"Maybe someone will come along and create a super easy to install and low maintenance server platform"

that's the idea

Chances are, you're already running one.

If you have a smartphone, it allows the carrier (=client) to access the device (=server) remotely.

Same for cable modems.

Maybe you also have a Wifi router. It is listening for HTTP requests because it has a "Web GUI". It is thus a web server, among other things. Maybe it also has a "backdoor" for remote login as reports continue to show this is common.

The idea is your devices are listening for incoming connections and they have data stores to serve on demand.

You may disagree but I would call these servers.

Many people manage to setup Wifi routers at home.

And with a modem or smartphone, there is almost no setup. You just turn it on and it starts serving.

So, I'd argue that "running your own server" is actually something anyone can do.

Maybe the real barrier to "running your own server" is only just confusion over terminology.

How would you ensure operational continuity for my mom who only has an ipad? Since that's the direction the world seems to be taking.

You can cache the data. I mean just think about how Git works. You can sync the information at random intervals between peers, and you don't need a direct connection all the time. A well-designed P2P decentralized network solves all these problems. A can send to C through B, if A and C are not currently connected and so on.

In fact, these are solved problems, and implemented in e.g. Freenet as far as I know.

Server/router hybrids.

> Maybe someone will come along and create a super easy to install and low maintenance server platform.

There is a developer release available already: https://freedomboxfoundation.org/ All packages are included in Debian Sid.

My mom can't install that herself, and wouldn't be able to find information on how to do it by browsing the freedombox website.

It's so obvious that the current freedombox website is targeted at computer geeks only and not general people. It is not 'super easy to install' if it's not granny-proved.

Your mom could plug in a ready-to-go Freedombox device that was installed with all that software already.

It is targeted at them, it is just not even close to done. Really, with this latest release it is only approaching getting usable at all.

Yes, that's why it's called a 'developer release'

Plus, what happens when the power goes out and now I can't receive email?

Email was created for a time when connections were expected to be unreliable. Email servers respond to a failure to connect by retrying at increasing intervals for several days.

Ah, that makes sense. I wasn't aware that's how it worked.

If your power at home has gone out, then very likely one of these two items is also "off":

  1) your internet connection endpoint
  2) your wireless router

At which point you could not read any of the emails that an external "service" might receive for you anyway.

Plus, as another poster already stated, email servers retry several times to deliver a message (as required by the spec), so the email just waits in the senders queue until your power is back, and then arrives, a few hours late.