Who Does That Server Really Serve?

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html

by ilandsman • 12 years ago

84 113 12 years ago

gnu.org

percept• 12 years ago

Funny, I've been listening to the podcast right now:

http://bootstrapped.fm/bootstrapped-episode-35-hate-the-saas...

spion4• 12 years ago

Thus, SaaSS is equivalent to running proprietary software with spyware and a universal back door.

I actually agreed with the article up to that point, but this is wheasel-wording and kinda dishonest. Microsoft's backdoor is universal as it has access to your entire system. The described SaaSS backdoor isn't universal - it only pertains to that particular service and no other services (or non-services) can be affected. Thus, given the previous definition of the word, it is not "universal"

This wheasel-wording only detracts from the point being made and may alienate people who would normally agree.

zifnab06• 12 years ago

I've always disliked Richard Stallman's views on software. While open source is great, its a terrible business model. Closed source has its place - and not all of it is inherently evil.

fitshipit• 12 years ago

Red Hat? Or what about Facebook or Google -- open source is pretty central to their business model.

sarciszewski6• 12 years ago

While open source is great, its a terrible business model.

Please explain why you believe this is true.

Also, don't confuse open source software and free software, there's actually a not-so-subtle difference.

gaius• 12 years ago

Stallmans ideas on economics make sense when you factor in his $1m grant from the MacArthur foundation, another $1m from the Takeda foundation, and tenure at MIT. If you have all that sure, give software away for free!

elwin• 12 years ago

While open source is great, its a terrible business model.

I think this is a necessary trade-off. Great business models often lead to monopoly and stagnation.

navait• 12 years ago

I don't know if Mr. Stallman is exactly a socialist, but he's not pro-capitalism either. So I don't think he really concerns himself with actually getting people to pay software developers. To him, that's an afterthought.

This makes him a revolutionary. Unfortunately, when the mainstream absorbs the revolution, what does the revolutionary do? Basically try to get them to adopt the ideas that aren't very good because all the good ones have been taken.

The best thing we could do is just say he was a great contributor to software, and ignore whatever drivel he writes now, much like we do with ESR.

vipstarry5• 12 years ago

If you ever attribute "open source software" to Stallman, you are confused. Stallman wants nothing to do with the idea of OSS, Stallman is advocating for a different idea. Stallman is advocating for the ethical solution to the inherent evil cause by proprietary software. People who have a business model by distributing proprietary software are contributing to this inherent evil. All proprietary software is evil because it causes various social and political problems that result in society who live helpless and socially divided. People who write and distribute proprietary software wield an unjust power over the users who choose to submit to the policy of proprietary software. The ethical solution to this political problem is free software; i.e. software that respects the users' freedom.

wtbob• 12 years ago

While open source is great, its a terrible business model.

I don't think that RMS cares about business models: he argues that proprietary software is unethical, not that it's bad business.

One could probably make a decent sum of money as a hit man, but it would be unethical.

Open source advocates argue pragmatically that open source software can be better (many eyes make all bugs shallow) or that it can be a competitive advantage to comnmoditise one's complements; free software advocates don't necessarily disagree, but don't particular care: they believe that proprietary software is fundamentally wrong.

You may dislike it, but do you disagree? Can you refute the plethora of ethical arguments RMS has been making over the last several decades?

Spearchucker• 12 years ago

As someone who's ambivalent about free and open source software (put mildly), this is the first one of his articles I really agree with. When I read that bit about universal back doors I smiled, knowing who he is and where he comes from.

I still agree with his point. Is it even worth pointing out such trivial things that might well end up hijacking the top thread here? Richard's message, in its entirety, makes an important point. Let's rather discuss that.

spion4• 12 years ago

I point it out because I've noticed this in his writings regularly. I think its really important because I believe it alienates a lot more people than he'd like. When making an argument, the last thing you want to do is sound deliberately dishonest.

fapjacks• 12 years ago

I read it as speaking specifically about the computing you are offloading onto the remote machine, not necessarily all computing that you do on any machine. For example, Microsoft's backdoor is universal on that machine, but doesn't apply to non-Windows hosts outside of that computer. That's what I read, anyways.

throwawayaway• 12 years ago

Did you mean weasel?

hirsin• 12 years ago

This one actually struck me the opposite way. I agree with his stance on SaaSS - you have no control over your data (spyware) which is being given up, and the operator can change literally anything on the system because they own it and have final say (universal backdoor).

