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> 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
by 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 agoI 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.