
Cloud computing is a trap, says Stallman - razorburn
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman
======
Harkins
Unintentionally hilarious given the way the FSF worked to make itself
irrelevant by ignoring hosted apps for decades. I mailed them in the late 90s
asking why it was that running an app on my computer meant I should get the
source code but running the exact same app via telnet meant I shouldn't. At
the time I was writing a MUD server I wanted to open source, but I was also
thinking of websites. The only answer I got was that, yes, the GPL doesn't
cover this and they have no interest in extending it to do so.

Stallman can whine about it if he likes, but he can't pretend this is some
sudden terrible attack on Free Software - it's been a problem for a long time,
and it's been ignored for a long time.

(Yeah, I'm aware of the Affero GPL. AGPLv2 was just bad. AGPLv3 is decent but
way late and inexplicably separate from the GPL.)

~~~
Herring
I remember reading some Eben Moglen & i think he mentioned that they didn't
hardcode this into GPLv3 because the rights of someone using an ATM are
(should be?) different from those of someone owning the machine with the code.

When trying to grok the GPL, it helps to keep rms' MIT printer story in mind.
It's on wiki.

~~~
13ren
It's not about open vs. closed source:

 _The 55-year-old New Yorker said that computer users should be keen to keep
their information in their own hands, rather than hand it over to a third
party._

~~~
alecco
"users should be keen to keep their information in their own hands"

That's Zero Knowledge. Like the recently unfunded fantastic Clipperz library.
I can't believe no smart investor found a way to make money with that. It
torpedoed my respect for angel investment. Anything "social" gets money,
something that can revolutionize the whole Internet experience, zip.

~~~
13ren
I honestly thought that was a Douglas Adam-style parody (from one of the later
books). Holding all your passwords in one place (no matter how secure) creates
a single point of vulnerability.

I do think that it's (theoretically) possible to safely store (in some
respects) your data online, through encryption... but this doesn't protect you
from innocent data loss (e.g. act of god, bankruptcy, incompetence, bad luck
etc).

Why not store all your data locally _as well_ , so it's distributed git-style,
and only use the cloud for crunching/archive? This is the model that Google
(google gears) and Adobe are moving towards (though I thought their main
motivation was so you could work off-line). HDD are unbelievably cheap, and
getting cheaper and cheaper... Gmail gives you 7GB for free - wow, that's so
much! - but how much do you have at home already?

There's no shortage; it's just convenience.

That startup's PR connection with Stallman (that they use GPLv3, they talked
to Stallman and are concerned about the same problems) seems tenuous and
disingenuous to me (though I didn't investigate in depth).

I still think it might be a parody.

~~~
alecco
Please try it before bad mouthing a very clever and working project.

They don't forbid you from storing things things locally. And it isn't just
for passwords. This is for anything really. Watch their presentations at
least.

~~~
13ren
OK, I just went through their presentation at your request, and I have the
same opinion. I'm not the only one, according to their own page here:
[http://www.clipperz.com/users/marco/blog/2007/12/24/how_dumb...](http://www.clipperz.com/users/marco/blog/2007/12/24/how_dumb_are_we)

I know something about public/private key encryption (or once did). I'm not
criticizing that, but their application of it. In their presentation, they say
that they picked passwords as the hardest possible test of their idea (i.e.
the one people are least likely to accept). I think this is where the
_"parody"_ aspect comes in, with their professed motive of proving a point,
rather than picking the most likely candidate for adoption.

I wasn't bad-mouthing them, but listing definite concerns. You might see the
Douglas Adams reference as "bad-mouthing", except that what I'm referring to
is his fictional idea of storing all your identification/passwords as one -
i.e. what these guys are doing. I also don't think it's bad-mouthing to state
my opinion that their PR connection to Stallman is tenuous, since they promote
online storage in his name - which he appears to oppose (in the very article
we are commenting on, I might add).

But of course, they still could change the world through their ideas, ideology
or technology - everyone has that chance if only they take it. I strongly
believe in encouraging anyone who takes action (so it would be really cool if
they proved me wrong - and I'd have something to learn which would be a bonus
for me). But I also think it's important to discuss ideas with intellectual
honestly. Those two views are at odds sometimes, and I don't always know how
to resolve them.

