On Thu, Aug 17, 2023 at 3:59 PM John Levine <johnl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It appears that Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
>The main cost of running such a registry is supporting the query function ...
No, Don is right. The main cost is maintaining the database, and
particularly dealing with exception cases when people lose their
password, or a friend or relative has to update info for an
incapacitated or dead person. Telling people that if they lose their
keys they have to set up a new identity isn't going to fly.
It is certainly doable, but not in a fully automated way.
See my response to Don. These are real costs but costs I have already considered and assigned to other parties in the Mesh Infrastructure. The Mesh is primarily an infrastructure for securing data at rest. I see you 'lose your fancy name' and raise you a 'lose the pictures of the kids at 5'. These are hard problems which is why I am focused on them.
I note that about 50% of the content I watch on YouTube is sponsored by VPN companies. There are hundreds of millions of people paying $20/year for a capability they think gives them 'security'. Add to those the anti-virus companies, etc. etc.
The difference between the Mesh and every other VC funded Internet startup is that the Mesh does not attempt to lock customers into a provider for life. There are no switching costs with the Mesh. If you have AliceVPN as your Mesh service provider and you want to switch to BobAV, you can do that with zero switching costs. All your email, voice, chats, video, etc. etc. moves without you having to do anything extra.
I have no idea what it will cost to run an MSP because it hasn't been tried yet. So I have been expanding the value proposition as much as possible. Once Everything is complete, every Mesh user will have a client that gives them:
* End to end encrypted email, chat, voice, video with no limitation on message sizes.
* Sharing encrypted data at rest with groups of users by applying threshold techniques.
* Provisioning and management of private keys across their user devices and IoT devices
* An IoT dashboard that acknowledges the fact people live in families.
* Contact management for the Mesh and any other Internet application
* Automated management of developer keys for code and commit signing.
* End to end secure social media in which no-one can censor your voice and nobody can force you to listen to them
If you are willing to use a CLI tool, all the parts that don't require a GUI work today. I hope to bring the GUI version with me to Prague.
I think the MSPs should be able to justify a $20/yr level fee for that range of capabilities.
Yes, managing databases is expensive. Having written a few back in the day, I have designed the Mesh approach to avoid the need to pay for DBA admins or SQL licenses.