Microsoft's "universal backdoor" is Windows Update I'm pretty sure. And our telemetry is the spyware. And yes, you could likely attempt to alter a copy of Adobe Reader through Windows Update, but so could any installer under the sun. It's a weak, inflammatory argument to call updates a backdoor. Indeed, the argument against updates will boil down to "well it's not free so how do you know it's not doing x". Which becomes the argument that all nonfree software is/can be backdoored.

spion4• 12 years ago

Thats precisely my point, its not universal. They only change their service (e.g. google docs). The other services you use remain unaffected.

Its not a weak and inflammatory argument to call Windows Update a backdoor. If push comes to shove and its very profitable for MS (or they're threatened by the NSA, or any other "really good" reason), they can and very likely will automatically install something on your system that you don't want. Or replace the default search engine with Bing. Or uninstall something. Or make your machine unusable.

We've already seen mild examples of this (see U2's album)

SaaS (especially web-based) doesn't have that kind of power over your machine (or over other services you use)

dllthomas4• 12 years ago

"And yes, you could likely attempt to alter a copy of Adobe Reader through Windows Update, but so could any installer under the sun."

That might be a good thing to fix, actually...

thibauts2• 12 years ago

OR you choose to delegate the burden of running and maintaining this software to someone that will do it in a more cost-effective way than you ever could.

nullc4• 12 years ago

Or could close their "beta" you were depending on without notice, could lose your data, could leak it, could give unexplainable corrupt results and leave you looking like a fraud, etc.

There are a lot of opportunities to trade off short term ease for tail risk, and thats a bit hazardous. RMS would probably argue that while you should have the freedom to do such a thing, you really shouldn't both because of the harms to you not being justified if you don't overemphasize the near term, and also because of systemic effects like losing solidarity with other people who would prefer to make another decision().

[e.g. many people who choose to run their own small mail filters find them regularly invisibly black holded by major mail services due to overactive spamfiltering.]

thibauts2• 12 years ago

SaaS don't have to be "beta". And of course there are many factors to take into account.

jschwartzi• 12 years ago

Or could close their "beta" you were depending on without notice, could lose your data, could leak it, could give unexplainable corrupt results and leave you looking like a fraud, etc.

I don't have to use SaaS to have these results. I've seen in-house efforts with the same risks. The difference, in my mind, is that with SaaS, the provider has some significant incentives to do a good job. The software is their specialty, and the developer will lose money if you stop using it because their software ends up costing you money. There's much less risk of internal company politics saddling you with a useless or dangerous system. On the contrary, I've seen "self-hosted" company projects promised in response to proposals to use SaaS, and they were usually promised to achieve some political goal rather than being a serious attempt to compete. Because it's an internal project which doesn't generate revenue, it's very easy for the company to promise something and then not deliver, as there's no money tied to it.

Having seen this multiple times, I'm much more inclined to use SaaS. Tail risks don't cost nearly as much money over the mid term as the risk of company politics derailing an otherwise laudable goal.

Yawnoc2• 12 years ago

Stallman is basically saying that it's unethical to outsource a software function that it's possible to run on-premises, which is just... a losing argument. Any given user can decide whether the (almost purely abstract) "freedom" of running free software one's own server outweighs the convenience of, say, not having to administer a mail server. I'm not sure what free software buys you versus hosted software with good data export features.

nullc4• 12 years ago

He's saying it has ethical implications.

Making that decision in an informed way starts with having some idea of what you're giving up.

In the case of SaaSS, you're often not sure what you're giving up precisely because the operation of the server is so opaque to you. E.g. is the server copying all your email to a hostile foreign government? The operator /says/ it isn't.

Indeed, it can be a bit abstract-- but many other important tradeoffs we weigh also involve abstract implications or effects at a distance.

dasil0033• 12 years ago

I have huge respect for Stallman and I understand his argument, but he's still stuck in a 1980s mentality where everyone on a computer had to have some level of expertise with actually running software.