If you disagree with my criticism, you could focus on refuting it instead of
labeling it as "bad-mouthing".

~~~
alecco
This is better. You can of course disagree, but the opening line of your
previous comment was quite childish and inflammatory, don't you agree?

~~~
13ren
I should add that when I wrote that line:

 _I honestly thought that was a Douglas Adam-style parody (from one of the
later books)._

I wasn't trying to put the project down with that, but reporting my reaction
to the site - I actually was laughing along with (what I thought was) their
parody for a few minutes (it seemed, though maybe shorter). I don't recall
when I started to think they might be serious, but it might been when I saw
their page "How dumb are we?", and they were defending their position...

It's true that it would have been more diplomatic to conceal my reaction.

Also, I searched around for a reference to the Douglas Adams passage, but
couldn't find it (I couldn't find my copy at home - all my books are in
boxes). I'm pretty sure it's near the start of "Mostly Harmless", as a product
of the "Infinidim" corporation, and something to do with a multi-dimensional
bird... I would like you to see it, because then I think then you'd have a
clear sense of my point of view (independent of your dis/agreement with it)

Incidentally, labeling a comment as "childish" and "inflammatory" provides
little information about the subject, and more about the emotional state of
the labeler (I am sorry to have upset you). Giving the reasons for that
emotional state are often a more compelling refutation - that is, if you can
see the reasons (I find that very hard myself).

------
OpenMIKE
I've been thinking about this lately - about giving all of your data to a
third party and hoping they don't go out of business or erase your account
(for whatever reason).

Issues of software freedom aside, I think the key to making people trust the
cloud is to make the data contained in the services more transitive.
Essentially, creating a standard Import/Export for the web. i.e. - If I decide
to switch to vimeo for my web video needs, I'd like to be able to import all
of my videos from youtube without much fuss (or make a local backup). That's
not a great example, but it's the general idea.

Hmmm...after I think about it, this pretty much boils down to: "let me get at
my data in a format that I can read."

~~~
jodrellblank
What's wrong with having the company charge you (and all users) enough to make
their service profitable, and having a contract between you that they wont
erase your data without sending you a copy first?

Keeping your personal data on a free account might be a bit of a crapshoot,
but keeping your company data on a paid for service account shouldn't be.

~~~
OpenMIKE
Nothing wrong with that at all - that actually sounds really reasonable. Is
anybody doing this? I'm getting to the point where I'd pay for most of the
stuff that I'm getting for free now - if I had some sort of contract that
would give me some recourse in case things go awry.

------
blakeweb
You can see the trap he's talking about as one possible future on the horizon
--I don't think we're there yet, and it will take continuing to be vocal about
our concerns to keep the benefits from turning sour.

The 2 main potential problems with your data being in the cloud versus on your
own computer seem to be 1) privacy and 2) portability. Privacy long-term seems
to be a tough nut to crack, and seems to depend mostly on choosing companies
we feel we can trust. Data portability will only win out against walled
gardens when users scream for it loud enough rather than go along using
whatever service (such as Facebook) despite your data being locked in.

But the benefits we get from using the cloud for storage and computation are
going to be difficult to ignore, despite the above concerns, and big brother
is going to be constantly creeping in as long as the people continue to be
scared into letting him.

I can see this being a problem for consumers long-term. But it doesn't do any
good to hear that Larry Ellison has come out strongly in favor of keeping your
data in-house.

------
geuis
He's kind of like our own modern day Don Quixote. Except he tilts at clouds.

------
Spyckie
I like this article.

Its like saying "Lets not use banks cause they can just take your money,
profit from it, and may not even give it back to you." Which, ironically, is
true because of the financial crisis.

The solution though is not to "use in-house computers" (or store your money
under a mattress). I think it would be to build your own cloud computer
services based on a free software model.

~~~
evgen
Easier said than done. Like building your own currency or financial system, it
is easy to create a toy and very difficult to scale this out where you have to
deal with trust issues, counter-party risk, and transactional overhead. Free
software is easy, free hardware and bandwidth is not.

