I've read most of the paper but I just wanted to clarify something: is the goal of this to invent modern cross-platform HTML/CSS or am I missing something?
Similarly, despite the fact that the user's data can be hosted on their own computer (ex: name service), I find it hard to believe that any major site hosted with Qbux would not still have sign-in pages and de-anonymize their users. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of the on prem data / distributed approach?
Yes and no. Qbix and QBUX are the next step in the evolution, but there are further steps.
1. Qbix is the operating system (available today)
2. QBUX is the token (monetizing open source and digital content)
3. https://intercoin.org is the next generation (launched in 2017, still in early stages)
Let's go through the roadmap. So basically, what Qbix does is gives you choice of landlord. It replaces the Feudalism on the Web with a free market (of hosting companies, plugins, etc.) There is no one middleman - not even Qbix Inc. - that prevents you from selling your software, digital content and services (hosting, translation, moderation) to communities, who in turn take their members' money and pay for the services.
Once all this is commoditized, there is competition rather than a monopoly or cartel of large corporations. I should say that, by and large, all the problems we see from corporations and governments have to do with a lack of a real open source alternative. At Qbix we wrote an article a year ago that was largely like the OP one, but used the events of its time. You could write an article like this any month of the year btw:
Alright so now we have a choice of landlord, which is capitalism and competition. That's pretty good, but we can do better. We could replace that with an autonomous, self-healing, end-to-end encrypted framework that has no user accounts and every infrastructure node just accepts cryptocurrency and stores stuff. One such system is http://maidsafe.net/ They are probably the furthest ahead. They started before Qbix, in 2006, and they are still not done. They are far beyond IPFS in their vision.
We started a spinoff company called Intercoin (that one, I can actually say, is selling tokens in a regulated presale at https://intercoin.org). The goal is to build a distributed platform and protocol that is cryptographically secure AND scalable, unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum which are only secure but not scalable. It would be used for many applications, including payments, micropayments, UBI, fundraising, but also things like anonymous and secure voting, elections and governance. Here is my article in CoinDesk from last month about the details of that:
So in the end game, "communities" are simply superconnector users, and any user can grow and become one. They are no longer privileged by virtue of operating or paying for the hardware servers. Indeed, every Inter.Activity is end-to-end encrypted and stored on K nodes that run a consensus about its state. The Inter.Activity can be a chat, or it can be a coin, or whatever that evolves over time, and every Inter.Action is M-of-N signed by the current owners of the Inter.Activity . Some of our early thoughts in 2018 can be seen here:
A lot of what I build is "graduating" from the level of technical programming and more to do with societal programming... i.e. like the US constitution, it basically has to be architected to shape the growth of communities in a positive direction. That is a lot of responsibility. I have been thinking about these issues for at least since 2012: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=114
This is why we've recently taken on advisors from many different schools of economics, sociology, etc. to understand how our architectural decisions. Our company's mission is to Empower People and Unite Communities.
PS: If you're an advanced JS + Web developer and you'd like to potentially get involved, email me at greg @ either one of the domains qbix.com or intercoin.org ... we could use all the help we can get.
Similarly, despite the fact that the user's data can be hosted on their own computer (ex: name service), I find it hard to believe that any major site hosted with Qbux would not still have sign-in pages and de-anonymize their users. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of the on prem data / distributed approach?