All this time I was thinking of installing applications on the physical drive of a computer. These applications would then access their data on the SAFE network.
The original breakthrough in computing by Von Neumann was to consider software also just as data (in stead of physical programs hardcoded, or external to the computer). This allowed the general purpose computer. There is no reason why we would not repeat this logic on SAFE.
What if we just have a single SAFE “embedded operating system” that
- runs routing and a single MAID login/logout architecture
- maps the virtual drive (as already provided by SAFE), where you can install any application you want - it’s your drive.
- manages/restricts access of different application to their PMID space, so they cannot snoop into other areas of your personal data without your approval.
Applications would just run as normal applications inside the native OS, but could always be updated and would be architecture specific (ie run the Mac binary when accessed on a Mac, run the windows exe when accessed on a windows machine, etc).
Of course you are free to install any app in your drive. But applications that fully live on SAFE could be linked to an applicationID, that can be rated/reported for trustworthiness.