Does he really turn against SaaS/Cloud? Software that doesn't run on your computer doesn't necessarily need to be in your control, right? As long as the clients are free.
It's gotten to the point where most cloud services are no longer managed instances of open source or even compatible software.
You could take a managed cloud PostgreSQL instance and migrate to something self-hosted if the prices were to hike up or something else happened that would necessitate it.
But how many of the cloud services in your stack does that apply to? Geocoding or routing? Push notifications and messaging? Payment gateways? Authentication and authorization solutions? File storage solutions? Web Application Firewalls?
Thank you, that was an enlightening text, made me understand better GNUs view of SaaS.
There are many cases where running a self hosted version is not feasible, which are also mentioned in the text. Social media and other services where the information is an important part of the service or software that can not be run on my own machine due to limits in my hardware. But outsourcing simple calculations that can be done locally is a bad thing I agree.
The FSF has created the AGPL 16 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Affero_General_Public_Lice...), so it's not like they didn't see the turn that software was going into. But it was already a losing battle, because every developer wants to think they might become millionaire and won't use it.
Whether the software runs on my computer or not, if I am the user, I must be in control.
Whether the meal is prepared in my kitchen or not, if I am going to eat it, I must be in control.
AGPL is also the license you should use if you don't want big corporations to use your software. Big Tech even avoids GPL-3 and stick to GPL-2 from what I have noticed.
KronisLV|2 years ago
I really liked the idea of Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS): https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
It's gotten to the point where most cloud services are no longer managed instances of open source or even compatible software.
You could take a managed cloud PostgreSQL instance and migrate to something self-hosted if the prices were to hike up or something else happened that would necessitate it.
But how many of the cloud services in your stack does that apply to? Geocoding or routing? Push notifications and messaging? Payment gateways? Authentication and authorization solutions? File storage solutions? Web Application Firewalls?
loxdalen|2 years ago
There are many cases where running a self hosted version is not feasible, which are also mentioned in the text. Social media and other services where the information is an important part of the service or software that can not be run on my own machine due to limits in my hardware. But outsourcing simple calculations that can be done locally is a bad thing I agree.
rakoo|2 years ago
Whether the software runs on my computer or not, if I am the user, I must be in control.
Whether the meal is prepared in my kitchen or not, if I am going to eat it, I must be in control.
0xDEF|2 years ago
loxdalen|2 years ago