~~~
coolestuk
It is not necessary to use open source software to be able to protect your
data (provided the applications have an API or some method of exporting your
data in a parsable format). It's also not difficult to build your own secure,
replicable network in the Cloud. Get a Linode and a Slicehost, install a Notes
server on them both, keep your data locally and in two secure, encrypted
automated backups in the Cloud. Whenever you don't have access to your local
Notes, you can even have elected to make all or just portions of your data
available via a browser and https.

addendum: Forgot to mention, total cost for the Notes client and server
licenses: about $150 for 1 user but any number of servers. And Notes will run
on Windows, Linux, OS X, ...

------
bayareaguy
Unfortunately they're using the term "Cloud computing" when they really mean
"Software as a service". I could be wrong, but I think RMS would have no
problem with people using open-source software to manage their data on a
rented slice at Slicehost or Amazon.

~~~
serhei
> I think RMS would have no problem with people using open-source software ...

... as long as they made sure to call it _free software_ , of course.

------
TrevorJ
It really just depends on if there will be market competition or not. Desktop
processing could suffer the same closed system-high-price fate if there
weren't any competition in the hardware market (IE: Intel vs. AMD). The
question isn't really cloud vs. clientside, it's Company A's cloud Vs. company
B or C or D. As he said, it's mostly branding and the underlying technology
exists and is pretty freely available so my sense is that cloud computing
could be a more competition-rich marketplace than clientside processing is
today since it's pretty dang tough to build chips.

------
DocSavage
He's generalizing. Cloud computing _must_ involve locking away files in the
cloud? Depends entirely on the company/organization you're doing business
with. There's no reason a cloud app can't provide export features as well as a
local Gears-like presence. There could even be an open source app operating in
the cloud (like a free App Engine app) with full data dumps to your local
computer.

------
tlrobinson
_His comments echo those made last week by Larry Ellison, the founder of
Oracle, who criticised the rash of cloud computing announcements as "fashion-
driven" and "complete gibberish"._

I _never_ expected Richard Stallman and Larry Ellison to agree on something
involving the software industry.

Granted they agree for very different reasons.

------
diggydo
The majority of users out there do not have the computer savvy that Richard
Stallman has. What about my mother who's hard drive is always on the brink of
failure and doesn't care to know what's involved in properly backing up her
photos or documents? I encourage her to use services like flickr and Gdocs for
this reason. The benefits far outweigh the drawbacks like privacy or
portability. Anything that is so sensitive or important is on paper and in a
fireproof safe like it should be. Don't get me started on Privacy.. what are
you people doing that's so sensitive??

Until every computer user has sys-admin capabilities, making use of the
"cloud" makes perfect sense in my opinion. That being said, I think its
important to pick services you trust and who make it easy to export your data
at will.

~~~
there
data loss and temporary outages at those big companies are not unheard of.

using flickr to share your photos with everyone is not the same as using
google docs to store all of your personal and private documents.

but why not simply set your mother up with an automatic online backup system
to store a copy of her files in the cloud instead of requiring that the master
copies be there? that way she retains privacy (assuming the encryption of the
provider is trusted) but gains portability by having a copy available online.
something like dropbox comes to mind here.

~~~
diggydo
Should we also home-school our children, keep our money under our mattress,
grow our own food, give ourselves medical exams? There are companies/service
providers out there who we outsource those things to because we don't have the
time or the expertise. Seriously people have been using web-based email for
over a decade. I've yet to hear of any doomsday failures but I do know I've
had a couple hard drive failures during that time span.

~~~
tjpick
> Should we also home-school our children, keep our money under our mattress,
> grow our own food, give ourselves medical exams? There are companies/service
> providers out there

grow some salad greens and tomatoes and eat those instead of McDonalds?

self check for breast or testicular cancer (whichever applies)?

take an active role in your child's education? I should hope so.

I'll give you the money under the mattress point. No return on investment.
However you should be managing it yourself in some form.

------
sjs382
I don't see a problem with applications in the cloud not giving source, as
long as the data is portable and there are still desktop equivalents.

Gmail going down for good isn't gonna affect me much if I have my email backed
up locally and desktop clients still exist.

