graham graham@theseamans.net wrote:
[...] For example, we will not easily get an equivalent to google's massive datacentres.
We already have an equivalent to it (our workstations) - it's just not very well-connected amongst itself.
I think open standards are useful even where free software does not exist, because it leaves a door open for us. We should ask the same things of these web services that we ask of other computer users who may or may not be using proprietary software. Send us open standard files not Word attachments, and so on.
Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com wrote:
At the end of the day, people running software privately don't have to share it. Someone who modifies a GPL'd web app and makes the improved version available for use doesn't have to share their private modifications - they have the rights to share it, they just don't want to, much as I might improve my server's copy of Apache and not give copies to the people who use that server.
We also need to develop open service models which can be implemented in free software and are resistant against an attack of embrace-extend-extinguish. We have some of these, but we need more.
I feel that placing restrictions on the output of software, as seen in Affero GPL, is an evolutionary dead-end and a way for FSF to defeat itself. The complications of GPLv3 are already a disturbance (it may be more lawyer-friendly, but it's not nice to even copyright-experienced hackers, let alone hackers who don't understand copyright yet) and that may be a threat to free software. I hope that Affero GPL gets delayed, at least long enough to allow developers to digest GPLv3 and to let FSF webmasters unbreak stet, or maybe forever.
Regards,