On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 5:55 AM, Patrick Anderson <[email protected]>wrote:
> Even if Google Hangouts were AGPL > this problem would remain unsolved. > > If Facebook and Gmail and Skype and > AWS were all Free and Open Source, > we would still face the same problems. > > We already have Free Software that can > do all of these things anyway. > > The problem is that we do not know how > to share the hardware needed to *host* > those services, and so remain subject > to the current owners. > > Free Culture cannot move forward until > we accept this difficult proposition and > design a organizational form capable of > perpetuating user freedom in the physical > realm through shared property ownership. > Patrick, I think you are probably right. However, we do not actually know what the world would look like if Google Hangouts were AGPL. It would certainly make competition easier. Perhaps solutions would be devised that we haven't considered, perhaps very distributed solutions. All that said, I think your point is important and needs to be part of the discussion. As I said, I could see snowdrift.coop actually address this hardware issue, so it is an idea we will have to consider. -- Aaron Wolf wolftune.com
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