The nebulous term "cloud computing" refers to many different scenarios, and they raise different issues. Thus, attempting to discuss "the issue of cloud computing" is an invitation to go astray. It is setting out on the wrong path.
One specific case, which is specific enough to say something about, is SaaS (software as a service). The article http://wiki.debian.org/Cloud/www.d.o-draft/philoshphy compares SaaS to various things, but I think those comparisons are all mistaken. A library is nothing like SaaS. A library is, traditionally, a place where you look at others' publications. The Internet analogue of a library is a ordinary web site such as gnu.org. The postal system is nothing like SaaS. The post office is a system of communication. The Internet analogue of the post office is email, or the Internet itself, used in the end-to-end form that it was designed for. A restaurant is nothing like SaaS. A restaurant sells a product that you consume, and that's not much like any digital activity. Food varies in regard to nutrition and taste, but it always goes in the same opening and gets digested the same way. Food is consumed; using digital data does not consume it, and doing computational activity is not consuming anything except electricity. Computing carries out a wide variety of activities, nothing like the uniformity of eating. Food can be unhealthy, but it can't be used to spy on you or manipulate you in subtle ways, not even if it is drugged. Thus, food is not comparable to software. The analogy is misleading. What is SaaS? SaaS means doing your own computing on a server run by someone else. It means losing control over your computing. A better term for it could be SaaSS: Service as a Software Substitute. It means that instead of doing your computing the right way -- by running your copy of a free program -- you hand your computing over to someone else, who has total control over it. Usimg SaaSS is equivalent to running a nonfree program with spyware and a universal back door (capable of forcible remote installation of software changes). There is no way to make SaaSS ok. However, other network services are a totally different issue. For instance, the Debian servers distribute copies of software. That's a different kind of activity, and raises different issues. The only thing that can be bad about this is if the software is nonfree. "Cloud computing" is the wrong kind of generalization -- it includes cases that raise totally different issues. To have a sensible discussion we should focus first on the different kinds of network services, to see which of them are inherently bad and find the ethical rules for the other kinds. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
