@tptacek I think my question about your post is this — right now people rely on a lot of apps written by professionals for things like mobile banking, messaging, medical providers, mobile payments, and subscription services (music, tv, etc). The interests of the app publishers aren’t aligned with total user freedom — banking app developers don’t want a totally malleable OS where there are no process separations or trust partitions. Rather, they want to rely on OS level guarantees that their code is isolated from other apps, that the binaries are signed, that the platform is somehow trusted.
I love your idea of an OS where users write their own apps as they want. But if they want to connect to third party services or use commercial software, won’t there still have to be a lot of security guarantees? I don’t just mean the depressing “browsers must implement DRM or you can’t watch streaming video.” I mean “how will medical providers trust your device enough to give you your lab results” if you are thinking of majorly changing the mobile device security model.
It’s not a hostile question, I’m genuinely curious about this design tradeoff.
The fear maybe a year ago was SaaSpocalypse. Why pay for Salesforce when I can vibe a CRM to my exact needs? Turns out to not be that easy.
The lion's share of value in a product like Salesforce is the ability to say "we run Salesforce" and have everyone know what you mean and have ready answers to all your problems even if they're not perfectly tailored (or cheap). Same thing with OS really. If natural language is now the most powerful programming language then having shared vocabulary on technical topics is more valuable than ever.
> The fear maybe a year ago was SaaSpocalypse. Why pay for Salesforce when I can vibe a CRM to my exact needs? Turns out to not be that easy.
In fact, it looks like the advent of AI has actually accelerated revenue growth for SaaS rather than killed it off. People simply aren't building these custom SaaS-killers as much as commenters on HN would have us believe.
Stripe Economics, The SaaSpocalypse was more like a RenaiSaaS: <a href="https://www.stripeeconomics.com/p/the-saaspocalypse-was-more-like-a" rel="nofollow">https://www.stripeeconomics.com/p/the-saaspocalypse-was-more...
decasia · · focus · HN ↗
I love your idea of an OS where users write their own apps as they want. But if they want to connect to third party services or use commercial software, won’t there still have to be a lot of security guarantees? I don’t just mean the depressing “browsers must implement DRM or you can’t watch streaming video.” I mean “how will medical providers trust your device enough to give you your lab results” if you are thinking of majorly changing the mobile device security model.
It’s not a hostile question, I’m genuinely curious about this design tradeoff.
tootie · · focus · HN ↗
The lion's share of value in a product like Salesforce is the ability to say "we run Salesforce" and have everyone know what you mean and have ready answers to all your problems even if they're not perfectly tailored (or cheap). Same thing with OS really. If natural language is now the most powerful programming language then having shared vocabulary on technical topics is more valuable than ever.
nozzlegear · · focus · HN ↗
In fact, it looks like the advent of AI has actually accelerated revenue growth for SaaS rather than killed it off. People simply aren't building these custom SaaS-killers as much as commenters on HN would have us believe.
Stripe Economics, The SaaSpocalypse was more like a RenaiSaaS: <a href="https://www.stripeeconomics.com/p/the-saaspocalypse-was-more-like-a" rel="nofollow">https://www.stripeeconomics.com/p/the-saaspocalypse-was-more...