13 ms·

Who does that server really serve? (2010)

105 points by cnst 7y ago

supakeen 7y ago
Interesting take on the entire thing (though from 2010). I think things have changed a bit regarding the possibilities of hosting on not-your-computer. I still agree with the premise that if you want control over something you use you should have it on your own computer, if you care less about that then a service is fine. I won't cross into dictating what others can do with my software or in the case of this article how they should buy their software.
ahbyb 7y ago
I suppose these articles aren't timestamped on purpose, but that is really annoying.
- cnst 7y ago
  Did the mention of "Windows Media Player" gave it up? :-) I think they're written in a neutral tone which is supposed to withstand the test of time, plus edited for corrections, but I do agree that it'd be nice to dates for some context. (It would appear that the original article was published in 2010.)
- tjr 7y ago
  From the bottom of the page: Copyright © 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018 Richard Stallman Updated: $Date: 2018/12/15 14:02:39 $
  - ahbyb 7y ago
    Interesting... one does not expect the timestamp to be there!
    - smhenderson 7y ago
      That was the traditional place to put it in the 90’s IIRC. Although I seem to remember seeing Updated snips under the title as well sometimes.
    - hinkley 7y ago
      I think that's an old CVS/SVN trick that didn't come forward into git. There's a token pattern you can put into files that gets updated at commit time.
  - zemo 7y ago
    the article was published March 18th 2010 in the Boston Review. I don't think the omission is deliberate, I think it is a mistake.
jammygit 7y ago
I think this is from his essay collection "Free Software, Free Society." Its a great read, I wish he'd written a sequel to go into more depth on some of the topics... maybe now he'll have time to do some more writing?
nexuist 7y ago
My problem with this article is that it is far too one sided to be a tenable argument. It is the software equivalent of arguing that taxation is theft, without acknowledging the things government works toward (infrastructure, business development, education, healthcare, national security). Note: Before the replies flood in, I understand everyone has problems with their government. The point is that you are still receiving benefits from government investment, regardless of how good those benefits are. I don't think anyone uses a SaaS platform without realizing that they are taking the role of customer. I am paying someone else to give me a platform that translates text so I don't have to put in the effort to set up one myself. What seems to be perpetually missing from the FOSS philosophy, especially among people who love tinkering with Linux (note: I am one of them), is a valuation of time. I don't care about free software if it takes me hours or weeks to set up. I will gladly pay someone else who has put in the time to develop a first-class platform so that I can go home earlier or spend my time working on something else. I have the power to make more money to cover my SaaS expenses later on; nobody has the power to generate more time that they can spend doing things that make them happy.
- 99052882514569 7y ago
  In addition to paid SaaS(S), to which your comment applies, there are also 'free' SaaS(S), where you're not taking the role of customer at all. Instead, you're taking the role of product, or your data is. You are the product to be sold to the platform's actual customers or used to benefit the larger company in some other way (e.g. Google Photos). I don't think it's an existential problem by any means, but one has to be cognizant of this fact.
- shantly 7y ago
  TFA seems to explicitly be about the kind of simple "give input, get output" program that you only make a SaaS to keep people from being able to continue using your software without paying you every month (or visiting your site for ad impressions, or sending you their data so you can use it to train machine learning models, or whatever). Not software that necessarily requires a server. I don't think it's in the same sort of bad syllogism category as "taxation = theft".
- 7y ago
movedx 7y ago
> The basic point is, you can have control over a program someone else wrote (if it's free), but you can never have control over a service someone else runs, so never use a service where in principle a program would do. If I'm reading this correctly, Richard is simply saying that SaaS(S) takes away your freedom to compute and manipulate software/data if there's a (free) program that can be run on your local computing environment. I've never really thought of using SaaS as someone else taking away my freedom. I understand the concept of lock-in and the possibilities that should I no longer pay the vendor then the software stops being available to me (but my data is still mine), but I don't feel my freedom is being taken away. And isn't Richard's argument the equivalent of saying that the banking system is taking away your freedom to spend your money because you COULD setup a safe at home and store all your money in it? Some problems are hard to solve and paying someone else a nominal fee to use their platform, which solves that hard problem, isn't taking away your freedom. > A user of the server would send her data to the server, which does her own computing on the data thus provided, then sends the results back to her or acts directly on her behalf. Case and point: what happens when the user in this scenario is using a MacBook Air but wants to compute a large sum of data using a complex, time consuming algorithm? Go out and buy a cluster of systems to maintain software freedom, or pay AWS for some services (they likely offer), SaaSS if you like, to do it for you in 10 minutes for $0.45? If anything such services are giving you more time and money, and therefore freedom. EDIT: added in example of a hard problem
- jolmg 7y ago
  I think you missed the point. For example, any SaaS can have a feature and decide to remove it, for whatever reason, and that results in a loss of freedom to you. For a concrete example, let's say that Github suddenly wants to add ads to their platform and because some people read and write issue posts with email, they decide to remove that feature so they'll be pushed to use the web interface and see the ads. That wouldn't be possible if the platform wasn't a SaaS. Just being forced to see ads is a loss of freedom. Software should only serve the user, not do stuff like impose ads on them. Nobody is arguing against paying the software developers, just against not being in control of the software. > Case and point: what happens when the user in this scenario is using a MacBook Air but wants to compute a large sum of data using a complex, time consuming algorithm? Go out and buy a cluster of systems to maintain software freedom, or pay AWS for some services (they likely offer), SaaSS if you like, to do it for you in 10 minutes for $0.45? I don't think the argument is against the use of VPSes, but rather against the running of code you can't inspect/modify/control, in the case of SaaS because the code is not running on a machine you control. I imagine that RMS isn't against the use of VPSes where you have control of the code running. So, yeah, rent that AWS VPS, nobody is arguing against it. And if you can self-host a SaaS program (well it might not count as SaaS anymore) on a VPS you're renting, then there's no problem with that either, as long as you have control of the code.
NotASithLord 7y ago
"If you rent a server (real or virtual), whose software load you have control over, that's not SaaSS. In SaaSS, someone else decides what software runs on the server and therefore controls the computing it does for you. In the case where you install the software on the server, you control what computing it does for you. Thus, the rented server is virtually your computer. For this issue, it counts as yours." I'm most curious about applying this distinction to the computing environment today. According to the author it seems Amazon EC2 wouldn't be considered a SaaSS, but Amazon Serverless would? After all you don't control the software loaded in a "serverless" environment, only the business logic. Yet both are hosted in and maintained by Amazon. Amazon, for all intents and purposes, has access to the data coming in and out of there in both cases. So does the distinction hold true, and if it does does it not damage the value of making such a distinction?
lonelappde 7y ago
Something weird about Stallman is that he has a special FOSS exemption for his microwave software, because it's an "appliance", not a "general purpose computer", but he doesn't grant the same exemption to cloud computing and web apps for some reason.