------
antirez
Well... it is impossible to deny that the whole 2.0 social/sharing/blabla is
possible with resident applications, distributed by definition in users PCs,
faster, without javascript magics.

~~~
evgen
It is equally impossible to deny the fact that it is much harder to get a user
to download and install software than it is to offer the same features and
services via the browser. Unless you are interacting with the user/OS/hardware
in a way that cannot be duplicated via the browser a web-based solution will
always have a larger audience than a resident application.

------
jrockway
I don't see a problem with cloud computing, as long as the software that runs
the cloud is Free. That way, when my provider dies, I can easily host it
myself or get another provider.

------
delano
What is Richard Stallman's stance on the electric utilities?

~~~
ajross
Electricity is a commodity. There's no inherent "freedom" lost in paying
someone to give it to you, any more than there is for buying your bread from a
market instead of growing your own wheat.

The proper analogy would be not to electricity in general, but to (in the US)
220V 60Hz two-phase alternating current. What if you could only buy that power
format from one vendor, who then decided to increase the price or change the
format such that you'd have to replace all your existing electrical hardware
or be at their mercy? Then you might feel that your freedom to operate your
equipment was being infringed, no?

~~~
delano
Ya, the vendors of alternating current are the electrical utilities. And the
issues your talking about happened in the 1880s, between Edison's DC vs
Teslas's AC. Obviously 110V AC won (not 220V) and market forces and regulation
have kept that standard and the price stable.

The point is that if we feel okay paying for electricity as a service, why not
computing? Data ownership and security is one reasonable concern but they're
not show stoppers.

------
mjnaus
Seriously, is that a bird in his hair?

------
Allocator2008
Stallman is a commie crackpot and everybody knows it. No respectable business
person of note takes him seriously.

You can't have Falstaff, and have him thin.

Meaning, you can't have superior computing power like the "cloud" provides and
expect to retain total transparency/privacy. Something has to give. I think it
is inevitable in the long run that business will decide that the help to their
bottom line that the cheap resources of the "cloud" provides offsets any
theoretical leftist concern about transparency, privacy, etc.

Asking everyone to do their own computing is like going back to an agrarian
culture where everyone grows their own food. Seem to recall Pol-Pot tried
that, and I don't think history looks upon him too favorably. 'Nuff said.

~~~
wmf
_you can't have superior computing power like the "cloud" provides and expect
to retain total transparency/privacy. Something has to give._

Sure, but some people would prefer to give on price rather than privacy.
Hopefully the market will continue to offer that choice.

------
Stasyan
"But Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of
the computer operating system GNU ..."

Huh ? "creator of the computer operating system GNU"

Can somebody explain what that means ?

~~~
thamer
_GNU is a computer operating system composed entirely of free software._ (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU> ).

It is a common misconception to call Linux-based systems “Linux”. Linux is the
kernel, the piece that manages devices, processes, and memory. GNU is a
collection of tools (GNU ls, GNU Bash, GNU C Compiler, etc.).

What the user sees is the set of GNU and non-GNU tools running on top of the
Linux kernel. This is the reason why rms insists on people calling their
system “GNU/Linux” and not only “Linux”.

RMS started GNU in 83-84: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU#History>

~~~
dcminter
The Linux kernel is not the entire environment. The set of GNU licensed tools
and applications is not the entire environment. Gnu + Linux is not the entire
environment.

Those who care are aware of the distinction between "Linux" the kernel and
"Linux" the environment built upon a Linux kernel. Those who don't are
unlikely to be aware of the derivation or importance of either term. Of those
who care few are willing to use his terminology.

This is not what I would consider a "misconception."

In my opinion Stallman does his cause damage by tilting at this particular
windmill.

~~~
henning
The same personality traits that cause him to spend inordinate amounts of time
focusing on pedantic bits of terminology are the same ones that allow him to
persevere in hammering home the same basic message over and over for 25 years
in the face of setback after setback.

~~~
dcminter
You're probably right. But it makes me uncomfortable that this is the FSF's
official line, not just Stallman's private rant.

------
lallysingh
Stallman is a jackass, says rest of the world.

Seriously, what a drama queen. This week it's cloud computing.

The article seems to confuse software freedom with control over personal
information --- two distinctly different concerns. The latter actually
relevant.