The fact is that many people today are incapable of even installing an application on a proprietary desktop OS, much less utilizing the freedom of software they control. 10 years ago I was building websites for people at $1000-$5000 a pop, all with open source software. They have all the benefits of free software available to them, but you know what they don't have? Anyone to maintain their software for a reasonable price. I've been directing them to SaaS providers for a long time because frankly it makes no sense to pay me 100 times as much to a software professional in order to realize this freedom.

Obviously Stallman would say that there's no inherent reason that you can't have a reasonably priced service based on free software, just like there's no reason you can't charge for shrinkwrapped free software. However the mechanics and cost savings of SaaS make this much much more difficult to conceive, and frankly I don't see how it will ever make sense for the laymen who make up the vast vast majority of computer users today.

Stallman is a gem of the computing world, and I would never say anything bad about his ideology, but the primary battle that needs to be fought today is about data ownership, not software freedom. The latter still matters, but only for the computing elites (ie. programmers, sysadmins, etc), the former is what is increasingly going to affect everyone going forward.

xorcist2• 12 years ago

No, he's bascially saying your SaaS provider owns your data in a very specific way. If you are to compete with Salesforce, would you really keep your customer data in their CRM?

maxlybbert4• 12 years ago

It's a little more than that. As I understand it, he's OK with people choosing to do business with a company along the lines of Facebook or Twitter as long as the customers have the freedom to get all the source code for all relevant web services (and, I believe, the user's own data) if desired. He understands why you might pay to have somebody do something you aren't willing to do yourself, but he believes you should always have the ability to get and modify the source code for all software you use, even if you aren't using it on your own computer.

dllthomas4• 12 years ago

"I'm not sure what free software buys you versus hosted software with good data export features."

A competitive market when you're looking to see that piece of software extended or adapted.

geofft• 12 years ago

I don't really like this argument. (This is a bit different from saying that I disagree.) There's a tradeoff here, and it's more than a cliche in this particular case.

The same argument would imply that you shouldn't do computing on VPSes or similar services that other people own. This might be strictly true, but the alternative for lots of people is that they just won't be doing that computing. At least with free software, we can say that it's usually monetarily cheaper than proprietary software. Buying and running your own server is much more expensive than running an EC2 box for pennies per hour. A lot of people's first introduction to free operating systems, these days, tends to be on a remote server instead of their personal computer. I don't think we should halt that.

The same argument would imply that you shouldn't use the email or shell account from your university, and you should self-host. While I actually do believe that to some extent, I get the feeling that Richard doesn't.

And even if you do end up self-hosting everything, chances are you won't be responding to security issues as quickly as a full-time team of professionals on call. At that point, anyone who wants to take your freedom can do so. This doesn't seem like a win.

I appreciate the goal, but we have a long way to go to the day when this becomes the right advice.

nullc4• 12 years ago

At a minimum you should know what you're getting into.

Imagine that that server is controlled by your worst enemy.

Still okay with using it? If so thats good evidence that you can just go ahead. If not, ... well, it gets harder because how do you know your worst enemy doesn't or won't gain control of it? (What? your worst enemy is the neighbour's chihuahua and Amazon doesn't hire dogs?)

WRT the costs there, I'm not sure that really follows. At least on the high end EC2 is phenomenally expensive if your load is predictable, it's interesting when you can't predict it. The large high cpu instances basically pay for the hardware in a couple months worth of use. Small instances are low performing to the point that a $35 quad core arm or $50 atom device is competitive. Surely there are cases where EC2 is cheaper, but "not computing at all" sounds like an exaggeration.

Turing_Machine• 12 years ago

"Small instances are low performing to the point that a $35 quad core arm or $50 atom device is competitive"

You're forgetting the "Amazon data center connectivity", "can scale up or down at will", and "someone else's problem if the hardware fails" parts. Those things are not free.

acomjean• 12 years ago

The same argument would imply that you shouldn't do computing on VPSes or similar services that other people own.

I don't think he saying that exactly. I think is more of a consider who has the control of the data .

For example. I worked for a company that monitored power use circuit but circuit. The data was uploaded to our servers and processed by our software. All very convenient. You could download some of the raw data, but generally small chunks. (minute by minute, day by day). You stopped paying and you lost functionality.

This is a similar problem with user generated fitness data. Some "Services" don't make it easy to take your data with you.

