I’m a newbie to the SAFE technical issues but given the big amount of data I need to read and understand I thought I could post a question instead.
When features are complete:
Can I upload something on SAFE that cannot be deleted even by me the original uploader ? (censorship resistant)
Can I make an application that also has the same characteristics meaning once it starts running and given enough coins it continues to run without anyone being able to stop it? (sounds like a doomsday scenario but im not talking about spam bots or terminators)
Can I make an application that has paid subscriptions that keep it running? The model with paid by usage is very communist style, i may want a few customers that want to pay big money because of my killer app service
Does the app need to be open source/viewable to SAFE users?
Welcome to the forum, don’t know if I can answer them all.
There’s even the question if anything can be deleted at all. I heard rumors about the fact that you can delete your data-atlas so you can never get your file back again. But the chunks might live on the network forever. Don’t know where this idea has gone. I would say it is possible. But I think even with you being able to delete it is censorship resistant. Unless under torture or extreme threads where people force you using violence to log in and delete it. Don’t know if that’s what you mean?
You don’t need to pay coins to run an App. So when you create one, you upload it to the network and you and others can use it. People will run your application local on their machines. So it depends on if they do or not how long your App is used. This is quite different from Ethereum where “contracts” run on the miners computer and nobody can stop the network.
If think a system where you charge people for using the App should be possible. Although I think people will grab your code and create a free version next to it. Most won’t IMO. Because they understand that it would kill development.
I think most Apps will be open source. They’re run in a “sandbox” but still people want to be able to read and check the code I think. Don’t know if closed source will be possible.
Yes, there is a lot to go through, and as there are many new paradigms proposed here, it can certainly be a bit confusing at first. And second, and third…
Correct. The concept of “deleting” data is really best though of as “forgetting where it’s stored”.
If you’re the only one who know about it (has the “data map” of it’s “chunks”) then it’s pretty much irretrievable. But no one can “delete” data off of the Network. Anyone who has valid access to that data is able to retrieve it at any time.
As @polpolrene mentioned, Apps are run local on the client’s machine. Even when (in the far future) distributed computing is implemented, that would only constitute CPU cycles, not RAM!
Basically there’s no back-end. Everything is front-end driven and started and stopped by the user on their local machine.
You certainly have the ability to create a closed-source application that requires a subscription service.
I have argued before on these forums that such a business model would be unsustainable in a climate such as the one we are creating, and that there are other, more prosperous ways to obtain income - at the same time as creating the opportunity for more customers by refraining from such a business model. Take a look at the micro paywall thread for a jumping off point.
EDIT: A point I’ve been mulling over for a bit: If you’re accessing the same data with different apps, would you pay to use an app over a similar one (functionality and feature-wise) for free? The thing is, no one pays a subscription to use Chrome, FF, IE, etc…
However that’s not to say that devs need to rely on the Network alone for payments, indeed, I would say that there will be much income generated from the users going to the App. It’s just a new paradigm of old business models. “Blocking” content to “extort” a subscription fee from users is not likely to go over very well (but I could be wrong!)
I would also argue that it is capitalistic from the point of view of the Network - if we’re going for a Pay Per PUT app reward mechanism. But that’s another conversation for another time. Of course, you can always get started here. But I digress…
Oops! I already got to this one. It’s like the WWW - the protocol is FOSS, the applications need not be.
However, knowing this community, the popular ones will most likely be FOSS…
Sounds like you want to start a DAO or DAP of some kind. You do realize the paid by usage, that is app development and paying the producer and so forth is how the whole network would be funded right, including you as an app developer whether your app required a subscription or not? You also realize it’s a ratio of how the network awards safecoins rather than a redistribution of earned safecoins. At no point is your money taken from you by force as in a statist regime. Furthermore there is no practical way for anyone to enforce closed source or a subscription service on the userbase as closed source software can simply be cloned, as can any software that uses a subscription or paywall of undesired height. A paywall could work yes, but it would have to be so small it would be unnoticeable. Same with a subscription. It could work but it would have to be a tiny trickle, more like automatically throwing coins in a tip jar than paying for a service. I very much doubt the culture of quid pro quo will last on SAFE.
On 1), I think you have your answer: yes, immutable can mean undeletable by anyone including the creator (err, I don’t mean God here )
I think you are asking about dApps that run on the network, not SAFE Apps (which run on the client). So my answers to the other questions differ from those given above:
& 3) I think theses will be possible, but not early i on because smart contracts and decentralised compute will be needed for dApps, and these will come after the beta is in operation. Implementing the basics of these will be a small task compared to that needed to create the network itself, so it shouldn’t be a long wait - I understand these to be seen as high priority after the core between features and support for SAFE Apps are in place.
For a dApp (run on the network) I think this would be a choice, up to the designer. For SAFE Apps (load from network, but run on client), open source is encouraged but not be required for any app that uses the SAFE API without linking to safe libraries (which should not really impose any restrictions on the functionality that’s available). There was talk that to encourage open source, that Safecoin transaction fees might be levied on closed source apps which used Safecoin to charger for services for example, but I’m not sure if this is still the case. If you want to link to libraries MaidSafe will I believe require you to either GPL your code, or negotiate a license to keep your source closed.
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