My personal thoughts about the current Profitability of running a Codius Host at this stage in development based on how it stands today.

I'm seeing a lot of posts asking about profitability, and I've responded to a few of them already.

tl;dr - don't expect to profit for now or a long while. Do it if you want to test your own app on it, or just want to support the community. There are currently no rewards for setting up a host early.

The software IMO, is in an alpha state, and there are no instructions (aside from the example I created) on how to actually develop an app that you can deploy for it. You can't even deploy an app at the moment without doing it directly on the server itself (which IMO should not be necessary; I know the devs will look into this).

Remember that the revitalization of Codius was just announced around two weeks ago. Right now, the community has been focused on trying to get hosts running (with a lot of problems along the way).

Factors for profitability

  • There is a good number of Codius hosts, and a good number of apps to deploy to them. If there are too many hosts and too few / no apps (as in the current situation), the chance of getting something will be low.

  • Developer community - resources need to be developed (eg tutorials) on how to develop and deploy an app to a Codius host. ILP is not easy to grasp, and requires a lot of prerequisite knowledge in different domains (solution: find good content writers to digest the hard to understand for lay-developers).

  • Support from Coil (the company that builds the Codius stack) - the developer community needs proper channels to raise issues and get support from the Codius devs. Right now it's a bit of a mess - it's a mix of github issues in different repos, gitter chat, and blog posts...

  • There has to be a good value proposition for wanting to deploy an app to a Codius host. There are no SLAs (eg host performance guarantees, uptime, etc) defined, for example. Those in the enterprise will care about various compliance models such as PCI compliance, and security guarantees of the Codius host itself.

  • Becoming a host has to be accessible to anyone. Right now, it is not easy to set up or troubleshoot.

  • Stable and secure software. Users who set up hosts and developers that deploy apps will need to be assured of certain security concerns / guarantees. Resources need to be poured into proper security testing and development, along with a channel / program for reporting security issues.

  • Product roadmap from Coil for the developer community and those interested in Codius to know / prepare for certain features / milestones.

  • Legal framework / guidance for hosting Codius apps - what if the app you're hosting as a Codius host contains content that's deemed as illegal, violates laws, etc - do you ban the app (if so, how would that work?)

  • Related to legal - right now, you upload your app and get a URL to the host running the app - it's easy to figure out the IP of that host (I understand an IP doesn't necessarily mean anything) - will Coil / the community have to come up with ideas to anonymize hosting to reduce legal risk of being a host?

I'm not trying to put Codius down in any way - I'm just trying to be realistic about the current state of the project. I definitely want to support it (I'm very active in gitter, have developed my own example app, etc) and see the idea succeed. However, it has a long way to go before it can go mainstream.

Thus, do not expect to profit any time soon.