VPSs you generally have more control, and can just dump your data and move to another provider.

logn2• 12 years ago

The same argument would imply that you shouldn't do computing on VPSes or similar services that other people own.

By my reading of the argument, they might not have a problem with VPS. First, the software on a VPS can be completely free (Linux). Second, it's not computing you would do on your own (short of buying a fiber connection and racked servers), and this is their argument for why a search engine might not be SaaSS.

As an aside, with a project such a YaCy, I think their final point that P2P software can replace SaaS (such as search engines) is coming to fruition.

The same argument would imply that you shouldn't use the email or shell account from your university

Again, I don't think they're arguing this. They'd certainly want you to use a free client, but the email protocol can't really support running servers on a user's machine if it's ever going to be turned off.

Personally, I think the solution for SaaSS operators is to license their code as free software, preferably Affero GPL so that others can't make it non-free. This still introduces privacy concerns but remedies all the lock-in issues and gives users the option of running that software themselves.

To your point on self-hosting being insecure, I think it's still more secure than putting 100% faith in a 3rd party, and one that's a single point of failure (or surveillance). In the end it's not much different of a problem than updating your personal OS.

AnthonyMouse2• 12 years ago

Buying and running your own server is much more expensive than running an EC2 box for pennies per hour.

Is it really? You can get a Pentium III era server essentially for free. Suppose it uses 60 watts (0.06KW). At the national average 12.2c/KWh that's 0.732c/hour. An Amazon micro instance is 1.3c/hour. That's the "I only need one instance" rate; if you need more than one then you can get slightly newer hardware with virtualization support which makes self-hosting even more attractive.

And even if you do end up self-hosting everything, chances are you won't be responding to security issues as quickly as a full-time team of professionals on call.

Amazon doesn't maintain your VM. When your VM is vulnerable to Heartbleed or Shellshock you still have to patch it yourself unless you've configured auto updates, which applies the same to self-hosting.

What Amazon provides is convenience. If you need about a hundred cores for twelve hours, you can buy a dozen 8-core machines on eBay, use them for twelve hours and then sell them again for about what you paid for them, but that's a huge pain compared with configuring the equivalent on EC2. EC2 isn't necessarily cheaper, it's just a lot easier, especially if you don't already have the requisite experience and don't want to learn. Which is much the same as it has always been with free vs. proprietary software.

rosser2• 12 years ago

The CapEx costs of a server are a fraction of the OpEx costs of colocation (rack space, power, bandwidth, &c).

alexdowad• 12 years ago

I love the part where he says that "Cloud computing" = "Be a sucker". LOL

markbnj2• 12 years ago

The ethics of Stallman's arguments don't matter in the least, and they never have. He's like a guy in 1905 trying to get people to keep using horses. He's been on the wrong side of history for so long that you can no longer even detect that there was a history to be on the wrong side of: he just floats out there in his own strange little bubble of ideals. You have to respect his dedication to those ideas, but there isn't much relevancy left.

jobposter1234• 12 years ago

What do you mean by the "wrong" side of history? I only see one or two reasonable arguments that can be made against Stallman -- he might be out of touch, he definitely values personal freedom over convenience... But it's a bit early to cast a value judgement saying he's on the wrong side of history.

I see him as someone who values things differently than I do, but I also could see a future 150 years down the road where people bemoan and wail, "why didn't we listen to Stallman".

handelaar• 12 years ago

And the answer will be "because he was unable to make himself listenable".

logn2• 12 years ago

He's been on the right side of history and the rest of us have been on the wrong side. I think the Snowden leaks solidify that view. After Microsoft Windows how could you disagree with him on concerns of proprietary software lock-in? And he's been spot-on as far as privacy goes: worried about the cloud long before anyone else, and concerned about cell-phone surveillance before it was hip. The mere existence of GNU licenses has done enormous good for the world, and Linux is proof. Linux didn't take off because of his ethics, so you're right in that regard, but his ethics are responsible for the things that people like about free software.

And this being hacker news, you have to admire the great hack that is the GPL.

WorldWideWayne• 12 years ago

History says that despite the fact that these "wrongs" have taken place, that people largely do not care. So, what does it mean to be "wrong"? Likewise, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there...does it really matter?

