7 ms·

I am little bit concerned about the way technology trends these days. It feels like sooner or later, big companies will have all the hardware and software host

I am little bit concerned about the way technology trends these days. It feels like sooner or later, big companies will have all the hardware and software hosted on their side and people will only get access to play it according to companies rules. This is actually a concern to my freedom as well. I want to own my hardware and software power. I want to run everything offline if i want to. I don't want to click "I agree" button for all the actions i am doing. It also means everybody is kind of forced to use their devices how these big companies are decided to. They are selling you an apple, but they don't let you to eat it however you want. I will be happy as long as they give me the option(and not to force me use cloud) to keep my hardware and software on my side.

Bahamut 12y ago
Except you don't own most software you have on your machine locally. You agree to a license to use it.
- whizzkid 12y ago
  "I want to own my hardware and software power" I think this states what I am trying to say.
  - wffurr 12y ago
    The parent is specifically addressing that point. You don't own most of the software you are purchasing. The vendor retains either the technical or legal ability to reach into your machine and disable the software via the licensing agreement.
    - whizzkid 12y ago
      I understand the point, which is really reasonable. But how about this way; In order to disable the software that I installed on my machine, they need to know who I am, which computer it is installed to, plus lots of other procedures to deal with. Which is time consuming and not easy. In order to disable cloud hosted software, - User.find(me).licence.valid = false
    - pjmlp 12y ago
      On most countries EULAS are void.
      - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Yeah how's that work? In the US any terms made after money is tendered are void. This was done to avoid someone adding terms to a contract on delivery. SO is it true for software too? What about electronic download?
        pjmlp 12y ago
        In most European countries yes, as you can only read such licenses after buying the product. For the EULA to be enforcable, it needs to be made available at the store in such a way that the customer can read it before buying. Same thing for digital goods. If you can only read the license after buying the product, it is not valid.
    - MiddleEndian 12y ago
      License or not, source or not, if I have something installed on my computer, I can modify it or at least attempt to do so. I can also run it without a reliable network connection. Not so much for streaming services.
- wvenable 12y ago
  You own the license. Which give you the right to use the software. You don't need to own the software to use it; you need to have a license. The real problem is that you can't own a license anymore for a lot of software. You can only just rent one.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  It's a theoretical/legal thing. In practice, you own software by having executables on your drive. You don't have to ask anyone whether you're allowed to run it or not. If authors have the audacity to enforce some checks on you, you can go ahead and crack the app. It's still code saved and running on your local machine.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
esturk 12y ago
That's the whole point of the Cloud. To the business, it deleverages the customer's control and increase the latter's dependence on the former. Think about why Skype is no longer P2P. Think about how some Video/Audio formats are proprietary that you have use the same service or else you risk losing all your past recordings.
- pradn 12y ago
  From what I gather, Skype moving to a centralized model is an effort to make it work better with mobile devices, where p2p/always-on is inefficient and power-hungry.
  - likeclockwork 12y ago
    Mobile is the thin end of the wedge.
- JBiserkov 12y ago
  >Think about why Skype is no longer P2P... Yes, please do think, then read what Skype's principal architect has to say about it http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/2013/06/sort/time_rev/page/1/entry/6:271/20130623090855:0B714E0A-DC06-11E2-9F35-8CD4CCA160A2/ http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/2013/06/sort/time_...
vinceguidry 12y ago
You should donate to and become a member of the Free Software Foundation. https://my.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom/join_fsf?referrer=13211 https://my.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom/join_fsf?referr...
- na85 12y ago
  I'd gladly do so if Stallman wasn't part of it. Childish meltdowns on stage, comments about pedophilia and toe jam eating aside, RMS might well have been a luminary 30 years ago. But AFAIK he hasn't done any coding in years, and mostly just travels around giving talks, riding on his past fame to continue to enable his lazy, selfish lifestyle (cf. refusing to own a cell phone but happily using someone else's, same for loyalty programs, accepting volunteers who probably want software dev intern experience and making them update his blog, etc.) The guy's just an embarrassment nowadays.
  - danudey 12y ago
    I went to his talk when he was in Vancouver, and it was… interesting. It came across as very tone-deaf, the tech equivalent of the man standing on the side of the street screaming about how our sinful behaviour will invite the lord's wrath. He's described, in recent history, the method in which he accesses the internet; namely, to queue up a list of URLs, batch-fetch them, and then read them offline at a later date. That the person arguing about how our software is taking our control from us doesn't use it in any manner remotely recognizable to us is odd, but for him to argue against web apps which he has, apparently, never used and presumably does not fully understand (beyond his experiences with mainframes and virtual terminals, which are conceptually similar) seems impractical and somewhat tone-deaf. The man is opposed to the way technology is going, and good on him for sticking to his principles, but he's basically staying ignorant of the last 15 years of technology development. He refuses to use any technology which isn't free software from the top to the bottom, which means he basically can't use sufficiently modern technology, and yet he wants to lecture us about what it does and how it works. Yet, his position is still somewhat inconsistent. He'll use other people's cell phones, he doesn't refuse to use servers which are entirely free software, and there's no way that the networking gear between him and other servers (e.g. his mail server) is 100% free software. He seems to draw the line at paying for it, but not at using or benefitting from it indirectly.
