an application architecture that respects users privacy and data ownership.
I think that last one is the most clear without needing to reference the technology, but I would love to say something like “this is a ___ app”.
In my experience explaining remoteStorage to non-programmers, it was difficult to communicate the difference between unhosted and the popular server architectures or native apps without getting too much into technical concepts. Wondering about ways to communicate in this context.
Using Web standards to let people control their data, and choose the applications and services to use with it
When we started solid we wanted it to be a “standards” approach to creating data and apps. But this has shifted in a far too aggressive way to becoming just a synonym for trying to promote RDF with all its incredible complexity, with the main serialization as Turtle. But, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that web developers want to use JSON, and will reject “full” RDF, with maybe some compromise around JSON-LD. Also, solid apps do not always need to be unhosted, so slight differentce
What is the audience of a non technical nomenclature? Non technical people that I know just use the term “apps”. When they like something on the web or on your phone they will ask, “what is the name of that app”
I guess this about branding. What do we want to communicate with an ‘unhosted’ app. Maybe things like privacy, control. Possibly the idea of ‘sovereign’ apps might be a nice brand.
to communicate freedom of platform (i.e. operating system, hardware form factor, browser) - we usually call this a ‘web app’ but as you mention I think less technical people just say ‘app’ without awareness of the distinction.
to communicate data sovereignty (i.e. the user owns the data, not the app or developer ) - I think it’s super important to make people aware of this aspect because it’s non-standard and also because if they know what to call it they can decide to seek it out when making choices.
perhaps, as you say, these two points may not mean that the app is unhosted.
I’m sharing my explorations in case anyone wants to join in. I repeatedly refer to point 1 with ‘universal’.
“autonomous data”
universal autonomous data app
universal personal data app
universal personal data storage app
univereal user data storage app
universal libre storage app
universal self-storage app
universal auto-storage app (as in the French ‘auto’)
In the Fission chat, you mention that people are concerned with privacy. Here you’ve suggested “privacy app”. I think this has connotations that don’t match. What about a “private app”?
I think that ideally the progression of “unhosted” apps will necessarily end up with the app itself being included in the user’s data—just like most software from the 90s was supposed to be installed on the user’s disk and kept there. In that case, it could be called a truly private app—there’s really no need to even hit the app developer’s public endpoint to use it, nor is there any problem if they’re unable to keep their site up in the long term—because your storage provider has your copy, anyway.
The notion of privacy is something that’s getting a lot of attention right now. It’s too attractive to pass up the opportunity to adopt messaging based on it, I think.
(NB: I regret that my first comment here is a form of bikeshedding, but there’s a real need for a term that’s approachable.)
I went with Zero Data because it’s somewhat objective: “the app doesn’t store any data”. It’s harder to measure ‘privateness’ and I wouldn’t want to project a false sense of security.
I think this is very much in line with Fission’s approach. Lot’s of different versions of each app, user customization, keep as much as possible in storage.
