Let's be clear. This post describes an architecture that is offline-first, not local-first.
One of the main goals of local-first is so that the user of a local-first application owns their own data. (See Martin Kleppmann's paper on this).
As such, local-first applications don't necessarily have a concept of a central server. `git` is local-first, though most teams synchronize to a hub such as Github or Gitlab. This is a design principle to get away from having to sync to the cloud, making it more difficult to monetize as a SAAS. There seems to be a growing trend of people promoting offline-first applications as local-first, but structuring it to still lock people's data into their SAAS. (If you want to lock them in, then say so -- call it offline-first).
A true local-first mobile app would allow me to collaborate with someone in the same room using Bluetooth, even out somewhere where I don't have wifi, cell service or Starlink
> A true local-first mobile app would allow me to collaborate with someone in the same room using Bluetooth, even out somewhere where I don't have wifi, cell service or Starlink
Are there any popular cross platform apps that actually do this? Genuine question, I don't know of any.
I won't speak on the author's behalf, but I think he was using the term loosely here to refer to an app that hydrates and mutates state against disk and asynchronously syncs with other users (via a sync service) in the background.
Also, his post uses an architecture that connects to the devloper's own backend database (pg, mongo, etc) and not a proprietary backend-as-a-service. I don't see data lock-in here.
But yes, that is a trend. Even the conference has many talks that don't stick to the original 7 ideals. I think "sync" or "sync engine" is a more useful general purpose term that isn't bogged down by specifics.
> Are there any popular cross platform apps that actually do this? Genuine question, I don't know of any.
I don't know any, either. I doubt there will be any made. I have not figured out how and why anyone would be incentivized to write something like that, other than a foundation whose mission is to develop something like that.
I read Kleppman's paper again and realized that my idea of "local-first" is more strict than his.
When I think of "local-first", I am thinking of what permaculture design does for an ecosystem. Agency and being able to own your own data is essential.
Looking at it again, I can see why people disagree with me on what "local-first is".
On the other hand, based on Kleppman's formulation of local-first principles, I can see why those design principles degenerate into what it is now. You're still ultimately serving the needs of the business to operate as an ongoing concern, and as such, you still have to find some way to lock-in end-user data.
In order for the software to be useful even without the originating company, those software has to be able to collaborate with other users using that data. Otherwise, the only people who can make use of the local data are people with the skill to take the data apart and use it for something else. That does not really serve the needs of the end-user.
As an example of the difference, in Kleppman's paper, his formulation of local-first calls Github as local-first. With how I am thinking about it, while git itself is local-first, Github is not. The features Github makes to bring users back are the very features that are not local-first or even with a sync engine -- issues, wiki, Actions, repo search, to name a few.
Gitlab's use of ActivityPub for those things are moving towards being able to do that, but ActivityPub itself is designed as a client-server and server-to-server architecture.
To imagine a "local-first" Github ... I would imagine a hackathon where several people create a software forge with a git repo ad-hoc with bluetooth or some other short range discovery. At the end of the hackathon, maybe they sync with Github. Maybe they don't.
One of the main goals of local-first is so that the user of a local-first application owns their own data. (See Martin Kleppmann's paper on this).
As such, local-first applications don't necessarily have a concept of a central server. `git` is local-first, though most teams synchronize to a hub such as Github or Gitlab. This is a design principle to get away from having to sync to the cloud, making it more difficult to monetize as a SAAS. There seems to be a growing trend of people promoting offline-first applications as local-first, but structuring it to still lock people's data into their SAAS. (If you want to lock them in, then say so -- call it offline-first).
A true local-first mobile app would allow me to collaborate with someone in the same room using Bluetooth, even out somewhere where I don't have wifi, cell service or Starlink
See:
- https://martin.kleppmann.com/papers/local-first.pdf
- https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-first/ (Same, but in html)