I consider what you are describing to be the fundamental difference between federated and peer-to-peer software.
Email is federated. It was designed to accommodate many hosting providers, all of which could interoperate and communicate. But it really isn't expected that every user will run their own server. The same goes for HTTP/HTML.
Gnutella and TOX are P2P. They were designed such that every client is a server, and there are typically no centralized servers apart from the clients.
Email is federated. It was designed to accommodate many hosting providers, all of which could interoperate and communicate. But it really isn't expected that every user will run their own server. The same goes for HTTP/HTML.
Gnutella and TOX are P2P. They were designed such that every client is a server, and there are typically no centralized servers apart from the clients.
There is value in both types of systems.