Sure, and there is the possibility of free-as-in-freedom libre software-as-a-service. And web APIs that are free software. The OpenStreetMap API, for instance.

Sure, and there is the possibility of free-as-in-freedom libre software-as-a-service. And web APIs that are free software. The OpenStreetMap API, for instance. The software that runs it is open source, the data is freely licensed, the system that it runs on is open source (Ubuntu Linux, Apache, Ruby on Rails)...