'The Future is Not Self-Hosted'

A software developer who built his own home server in response to Amazon's removal of Kindle book downloads now argues that self-hosting 'is NOT the future we should be fighting for.' Drew Lyton constructed a home server running open-source alternatives to Google Drive, Google Photos, Audible, Kindle, and Netflix after Amazon announced that 'Kindle users would no longer be able to download and back up their book libraries to their computers.'

The change prompted Amazon to update Kindle store language to say 'users are purchasing licenses -- not books.' Lyton's setup involved a Lenovo P520 with 128GB RAM, multiple hard drives, and Docker containers running applications like Immich for photo storage and Jellyfin for media streaming. The technical complexity required '138 words to describe but took me the better part of two weeks to actually do.'

The implementation was successful but Lyton concluded that self-hosting 'assumes isolated, independent systems are virtuous. But in reality, this simply makes them hugely inconvenient.' He proposes 'publicly funded, accessible, at cost cloud-services' as an alternative, suggesting libraries could provide '100GB of encrypted file storage, photo-sharing and document collaboration tools, and media streaming services -- all for free.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.