Never. I’m serious. I know the customer is always right. Well not this time. blist is delivered as a service because that’s where it makes sense to run it - for you - not just for us.

A number of people have asked about our plans to let you install blist and run it locally. That’s not going to happen. Data wants to be shared. It wants to be accessible from wherever you are. It wants to be accessible from a multitude of devices. It wants to be accessible programmatically. For those things to happen, data needs to be “in the cloud” as they say.

Obviously there isn’t really a cloud. The Internet isn’t a network of arteries and veins in which data builds up like plaque. Companies like blist choose to offer their services via the Internet.

We offer blist as a service in part because it helps us too. It lowers our support costs by ensuring that everyone is using the most current version of our software. It lowers our development costs because we develop for exactly one platform - the one we run on our servers. It lowers our operating costs in a multitude of ways.

But more importantly we offer blist as a service for a major philosophical reason. blist wants to democratize working with data by empowering mainstream users - ordinary people - to organize data without relying on a database administrator (DBA).

Think about how mainstream users now draw diagrams with Visio and make presentations with PowerPoint. Those functions used to be performed centrally by specialists, much like data is still organized by a specialist - a DBA.

If blist is going to succeed at democratizing working with data, we have to eliminate the two dependencies that keep you beholden to the DBA. First, we have to dramatically improve the user experience of working with data so that you can organize it yourself. Second, we have to relieve you of the operational burden of keeping the database running.

In addition to designing schemas, DBA’s fix block corruption. They install software patches. They perform backups and restorations. DBAs are constantly monitoring, tuning and tweaking the database to keep it running optimally. I call it the “muck” of running a database.

By moving the database to the cloud, there’s no local database that you need to keep running. There’s no muck.

We believe breakthrough innovations in usability and freeing you of the operational burden of running a database will pave the way to democratizing working with data. It’s our belief. It’s our mission.