105 points by cnst 7y ago

Interesting take on the entire thing (though from 2010). I think things have changed a bit regarding the possibilities of hosting on not-your-computer. I still agree with the premise that if you want control over something you use you should have it on your own computer, if you care less about that then a service is fine. I won't cross into dictating what others can do with my software or in the case of this article how they should buy their software.

ahbyb 7y ago

I suppose these articles aren't timestamped on purpose, but that is really annoying.

cnst 7y ago
Did the mention of "Windows Media Player" gave it up? :-) I think they're written in a neutral tone which is supposed to withstand the test of time, plus edited for corrections, but I do agree that it'd be nice to dates for some context. (It would appear that the original article was published in 2010.)
tjr 7y ago
From the bottom of the page: Copyright © 2010, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018 Richard Stallman Updated: $Date: 2018/12/15 14:02:39 $
- ahbyb 7y ago
  Interesting... one does not expect the timestamp to be there!
  - smhenderson 7y ago
    That was the traditional place to put it in the 90’s IIRC. Although I seem to remember seeing Updated snips under the title as well sometimes.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    I think that's an old CVS/SVN trick that didn't come forward into git. There's a token pattern you can put into files that gets updated at commit time.
- zemo 7y ago
  the article was published March 18th 2010 in the Boston Review. I don't think the omission is deliberate, I think it is a mistake.

jammygit 7y ago

I think this is from his essay collection "Free Software, Free Society." Its a great read, I wish he'd written a sequel to go into more depth on some of the topics... maybe now he'll have time to do some more writing?

nexuist 7y ago

My problem with this article is that it is far too one sided to be a tenable argument. It is the software equivalent of arguing that taxation is theft, without acknowledging the things government works toward (infrastructure, business development, education, healthcare, national security). Note: Before the replies flood in, I understand everyone has problems with their government. The point is that you are still receiving benefits from government investment, regardless of how good those benefits are. I don't think anyone uses a SaaS platform without realizing that they are taking the role of customer. I am paying someone else to give me a platform that translates text so I don't have to put in the effort to set up one myself. What seems to be perpetually missing from the FOSS philosophy, especially among people who love tinkering with Linux (note: I am one of them), is a valuation of time. I don't care about free software if it takes me hours or weeks to set up. I will gladly pay someone else who has put in the time to develop a first-class platform so that I can go home earlier or spend my time working on something else. I have the power to make more money to cover my SaaS expenses later on; nobody has the power to generate more time that they can spend doing things that make them happy.

