Cloud computing is a trap, says Stallman

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman

by razorburn • 18 years ago

99 70 18 years ago

guardian.co.uk

Stasyan• 18 years ago

"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 ?

jrockway2• 18 years ago

GNU is a UNIX-like operating system that RMS wrote most of. (Since he wrote it, a lot of other people have worked on it too.)

Most Linux distros use the GNU userland, but they don't have to ... they could use the BSD userland if they really wanted to.

ii• 18 years ago

They don't have to use the Linux kernel in the first place ... they could use the Hurd, NetBSD or FreeBSD instead ;)

http://www.debian.org/ports/#nonlinux

Linux distros are more GNU than Linux, the problem is in the name -- 'GNU' sounds and looks nerdy and unfriendly.

RK• 18 years ago

GNU is Not Unix

thamer• 18 years ago

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

dcminter2• 18 years ago

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.

dimitar• 18 years ago

How many times do we have to go through this? You could have just used your favorite search engine to find the answer and the rest could just ignored you. By the way am I being too anti-social? Excuse me, please.

DocSavage• 18 years ago

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.

OpenMIKE2• 18 years ago

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."

wheels• 18 years ago

I've thought some about what it would take to set up a system for failed startups so that customers could be assured that their data / services don't disappear when a company goes bust -- something similar to the Free Qt Foundation that KDE has setup with Trolltech:

http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

I think that's a difficult problem for software-as-a-service to overcome.

vital_sol• 18 years ago

Here at salesforce.com (the company that does cloud computing/saas for businesses,) we have the data loader tool that customers can use to download all of their data locally as often as they wish. Also, there is an API so people can write their own backup/restore/integration code.

iigs• 18 years ago

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).

Or be forced to give up access statistics via Pen Register.

Or provide governments the ability to access your data via CALEA compliance hardware/processes.

I value the privacy of my data as much as I value the integrity of it. I don't see myself doing much cloud computing in the near future.

jwilliams• 18 years ago

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."

Basically what you're talking about is standards - but I think the SaaS/Cloud space is too immature to be able to define standards at this stage... In fact, whilst it would give consumers extra security, it would very likely slow down innovation.

jodrellblank3• 18 years ago

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.

OpenMIKE2• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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.

delano2• 18 years ago

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

Herring3• 18 years ago

Yeah, there's a strong economic case for cloud computing. I'm not worried though. If control & source code availability become important, I'm sure people will switch again to the AGPL as they once switched to using GPL.

Best part is you can link the two & distribute.

gregwebs• 18 years ago

There is nothing wrong with centralized models, it is when there is a center that is not open source. Anything that is programmable (multiple times, not write once mediums) should be ran on open source software. The electrical utilities are immorally not sharing the source code that controls them.

ajross• 18 years ago

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?

delano2• 18 years ago

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.

Agathos• 18 years ago

If your electric utility is telling you that you can't modify the electricity that enters your home then I think RMS might object.

I know I would object if I couldn't convert my AC to DC. My computer wouldn't run!

Harkins2• 18 years ago

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.)

Herring3• 18 years ago

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.

13ren6• 18 years ago

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.

TrevorJ• 18 years ago

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.

diggydo2• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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.

Zev• 18 years ago

I can't remember ever losing an email or photo from gmail or flickr. Yes, there's some downtimes (one big one with gmail and a few small ones spread out with flickr), but nothing show-stopping (note: you could still access emails with html-only gmail if you needed)

diggydo2• 18 years ago

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.

ntoshev3• 18 years ago

The cloud is statistically much more reliable than your home computer.

ntoshev3• 18 years ago

Experts in specific areas develop blindness to problems in certain areas of their solution. Usually the framework they use to approach the problems makes certain simplifying assumptions, and these assumptions become their blind spots. These frameworks solve the hard problems they are designed to solve, so the biggest remaining problems remain hidden under these assumptions.

Examples:

Economists assume rationality. Java developers don't notice all the boilerplate. Lisp developers don't notice the brackets). Stallman doesn't notice all the sysadmin burden.

tjpick3• 18 years ago

But that's not true in Stallman's case. He openly acknowledges it by stating that we should choose freedom over convenience. He recognizes the burden and encourages people to choose it anyway because freedom is worth fighting for. That's at the core of his message. Its not in the article unfortunately but he does say this at his talks.

wmf2• 18 years ago

OTOH, PCs worked before they were connected to the Net. People self-administered their computers for a long time; was it an anomaly?

edu• 18 years ago

How many people had computers then? And Today? Also, it was a way safer environment.

geuis• 18 years ago

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

Spyckie• 18 years ago

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.

evgen2• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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, ...

jrockway2• 18 years ago

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.

sjs382• 18 years ago

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.

bayareaguy• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

> 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.

antirez• 18 years ago

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.

evgen2• 18 years ago

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.

Allocator2008• 18 years ago

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.

wmf2• 18 years ago

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.

jodrellblank3• 18 years ago

'Respectable business people of note' have just overcooked the world economy and driven it up the embankment, through the hedge and are currently rolling it ass-over-teakettle through the nearest field, hoping desperately that someone built some bloody airbags into it somewhere.

Anyway, if people want transparency/privacy enough to pay for it then 'theoretical leftist concerns' will suddenly become noteworthy and start appearing. As they already do with online ordering and banking and virtual private networks and so on.

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

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.

lallysingh• 18 years ago

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.

mjnaus• 18 years ago

Seriously, is that a bird in his hair?

Cloud computing is a trap, says Stallman

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