Comment by swyx
20 days ago
> Apps may come and go, but files stay—at least, as long as our apps think in files.
yes: https://www.swyx.io/data-outlasts-code-but
all lasting work is done in files/data (can be parsed permissionlessly, still useful if partially corrupted), but economic incentives keep pushing us to keep things in code (brittle, dies basically when one of maintainer|buildtools|hardware substrate dies).
when standards emerge (forcing code to accept/emit data) that is worth so much to a civilization. a developer ecosystem tipping the incentive scales such that companies like the Googl/Msft/OpenAI/Anthropics of the world WANT to contribute/participate in data standards rather than keep things proprietary is one of the most powerful levers we as a developer community collectively hold.
(At the same time we shoudl also watch out for companies extending/embracing/extinguishing standards... although honestly outside of Chrome I struggle to think of a truly successful example)
Indeed. My first reaction was:
> Files are the source of truth—the apps would reflect whatever’s in your folder.
Now that the "app" is a web site that supports itself with advertising revenue, it has no incentive whatsoever to work this way.
There was never any such incentive. MS Office formats were undocumented for years because MS had no incentive to document them. Merely using files did not help at all. Actually the vast majority of all file formats have never been open. Think about all the custom file formats used by video games, for instance.
I actually talk about this in the article. Merely using files is how we got out of the dependency on MS Office. Multiple efforts reverse-engineered them, including Google Docs. Yes they were undocumented, but as long as stuff has to be stored on the disk under user’s control, the overall dynamics are very different from you-can’t-see-the-files systems.
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I think it's on open social apps to show that they're actually meaningfully better products, and that is possible because they're open. With luck, this may lead to an ecosystem where it's worth staying compatible and interoperable, and where users scoff if someone is trying to break it, and where users have an easy way to walk away. I know this sounds super idealistic but this did essentially happen with open source over a long time. At some point, people were just as skeptical of open source as we might be about open social.
I do really appreciate your vision, FWIW. (It also seems very compatible with my ideas about software complexity and dependencies etc.)
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> meaningfully better products
That are yet to become monetised. It's all fun and games until Bluesky announced how users and developers will pay for all this and what happens with your "social file system" when you stop paying.
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> a developer ecosystem tipping the incentive scales such that companies like the Googl/Msft/OpenAI/Anthropics of the world WANT to contribute/participate
I think Apache Arrow has achieved exactly that [1]. It's also very file-friendly, in that Arrow IPC files are self describing, zero-copy, and capable of representing almost any data structure.
[1] https://insights.linuxfoundation.org/project/apache-arrow/co...
Nice to see you :) I didn't know the "indirection" law, that's funny.
> At the same time we shoudl also watch out for companies extending/embracing/extinguishing standards
Is ATProto actually a standard? But regardless, nothing prevents Bluesky from enschitifying.
I’m somewhat concerned that the “file system” or the storage where all of our things are supposed to be stored is now suddenly in the cloud. We actually have a real file system … it backs itself up on iPhone even.
It feels like the entire pitch is based on some FOMO factor “oh but my posts” - do people really care that much about their short form outbursts? I mean the whole point of twitter was to post and forget but maybe not for everybody.
It’s a long road but the plan is to standardize AT. See https://docs.bsky.app/blog/taking-at-to-ietf for ongoing first steps.
>I’m somewhat concerned that the “file system” or the storage where all of our things are supposed to be stored is now suddenly in the cloud. We actually have a real file system … it backs itself up on iPhone even.
I don’t know how this is related to what my article talks about. The data we’re taking about is already public and in the cloud, it’s just locked into specific app’s databases.
The point isn’t about some single specific app, but about creating an ecosystem where the things you create (StackOverflow posts, Reddit discussions, Instagram follows, Letterboxd recipes) are not tied to the fate of that particular app and the whims of its creators. Then, if a service shuts down or turns to shit, developers can compete without solving the cold start problem. You just need to make a better app for same data, not convince everyone to recreate everything on your app.
Isn't this the design idea behind ATProto?
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I think that's an overly charitable take. Giving Google/MSFT/OpenAI/Anthropic what they want does not guarantee a return on dividends. Standards are nice, but Apple is a giant testament to the fact that all the standards in the world won't move an adequately entrenched business.