"'Software as a service' means that you think of a particular server as doing your computing for you. If that's what the server does, you must not use it! If you do your computing on someone else's server, you hand over control of your computing to whoever controls the server. It is like running binary-only software, only worse: it's even harder for you to patch the program that's running on someone else's server than it is to patch a binary copy of a program running on your own computer. Just like non-free software, 'software as a service' is incompatible with your freedom." ** Full Story **
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sgbeal
15 years 22 weeks 3 days 19 hours ago
Free Service isn't possible, Mr. Stallman.
"'software as a service' is incompatible with your freedom"
and so is the service of buying a hamburger at McDonalds. Not EVERYTHING can be Free as in Freedom, RMS! We pay for the service of cloud computing so that someone else has to go through the trouble of maintaining the infrastructure. i don't personally want to maintain a separate server (or service) for every significant app i use, and will gladly pay someone for that service. There's nothing wrong with that. Being upset because Service is not free absolutely absurd. i will go so far as to say that Service *cannot* be Free as in Freedom, because the moment it's free it becomes someone's duty to provide it, and that someone then loses their freedom.