Hi Jonas
On 01/19/2018 11:50 AM, Jonas Oberg wrote:
By and large, I believe *where* a certain piece of code runs is immaterial
to the question, and what matters is the interface the user of a service is
subject to. As we know, throughout the history of computing, we've
constantly moved the processing power between the client, and the server,
and back again, time and time again.
I believe it makes a difference if the software is running on my
computer or not.
An aspect of they point you make is that the software run by complex web
applications like Facebook or GMail should also be free, we should be
able to study it and figure out what it's doing on our behalf when we're
pushing its buttons. I think that's the use case of the Affero GPL - by
licensing under the Affero GPL, you demand that derived sites should not
refuse to make its code, along with its own changes, available to the user.
However, you can't expect to be able to make modifications on other
people's servers. What you can do is set up your own server with the
same software with the modifications.
In the case of Facebook, likely people wouldn't use your site because
you don't have Facebook's database.
And that's in my view a threat to software freedom, but it's a different
threat: The centralization. One of FSFE's slogans is "There is no Cloud,
just other people's computers".
This is completely true. What is also true is that vast majority of
computers in "the cloud" in "The Cloud" is owned by a very small handful
of suppliers. So "Cloud computing" is not just an euphemism for "not
your computer", it's a euphemism for the fact that ownership of
practically all computers in the world, and nearly all public
infrastructure, is being concentrated into the hands of maybe three or
four cloud vendors. And that's a huge problem.
But, as I argue - it's also a different one.
Best
Carsten
That Google or Facebook happens to have JavaScript that, today, runs on
the client side, should not affect whether it's considered to be violating
my freedom or not.
Let's imagine for a second that Google and Facebook rewrote their frontend
to use only CSS/HTML, and avoid JavaScript. Would that magically make their
service more respecting of my freedom? I do not believe so. It would still
be a proprietary service.
And similarly, if they licensed and made available all the corresponding
source code for their JavaScript, that would not make the service more
respecting of my freedom either. It would still be a proprietary service.
Best,
_______________________________________________
Discussion mailing list
Discussion@lists.fsfe.org
https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