api 12y ago
"It feels like sooner or later, big companies will have all the hardware and software hosted on their side and people will only get access to play it according to companies rules." I agree. The "PC revolution" has gone into full reverse. It's the revenge of the mainframe and the whole mentality behind it. There's many reasons for this, but the biggest one I think is piracy and the general mentality that "everything should be free" (as in beer). The problem is that nothing is free. Everything costs money. Really polished software costs a lot of money. So far three strategies for dealing with this misalignment have emerged: (1) Push everything back to the mainframe and return the user to serfdom. (2) Create completely jailed devices (iOS, jailed Android deployments) linked to completely closed app stores and use cryptography to effectively achieve #1 without having to offload all computation. (3) Create "free" products and services for which the user is the product -- this is the surveillance and manipulation business model of sites like Facebook. I've come to believe that free is actually the enemy of freedom, and that the "pirate party" crowd is worse than wrong. What they're promoting is actively pushing us toward a radically less free world. The "everything should be free" ideology creates a complete decoupling between the user and the economics of software and content creation -- so now the only viable business models are either serfdom or exploitation. In a sense free places the user in the ultimate position of disempowerment. Since you're not paying there is no reason anyone should care about you or your needs/preferences. It works for content too. In a world where people pay for music, music is made for you. In a world where nobody pays for music, it has to be made for someone else. I envision a future where pretty much all non-hobbyist / starving artist music is made at the behest of advertisers or political propagandists. It's all full of either product placements or messages crafted to get you to vote or think a certain way, and it has negative artistic integrity.
- penguindev 12y ago
  A comprehensive post. Just to add to 2) Chromebooks are DRM friendly, and chromecasts are locked as well. Google bought wildvine DRM and my guess is DRM can be pretty much expected to win for media/software, since hardware makers are on board and they've had enough tries to get the crypto implemented right. Even intel cpus have DRM on board (intel insider). The only threat to DRM now is it relies on human beings keeping secrets [edit: and having as few people / companies who know the master secret as possible], so if the economic value in breaking it is high enough, someone will get paid off / extorted to leak it... whereas 1) is probably safer from attack, and 3) can get hit by adblock+ right now... Definitely fun watching the battle play out, and as a programmer with a family to feed I must admit I'm hoping for a way to value virtual creative goods that isn't $0.00 :-)
ewzimm 12y ago
On the flip side, you can consider that traditional proprietary software installs usually have full access to read and modify your system, often in ways you don't expect or wouldn't consent to. Running in a virtualized environment in a browser significantly reduces access to your system. So if you run a free software local install with proprietary programs running in a jailed browser environment, you are probably more secure than you would be if you had installed them locally.
- javajosh 12y ago
  But think this through...if you don't run anything locally then what, exactly, are you protecting on your local system by running things remotely? Although honestly, for something like photoshop I really don't see a problem. It's a creative tool, and probably isn't producing interesting data for the NSA, et al. The real security concern here is Adobe's, in that they want to protect their software from you, the user. They want to set up an annuity-style revenue stream, and the only way to do that is to protect the binary image of their software. So they did that. Really, the only objection I would have to this is that it adds a (sometimes rather difficult to meet) requirement that you have a solid internet connection to run what used to be a stand-alone application. More philosophically, I object to the horrible waste this kind of runtime requires, particularly of network bandwidth. Perhaps, though, this is the price of saving the premium proprietary software market.
  - penguindev 12y ago
    You'd be preventing your local credentials from being phished / stolen, keyloggers installed, your machine from being in a botnet...
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      And your local credentials matter for exactly what? The only useful ones are increasingly the ones you type in the web browser. http://xkcd.com/1200/ http://xkcd.com/1200/
      - 12y ago
vlunkr 12y ago
On the other hand, all this cloud software means that you can use really demanding applications on cheap hardware, like Photoshop on a Chrome Book. But for the most part, I agree with you. Companies can change their pricing or terms at any time and you can't do anything about it. On top of that, to use the software you're paying for you also have to pay your fees to the ISPs.
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  > On the other hand, all this cloud software means that you can use really demanding applications on cheap hardware, like Photoshop on a Chrome Book. But Adobe can charge literally anything! And they can cut your access overnight at a whim.
  - fsloth 12y ago
    But it's suddenly a viable business plan to start competing in the DTP space if you can find the talent. Adobe can charge anything <-> suddenly anyone can realistically start to compete with Adobe. I would say that evens out the playing field.
sek 12y ago
Your own/free software will run on your Raspberry Pi at home, or your independent hosting provider in Island etc. It just doesn't happen that much on the desktop any more. It's still up to you if you want to use the software from adobe.com or the "Gimp cloud" on your home server. This could even be an opportunity, because giving a link to non-technical users is easier than installing software locally. In that sense it could close a gap that existed previously.

Bahamut 12y ago

Except you don't own most software you have on your machine locally. You agree to a license to use it.

whizzkid 12y ago
"I want to own my hardware and software power" I think this states what I am trying to say.
- wffurr 12y ago
  The parent is specifically addressing that point. You don't own most of the software you are purchasing. The vendor retains either the technical or legal ability to reach into your machine and disable the software via the licensing agreement.
  - whizzkid 12y ago
    I understand the point, which is really reasonable. But how about this way; In order to disable the software that I installed on my machine, they need to know who I am, which computer it is installed to, plus lots of other procedures to deal with. Which is time consuming and not easy. In order to disable cloud hosted software, - User.find(me).licence.valid = false
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    On most countries EULAS are void.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Yeah how's that work? In the US any terms made after money is tendered are void. This was done to avoid someone adding terms to a contract on delivery. SO is it true for software too? What about electronic download?
      - pjmlp 12y ago
        In most European countries yes, as you can only read such licenses after buying the product. For the EULA to be enforcable, it needs to be made available at the store in such a way that the customer can read it before buying. Same thing for digital goods. If you can only read the license after buying the product, it is not valid.
  - MiddleEndian 12y ago
    License or not, source or not, if I have something installed on my computer, I can modify it or at least attempt to do so. I can also run it without a reliable network connection. Not so much for streaming services.
wvenable 12y ago
You own the license. Which give you the right to use the software. You don't need to own the software to use it; you need to have a license. The real problem is that you can't own a license anymore for a lot of software. You can only just rent one.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
It's a theoretical/legal thing. In practice, you own software by having executables on your drive. You don't have to ask anyone whether you're allowed to run it or not. If authors have the audacity to enforce some checks on you, you can go ahead and crack the app. It's still code saved and running on your local machine.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

esturk 12y ago

That's the whole point of the Cloud. To the business, it deleverages the customer's control and increase the latter's dependence on the former. Think about why Skype is no longer P2P. Think about how some Video/Audio formats are proprietary that you have use the same service or else you risk losing all your past recordings.

pradn 12y ago
From what I gather, Skype moving to a centralized model is an effort to make it work better with mobile devices, where p2p/always-on is inefficient and power-hungry.
- likeclockwork 12y ago
  Mobile is the thin end of the wedge.
JBiserkov 12y ago
>Think about why Skype is no longer P2P... Yes, please do think, then read what Skype's principal architect has to say about it http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/2013/06/sort/time_rev/page/1/entry/6:271/20130623090855:0B714E0A-DC06-11E2-9F35-8CD4CCA160A2/ http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/2013/06/sort/time_...

vinceguidry 12y ago

You should donate to and become a member of the Free Software Foundation. https://my.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom/join_fsf?referrer=13211 https://my.fsf.org/associate/support_freedom/join_fsf?referr...

na85 12y ago
I'd gladly do so if Stallman wasn't part of it. Childish meltdowns on stage, comments about pedophilia and toe jam eating aside, RMS might well have been a luminary 30 years ago. But AFAIK he hasn't done any coding in years, and mostly just travels around giving talks, riding on his past fame to continue to enable his lazy, selfish lifestyle (cf. refusing to own a cell phone but happily using someone else's, same for loyalty programs, accepting volunteers who probably want software dev intern experience and making them update his blog, etc.) The guy's just an embarrassment nowadays.
- danudey 12y ago
  I went to his talk when he was in Vancouver, and it was… interesting. It came across as very tone-deaf, the tech equivalent of the man standing on the side of the street screaming about how our sinful behaviour will invite the lord's wrath. He's described, in recent history, the method in which he accesses the internet; namely, to queue up a list of URLs, batch-fetch them, and then read them offline at a later date. That the person arguing about how our software is taking our control from us doesn't use it in any manner remotely recognizable to us is odd, but for him to argue against web apps which he has, apparently, never used and presumably does not fully understand (beyond his experiences with mainframes and virtual terminals, which are conceptually similar) seems impractical and somewhat tone-deaf. The man is opposed to the way technology is going, and good on him for sticking to his principles, but he's basically staying ignorant of the last 15 years of technology development. He refuses to use any technology which isn't free software from the top to the bottom, which means he basically can't use sufficiently modern technology, and yet he wants to lecture us about what it does and how it works. Yet, his position is still somewhat inconsistent. He'll use other people's cell phones, he doesn't refuse to use servers which are entirely free software, and there's no way that the networking gear between him and other servers (e.g. his mail server) is 100% free software. He seems to draw the line at paying for it, but not at using or benefitting from it indirectly.

api 12y ago

"It feels like sooner or later, big companies will have all the hardware and software hosted on their side and people will only get access to play it according to companies rules." I agree. The "PC revolution" has gone into full reverse. It's the revenge of the mainframe and the whole mentality behind it. There's many reasons for this, but the biggest one I think is piracy and the general mentality that "everything should be free" (as in beer). The problem is that nothing is free. Everything costs money. Really polished software costs a lot of money. So far three strategies for dealing with this misalignment have emerged: (1) Push everything back to the mainframe and return the user to serfdom. (2) Create completely jailed devices (iOS, jailed Android deployments) linked to completely closed app stores and use cryptography to effectively achieve #1 without having to offload all computation. (3) Create "free" products and services for which the user is the product -- this is the surveillance and manipulation business model of sites like Facebook. I've come to believe that free is actually the enemy of freedom, and that the "pirate party" crowd is worse than wrong. What they're promoting is actively pushing us toward a radically less free world. The "everything should be free" ideology creates a complete decoupling between the user and the economics of software and content creation -- so now the only viable business models are either serfdom or exploitation. In a sense free places the user in the ultimate position of disempowerment. Since you're not paying there is no reason anyone should care about you or your needs/preferences. It works for content too. In a world where people pay for music, music is made for you. In a world where nobody pays for music, it has to be made for someone else. I envision a future where pretty much all non-hobbyist / starving artist music is made at the behest of advertisers or political propagandists. It's all full of either product placements or messages crafted to get you to vote or think a certain way, and it has negative artistic integrity.

penguindev 12y ago
A comprehensive post. Just to add to 2) Chromebooks are DRM friendly, and chromecasts are locked as well. Google bought wildvine DRM and my guess is DRM can be pretty much expected to win for media/software, since hardware makers are on board and they've had enough tries to get the crypto implemented right. Even intel cpus have DRM on board (intel insider). The only threat to DRM now is it relies on human beings keeping secrets [edit: and having as few people / companies who know the master secret as possible], so if the economic value in breaking it is high enough, someone will get paid off / extorted to leak it... whereas 1) is probably safer from attack, and 3) can get hit by adblock+ right now... Definitely fun watching the battle play out, and as a programmer with a family to feed I must admit I'm hoping for a way to value virtual creative goods that isn't $0.00 :-)

ewzimm 12y ago

On the flip side, you can consider that traditional proprietary software installs usually have full access to read and modify your system, often in ways you don't expect or wouldn't consent to. Running in a virtualized environment in a browser significantly reduces access to your system. So if you run a free software local install with proprietary programs running in a jailed browser environment, you are probably more secure than you would be if you had installed them locally.

javajosh 12y ago
But think this through...if you don't run anything locally then what, exactly, are you protecting on your local system by running things remotely? Although honestly, for something like photoshop I really don't see a problem. It's a creative tool, and probably isn't producing interesting data for the NSA, et al. The real security concern here is Adobe's, in that they want to protect their software from you, the user. They want to set up an annuity-style revenue stream, and the only way to do that is to protect the binary image of their software. So they did that. Really, the only objection I would have to this is that it adds a (sometimes rather difficult to meet) requirement that you have a solid internet connection to run what used to be a stand-alone application. More philosophically, I object to the horrible waste this kind of runtime requires, particularly of network bandwidth. Perhaps, though, this is the price of saving the premium proprietary software market.
- penguindev 12y ago
  You'd be preventing your local credentials from being phished / stolen, keyloggers installed, your machine from being in a botnet...
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    And your local credentials matter for exactly what? The only useful ones are increasingly the ones you type in the web browser. http://xkcd.com/1200/ http://xkcd.com/1200/
    - 12y ago

vlunkr 12y ago

On the other hand, all this cloud software means that you can use really demanding applications on cheap hardware, like Photoshop on a Chrome Book. But for the most part, I agree with you. Companies can change their pricing or terms at any time and you can't do anything about it. On top of that, to use the software you're paying for you also have to pay your fees to the ISPs.

JetSpiegel 12y ago
> On the other hand, all this cloud software means that you can use really demanding applications on cheap hardware, like Photoshop on a Chrome Book. But Adobe can charge literally anything! And they can cut your access overnight at a whim.
- fsloth 12y ago
  But it's suddenly a viable business plan to start competing in the DTP space if you can find the talent. Adobe can charge anything <-> suddenly anyone can realistically start to compete with Adobe. I would say that evens out the playing field.

sek 12y ago

Your own/free software will run on your Raspberry Pi at home, or your independent hosting provider in Island etc. It just doesn't happen that much on the desktop any more. It's still up to you if you want to use the software from adobe.com or the "Gimp cloud" on your home server. This could even be an opportunity, because giving a link to non-technical users is easier than installing software locally. In that sense it could close a gap that existed previously.