> We believe that the starting point indeed needs > to be 100% Free/Libre and not rely on things > like Google Hangout; but we also believe that > the solution is to make the Free/Libre things > also superior products so there's no temptation > And our system is meant to solve that.
That is great news. But could I ask a delicate question?... How will we pay to *host* that free software. For example, there is plenty of Free chat software to replace Google Hangouts, but we do not know how share the costs of the hardware needed to *host* that software, and so remain in isolation. The difficulty of sharing hardware may be the most important problem we face. For example, if we could share hardware such as the factories that make computers, we could have DRM free hardware. You may think it is impossible to own such large things, but the truth is that we *already* pay for them. We, the users pay all the costs of production and even more when we pay profit, so it is easy to see we could afford to do so. Once we learn to share hardware, we can offer Free-As-In-Freedom email servers and Fakebook replacements and video hosting and generally everything that cloud computing will soon be solving. If we refuse to learn how to share hardware, the gains in software Freedom will become less and less important as those who own the hardware will be able to use Free Software and Free Designs against us because we did not organize for our own, mutual benefit.
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