Fabrizio Capobianco of Funambol was interviewed this week on linux.com. He talks about his work to get OSI to accept AGPLv3 and why network-service-freedom respecting software licenses are good for his business.
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Ben Webb (aka bjwebb) has announced the launch of a project called AGPLMail.
bjwebb has been asking me questions on and off on IRC about starting
this project, and I am very glad to see his announcement. He asks in his
blog post am I doing something valuable?
. My unequivocal answer is
yes!
As developers, we have to clone each application that has become a standard in “the Cloud” and make sure there is a Free-as-in-Freedom (FaiF) equivalent. We need readers and signers of the Franklin Street Statement to get to work writing FaiF applications that embody its ideas. That’s the only way we will meet and overcome the challenge of truly distributed network services that respect user freedom and autonomy.
It’s tough to always be playing catch-up, but the Free Software world has shown that we “get there in the end”, and that the final result is something that really respects the freedom of the users. I’m glad bjwebb is taking a stab at the FaiF Web 2.0 mail client, and I hope others will help him make it better.
As a final note, I wanted to point out the admirable humility bjwebb has shown in putting his code out there. What he’s looking for is others to join him on the journey and try to make the application into something interesting. He doesn’t purport to have the answers, but he’s certainly asking the right questions in the best possible way for a developer — putting some code out there under a Free license and asking his peers to give him some feedback!
Dirk Riehle has an interesting summary in his blog of Fabrizio Capobianco’s keynote at OSS 2008. Riehle credits Capobianco as the primary catalyst for OSI approval of the AGPLv3. I didn’t realize we owed Capobianco our thanks for that, but I am glad he did that work and wanted to take an opportunity to thank him for it!
There’s an interesting, brief article in the Guardian Technology section today: Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman. In it, Richard Stallman is quoted as saying about cloud computing:
“It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign.”Later in the article he elucidates further:
“One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control,” he said. “It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.”I don’t think it would surprise anyone that I respectfully disagree with this statement. I’m very supportive of his concern about cloud computing, and I agree that it’s something that the Free Software and Free Culture communities need to address. But in rejecting all network computing, I think RMS has thrown out the baby with the bathwater. I don’t believe loss of absolute control means that you lose your autonomy completely. And I think that exchanging some control in order to participate in social, collaborative computing is ultimately enriching for individuals and for society.
Here’s an admittedly overstretched metaphor: I live in a house where I control everything* — the temperature, where the furniture is placed, how much and what kind of food is in the cupboards. I can go in any room in the house whenever I want, and I can change whatever I want. Great.
I wouldn’t want to spend any time in jail. In jail, I have very, very limited freedom, and there are hostile fellow inmates and in some jails interrogations and beatings. It is a really bad place to spend any amount of time.
But I do like to go visit my friends’ and family members’ houses. I don’t have absolute freedom to do whatever I want at their house, but I get to spend time with people I like, enjoy their hospitality, and also see the way other people live for a little while. By having an informal custom of hospitality interchange, I and my friends and social network get to enjoy more of the world than we would just in our own houses.
If friends’ houses were more like jail, I wouldn’t want to go. If a friend told me that I couldn’t talk about politics in her house (say), or another required everyone who visited to be strip-searched at the door, I’d of course not visit (and hopefully would be allowed to leave). But I usually can expect a certain level of autonomy in my person and in my effects that is acceptable and comfortable.
Going places I don’t individually control — restaurants, museums, retail stores, public parks — enriches my life immeasurably. A definition of “freedom” where I couldn’t leave my own house because it was the only space I had absolute control over would not feel very free to me at all. At the same time, I think there are some places I just don’t want to go — my freedom and physical well-being wouldn’t be protected or respected there.
Similarly, I think that using network services makes my computing life fuller and more satisfying. I can do more things and be a more effective person by spring-boarding off the software on other peoples’ computers than just with my own. I may not control your email server, but I enjoy sending you email, and I think it makes both of our lives better.
And I think that just as we can define a level of personal autonomy that we expect in places that belong to other people or groups, we should be able to define a level of autonomy that we can expect when using software on other people’s computers. Can we make working on network services more like visiting a friends’ house than like being locked in a jail?
We’ve made a balance between the absolute don’t-use-other-people’s-computers argument and the maybe-it’s-OK-sometimes argument in the Franklin Street Statement. Time will tell whether we can craft a culture around Free Network Services that is respectful of users’ autonomy, such that we can use other computers with some measure of confidence.
- For hypothetical purposes. My wife and daughter would probably dispute this claim.
Careful readers of the Franklin Street Statement will have noticed that it doesn’t ever use the word ‘web.’ That was very deliberate. While web services are pretty important to all our lives at this point, and web services like facebook and twitter have provided plenty of fodder for discussion of autonomous services, there are lots of non-web services that are pretty important. These range from very obvious ones (like email) to less obvious ones- like, say, virtual worlds like Second Life.
There has been some progress in virtual worlds, particularly with efforts like opencroquet, but more could still be done. Azdel Slade has written some worthwhile and interesting posts about the problem here, here, and here- worth a read!
I’ve proposed a panel discussion on issues of Autonomy in the Cloud for the upcoming South by Southwest Interactive in March 2009.
I think that SxSW is a potentially very friendly crowd where network services and cloud computing are a hot topic and Free and Open Source software are favourably considered. It’s a great place for us to be challenging the conventional wisdom that freedom and autonomy aren’t important “in the cloud”.
Ideally the panel would comprise members of the autonomo.us group, other people interested in autonomy and software-as-a-service, and maybe some dissenters to make the whole thing interesting.
If you’re interested in user autonomy, the Franklin Street Statement, and Open Software Services, please take a few moments to register for the Panelpicker and vote for the above panel. Tell your friends, colleagues, and neighbors, vote early, vote often! Thanks!
I was really happy to see a blog post on Open Source and Cloud Computing by Tim O’Reilly in O’Reilly Radar today. Not just because he gave a nod to my new microblogging project, Identi.ca, although that was pretty sweet. Tim argues strongly for the use of distributed, federated web services implementing open standards.
In interviews, in private discussion, and in some media articles about autonomo.us, people have suggested that we’re redundant to other groups like DiSo or DataPortability, who are discussing standards and writing code. To quote webmonkey:
Rather than spending their time on grandiose statements, the DiSo Project and others like are already distributing code that just works. … [T]he web moves much faster than desktop software and it remains to be seen if the principles of desktop software can guide the development of an open web.
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