Love it! I've been thinking about this a lot lately. It's crazy how many great FOSS alternatives are out there to everything – and while they might be relatively easy to install for tech-people ("docker compose up"), they are still out of reach for non-tech people.
Also, so many of these selfhostable apps are web applications with a db, server and frontend, but for a lot of use cases (at least for me personally) you just use it on one machine and don't even need a "hosted" version or any kind of sync to another device. A completely local desktop program would suffice. For example I do personal accounting once a month on my computer – no need to have a web app running 24/7 somewhere else. I want to turn on the program, do my work, and then turn it off. While I can achieve that easily as a developer, most of the people can't.
There seems to be a huge misalignment (for lack of a better word) between the amount of high-quality selfhostable FOSS alternatives and the amount of people that can actually use them. I think we need more projects like yours, where the goal is to close that gap.
I will definitely try to use selfhostblocks for a few things and try to contribute, keep it up!
My guess as to why most apps are now a web UI on top of a DB is because it’s easy to “install”. SelfHostBlocks is admittedly geared towards a central server serving web apps. Or at least apps with a desktop or mobile component but geared towards synching to a central server.
Feel free to give it a try though, I’d love that! Also feel free to join the matrix channel UF you have any questions or just to get some updates.
> My guess as to why most apps are now a web UI on top of a DB is because it’s easy to “install”.
That plus web dev is trendy and everybody is learning it. I wouldn't know how to code a proper desktop app right now, I've not done it in years.
I don't want to criticize that or the centralization aspect – there will still be ways to put these centralized things on a PC for example.
Exactly what I have been brainstorming a couple of times recently. I think it's a really cool idea, although I wouldn't know why anybody would want to switch? It would probably become rather niche (which is possibly even for the best). And if a critical mass switches over, what would prevent it from having the same kind of people and behaviour?
That being said I would be absolutely down to go down that rabbithole.
Why would a Twitter user switch to Mastodon or Bluesky or micro blogging, either on a shared public instance or on a personal instance?
Why would anyone think of making a new Twitter or a new LinkedIn in 2015? (actually, it's not new, it's different because of the different premise: not a single private platform controlled by whoever owns it, but several cooperating platforms through a common protocol).
Why would a Ford driver switch to a bicycle? Because while the infrastructure has not adjusted yet, it's a more sustainable, human-sized, city/neighbourhood-sized transportation tool (which, while it does not cover 100% of the cases, depending on the situation, can cover 50/80% of those), and it gives, not more power (that's irrelevant) but much more direct control about what you can do with it, where you can go.
So in short: it cannot start differently than as a niche thing.
> if a critical mass switches over, what would prevent it from having the same kind of people and behaviour?
Hosting instances policies and moderation. Much like Mastodon does already.
The actual value/service of LinkedIn is not in the data they have (it could be as well stored in a distributed database, such as the open web could be understood as). It's in how they operate/categorize/filter/report over it (their algorithms), and how they brand under their authority (which some take as some guarantee, which they are even happy to pay to).
Also, so many of these selfhostable apps are web applications with a db, server and frontend, but for a lot of use cases (at least for me personally) you just use it on one machine and don't even need a "hosted" version or any kind of sync to another device. A completely local desktop program would suffice. For example I do personal accounting once a month on my computer – no need to have a web app running 24/7 somewhere else. I want to turn on the program, do my work, and then turn it off. While I can achieve that easily as a developer, most of the people can't. There seems to be a huge misalignment (for lack of a better word) between the amount of high-quality selfhostable FOSS alternatives and the amount of people that can actually use them. I think we need more projects like yours, where the goal is to close that gap.
I will definitely try to use selfhostblocks for a few things and try to contribute, keep it up!