Will P2P end DevOps?

An Internet free of information landlords; how we made it possible.

Two years ago we started cutting code, and we recently released the Socket Runtime. It’s an open source project that helps developers build native mobile and desktop apps for any OS, using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, or their favorite front-end libraries. The goal is to take these technologies, and the characteristics that make the Web great, beyond the constraints of the browser and the Cloud. There have been some pretty interesting articles written by The Register, Forbes, and Venture Beat and they answer some interesting questions.

Aside from being 100% Web technology. Socket Runtime offers some big improvements over older cross-platform solutions like React Native. For example, Socket apps will work with any Web library or framework! Compared to Electron, Socket apps are about 200% smaller, and use far less memory. Socket apps are also more secure, because 100% of the native code can be ruled by a CSP. Socket apps can even be distributed outside of the App Stores. There’s a long list of reasons why Socket Runtime is what's next for cross-platform development, but this is all just setting the stage for something much bigger and more important.

A new client-side runtime allows us to ship capabilities to developers that they might need to wait years for, or may never get in the browser. And the biggest, most interesting capability we wanted to introduce was Peer To Peer.

Why is P2P so important? Today, we build the Web by deploying to the Cloud. As convenient as the Cloud can be at first, it’s incredibly expensive when you start building non-trivial projects. With the Cloud, as the demand for your project grows, so do the costs. And it's not just an issue of money, the time spent gluing together and debugging services requires an extraordinary amount of time and people. Servers are a natural bottle-neck, because they're one server to many users. In terms of security, privacy, cost, and complexity, the middleman in the Cloud has never been the best solution, but until now it's been the only solution for Web development.

P2P offers a reliable way to escape the cost and complexity of the Cloud. This is the business case for the decentralization of the Web. Socket Runtime offers P2P to anyone with basic Web development skills. Making it possible to build networked software without any servers or rent-seeking Internet landlords. Join us on this journey away from the data center, beyond the edge, into a free Peer to Peer Web.