damon: damon: Doesnt SAFE do what SOLID is doing anyway? Why would SOLID need to run on top of SAFE?

The big wins of SAFE are security, privacy, data ownership, and decentralised services. Users in control and a level playing field for developers, who don’t have to shell out for infrastructure, and can make money without having to charge, show ads etc.

Solid aims for some of these goals, but is sever and service based, so I don’t think that on its own Solid can achieve them at scale, and will always be a poor second to SAFE.

In fact I think that as is, Solid would rapidly become centralised if it gained mass adoption, and we would be no better off. There are different views on this over on the Solid chat and forum, some see the problem some don’t. Assuming I’m right, then the earlier they see this the better, but even if they don’t we can still take their work and integrate it with SAFE Network because at its heart Solid is a protocol and some standards, and the code is open source.

However, the big win of Solid is that it separates the app from data much better than SAFE can alone. In other words, the user owns the data, and can at any time switch from one app and use another, without loss of service. Try that with Facebook!

This is a BIG deal because it means apps will have to compete on features and not by trying to capture and control our personal data. It turns the business models inside out, and will make it possible for independent app developers - even individuals - to compete with Facebook, Google and Co.

Solid makes it feasible for one app to read, write and mash up the data of another app. The data itself will be much more useful as LinkedData (RDF), because apps will be able to understand and query it based on semantics that are inherent in LinkedData. This means more powerful apps. Lots of innovation. Much better services for users, competing to do a better job for users instead of treating users as the product.

This aspect of Solid is genius, and a very big deal IMO. Put Solid and SAFE together and you have an incredible combination.

If you are interested in what Solid brings to SAFE and how this might work, may I humbly suggest [cough] my presentation to SAFE Network DevCon earlier this year. Its a short video (12mins) or you can click through a longer set of slides which I hope are fairly self explanatory. See: