The awesome life of an OSS web dev

Well, as we progress through the years of computing, the web as a platform has really taken off. Many people are using things such as Google Docs because of their simplicity and convenience, and also it makes it extremely easy to share documents. Also, adobe recently released their web-based photo editor, Photoshop Express, as well as AIR, which allows web developers to create desktop applications using javascript, flash, and html. A javascript implementation of openGL is in the works, and javascript in general has been a hot topic in the web world. Also, the gnome project has started working on an online desktop that is integrated with web services.

So what am I getting at? I feel that eventually the web as a platform will replace the desktop platform. Web applications are platform-independent, simple enough for most people to figure out, and usually make it easy to share things. The problem however is that we as javascript developers don't have the capabilities of writing an image or video editor without server-side scripting. Even then, it would not be scalable.
Also standards are a huge issue, the IE people just can't seem to get it through their thick heads that their browser is the worst when it comes to web standards. IE8 holds some promise, but I have my doubts.

We still need to be able to do more with javascript though. I doubt it's possible to write a video editor in pure javascript. We need to have more tools to do cool things. I think that the openGL implementation is definitely a step in the right direction, but it's still not enough. More intergration with the desktop is necessary. (but not too much :D)

Now, I personally don't want to see the desktop turn into a thing you go on websites with. If anything I would want to see a web-based desktop environment with many applications, which is why I started the Psych Desktop project. Anyways, I feel that we need to stop trusting third parties, because if we come to a point where everything is stored on the web, any third party can then do whatever they wish with our property. This is no good.

So in the future I hope that running a home server with a web desktop becomes very easy. The problem here is that static IPs are costly and uncommon, and the average consumer does not know what dynamic DNS is. In order for the home server to take off something needs to be done about this.

And the last thing I see is open source software dominating this platform. Heck, it's already dominating the platform, most web servers run linux/apache, and most personal blogs and websites are powered by open source software.

So that's what I think will become of the computers of the future. Web apps replacing desktop apps, more home servers, and web desktops finally taking off.