"...The current generation of network services or Software as a Service can provide advantages over traditional, locally installed software in ease of deployment, collaboration, and data aggregation. Many users have begun to rely on such services in preference to software provisioned by themselves or their organizations.

It is supported by many that the AGPL license for network services which run in a cloud brings back the fairness provision that the original GPL intended and returns the freedom that FLOSS promises to all users and developers. But does the APGL license really provide all that?

Eben Moglen gave a talk last week on ``Freedom In the Cloud: Software Freedom, Privacy, and Security for Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing''. If you are interested in the problem of network services, you need to watch this!

"Network services are one of the fastest growing areas in modern software. However, while network services have much of the convenience of free software, only a minority are available under a free license. In fact, it was only last November that the Free Software Foundation (FSF) released the GNU Affero General Public License for network services.

"BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA—Monday, July 14, 2008— A new activist group called autonomo.us has launched an online presence to focus on issues of software freedom in network services..."

"...copyleft is a tool designed to spread freedom in software, at any cost. The FSF, which wrote the GNU and Affero licenses, has the goal to make all software free as in freedom. Companies are ‘free’ to join the revolution, or to look somewhere else for their needs.

I’m a big fan of Free Culture and free open source web services too, licensed under the AGPL. The example I use most is probably Identi.ca, because I’m a noisy git and I like talking to people. I also wrote about the creation of Libre.fm a little while back, and I think we could really use more of these truly “free” web services.

"...I'm going to talk about the AGPL 3.0, why it's important that we put effort into figuring out what freedom for different technologies means, and what the components of freedom for web services might be."

You probably rely on the services on your own private network -- wikis, mail servers, Web sites, and other applications you've installed. What happens when you have to leave the friendly confines of your network?