99052882514569 7y ago
In addition to paid SaaS(S), to which your comment applies, there are also 'free' SaaS(S), where you're not taking the role of customer at all. Instead, you're taking the role of product, or your data is. You are the product to be sold to the platform's actual customers or used to benefit the larger company in some other way (e.g. Google Photos). I don't think it's an existential problem by any means, but one has to be cognizant of this fact.
shantly 7y ago
TFA seems to explicitly be about the kind of simple "give input, get output" program that you only make a SaaS to keep people from being able to continue using your software without paying you every month (or visiting your site for ad impressions, or sending you their data so you can use it to train machine learning models, or whatever). Not software that necessarily requires a server. I don't think it's in the same sort of bad syllogism category as "taxation = theft".
7y ago

movedx 7y ago

> The basic point is, you can have control over a program someone else wrote (if it's free), but you can never have control over a service someone else runs, so never use a service where in principle a program would do. If I'm reading this correctly, Richard is simply saying that SaaS(S) takes away your freedom to compute and manipulate software/data if there's a (free) program that can be run on your local computing environment. I've never really thought of using SaaS as someone else taking away my freedom. I understand the concept of lock-in and the possibilities that should I no longer pay the vendor then the software stops being available to me (but my data is still mine), but I don't feel my freedom is being taken away. And isn't Richard's argument the equivalent of saying that the banking system is taking away your freedom to spend your money because you COULD setup a safe at home and store all your money in it? Some problems are hard to solve and paying someone else a nominal fee to use their platform, which solves that hard problem, isn't taking away your freedom. > A user of the server would send her data to the server, which does her own computing on the data thus provided, then sends the results back to her or acts directly on her behalf. Case and point: what happens when the user in this scenario is using a MacBook Air but wants to compute a large sum of data using a complex, time consuming algorithm? Go out and buy a cluster of systems to maintain software freedom, or pay AWS for some services (they likely offer), SaaSS if you like, to do it for you in 10 minutes for $0.45? If anything such services are giving you more time and money, and therefore freedom. EDIT: added in example of a hard problem

jolmg 7y ago
I think you missed the point. For example, any SaaS can have a feature and decide to remove it, for whatever reason, and that results in a loss of freedom to you. For a concrete example, let's say that Github suddenly wants to add ads to their platform and because some people read and write issue posts with email, they decide to remove that feature so they'll be pushed to use the web interface and see the ads. That wouldn't be possible if the platform wasn't a SaaS. Just being forced to see ads is a loss of freedom. Software should only serve the user, not do stuff like impose ads on them. Nobody is arguing against paying the software developers, just against not being in control of the software. > Case and point: what happens when the user in this scenario is using a MacBook Air but wants to compute a large sum of data using a complex, time consuming algorithm? Go out and buy a cluster of systems to maintain software freedom, or pay AWS for some services (they likely offer), SaaSS if you like, to do it for you in 10 minutes for $0.45? I don't think the argument is against the use of VPSes, but rather against the running of code you can't inspect/modify/control, in the case of SaaS because the code is not running on a machine you control. I imagine that RMS isn't against the use of VPSes where you have control of the code running. So, yeah, rent that AWS VPS, nobody is arguing against it. And if you can self-host a SaaS program (well it might not count as SaaS anymore) on a VPS you're renting, then there's no problem with that either, as long as you have control of the code.

NotASithLord 7y ago

"If you rent a server (real or virtual), whose software load you have control over, that's not SaaSS. In SaaSS, someone else decides what software runs on the server and therefore controls the computing it does for you. In the case where you install the software on the server, you control what computing it does for you. Thus, the rented server is virtually your computer. For this issue, it counts as yours." I'm most curious about applying this distinction to the computing environment today. According to the author it seems Amazon EC2 wouldn't be considered a SaaSS, but Amazon Serverless would? After all you don't control the software loaded in a "serverless" environment, only the business logic. Yet both are hosted in and maintained by Amazon. Amazon, for all intents and purposes, has access to the data coming in and out of there in both cases. So does the distinction hold true, and if it does does it not damage the value of making such a distinction?

lonelappde 7y ago

Something weird about Stallman is that he has a special FOSS exemption for his microwave software, because it's an "appliance", not a "general purpose computer", but he doesn't grant the same exemption to cloud computing and web apps for some reason.