Re: [libreplanet-discuss] The GNU ethical repository criteria will only harm free software.

[Aaron Wolf]

On 10/22/2015 01:56 AM, Alexander Berntsen wrote:
> On 22/10/15 03:21, Mike Gerwitz wrote:
>> GNU and the FSF stand against SaaSS.
> Saying that you are against SaaSS doesn't make any sense when you
> *develop SaaSS*, and are making ethical criteria for *using SaaSS*.
> 
> And anyway, being "against SaaSS" is an inherently backwards way of
> going about it. SaaSS can liberate and empower users, which should be
> the main goal of FSF. Not everyone is a rich American developer who
> can order free high-quality hardware. If the FSF is against SaaSS they
> are effectively against e.g. poor people, and I don't think they mean
> to be.
> 

Alex, that argument is simply unreasonable. That's comparable to
Facebook saying "people who oppose our Internet.org closed, non-neutral,
censored system are against poor people" or Microsoft saying "people who
oppose our no-charge licensing of Windows and Microsoft Office to these
schools are against poor people" or even "people who oppose sourcing
Pizza Hut for subsidized school lunches are against poor people".

The FSF defines SaaSS specifically as services that are run over a
network specifically where they could be run on local machines
effectively enough. This is not weird edge cases where someone gets
access to a super computer for some advanced scientific analysis. The
vast majority of these cases do not require any sort of high-qualiy,
latest, expensive hardware.

Public hosting of code in a repository is not SaaSS, as it isn't your
own private computing done instead on someone else's server. It's about
public serving of data. The whole point here is that the FSF recognizes
that people can't all easily run their own servers and services, even
though that might be ideal.

-- 
Aaron Wolf
co-founder, Snowdrift.coop
music teacher, wolftune.com

signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature