Recently, the FSF convened a meeting to discuss the questions for network services and the issues that they pose for software freedom. The description of the event said:
The last decade has witnessed a rise in the role of computing as a service, a massive increase in the use of web applications, the migration of personal computing tasks to data-centers, and the creation of new classes of service-based applications. These shifts have raised a host of important questions for the advocates of free software. For example, by separating use and distribution of software, these models have in some cases reduced the effectiveness of GNU GPL-style copyleft which treat modified web applications as if they were private software. Much more importantly, the movement of software off of personal computers has reconfigured power relationships between users and their software and complicated questions of ownership and control in ways that free software advocates do not yet know how to address.Read the rest of this entry »What does freedom mean for the users and developers of web services? What is at risk? What should the free software community, and the Free Software Foundation, do to ensure that software, and its users, stay free in this new technological environment?
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