I could also argue that Linux is generally holding the world back. Just like wrong and right...this whole thing is a matter of opinion and point of view. There are simply no absolutes to measure against.

rosser2• 12 years ago

I really, really don't like Stallman's zealotry, but you are dead wrong.

gear54rus• 12 years ago

I wonder if this is an argument spawned of fear (that what he says is true, that it is 100% accurate and it is that bad), or is there really something that lets you believe that he's wrong.

Maybe we didn't see enough bullshit put into proprietary programs? Not enough backdoors? Not enough DRM maybe?

This may be an unpopular opinion but it certainly is a valid one. I tend to side with it.

dagw• 12 years ago

He's like a guy in 1905 trying to get people to keep using horses.

Or perhaps he's the guy in 1905 trying to get people to keep using electric cars. In 120 years time it might turn out that he was onto something all along.

Puts• 12 years ago

http://xkcd.com/743/

jacquesm8• 12 years ago

Wow, what a lot of hate for RMS in this thread. All I know for sure is that I wouldn't be writing this on the machine I'm using here without him, and a ton of hardware in this house would spontaneously stop working if every line of code he had an (indirect) hand in or influence on disappeared. I'm pretty grateful for that.

Of course you could say the same about Edison or Maxwell, but that's roughly the right magnitude. Hating on Stallman as a person is not very elegant, hating him for the wrong reasons (at a glance, I spot: jealousy, misunderstanding, claims of irrelevancy and so on) is not productive either.

If you're going to criticize criticize the particulars of the linked article rather than the man. Thanks.

On topic: In case you didn't get it: the article (rightly) identifies software-as-a-service as a threat to open source, it allows companies that in the past would have shipped binaries and would have been compelled by the GPL to release their sources to do an end-run around all this so they can charge you for their software without ever having to release anything. That's a valid point and plenty of examples exist in the world today.

How serious this is is not for me to say but I do note an ever increasing trend towards lock-in and a more asymmetric internet which seems to draw a line between the 'haves' (the owners of infrastructure and services) and the 'have nots' (the users, smaller businesses). Ever larger chunks of a business operation are running on hardware and software even the business owners have no control over, stuff they couldn't keep alive even if their business depended on it. This sort of inter-dependency is exactly what we should be trying to avoid because it means that you are simply no longer in control, either because you don't have access to all the code that powers your business or because your code is only a minor extension to a bunch of black box code that you can not review or inspect on a machine that might be running all kinds of nefarious stuff besides what you think it is doing and that might come back to bite you one day.

pdkl95• 12 years ago

In addition to the hate for RMS, just look at how many people are distracted by the argument over development models. PHK was right[1] - PSYOPS for nerds is easy; as easily-deployed distractions go, "profitability of Free Software" is right behind "GPL vs BSD".

[1] https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/schedule/event/nsa_operation...

pmoriarty2• 12 years ago

Software as a Service is a huge threat to Free software in particular, and Open Source in general.

This is why I release all my own software under the AGPL.[1][2]

I also try to avoid using SaaS as much as possible. But this is going to remain very difficult until fully decentralized, peer-to-peer communication networks become widespread.

As long as centralized forums like HN, centralized mail services like GMail, and centralized social networks like Facebook dominate, it's going to be hard for you to keep your data out of their hands without refusing to participate in electronic communication at all. While any sort of data, from email to TCP packets, flows from your own machine through others outside your control, this will remain the case.

Complete freedom will require complete isolation. Anything less will be a compromise. Everyone will have to determine where they draw the line for themselves.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License

[2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

jacquesm8• 12 years ago

This should be periodically reposted or sticky somehow:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/

John Walker was pretty prescient when he wrote that.

(and in case you don't know who he is: he founded Autodesk).

MrDom2• 12 years ago

But this is going to remain very difficult until fully decentralized, peer-to-peer communication networks become widespread.

Do you think they ever will? There's not much financial incentive for companies to embrace decentralized p2p and there's a clear financial incentive for SaaS. Until that situation reverses itself, we have a problem.

MrDom2• 12 years ago

Most people hate individuals who act like they have greater moral authority than us mere mortals. It feels like an implicit judgement of our character. The fact that he's been proven right over and over makes it worse.

This thread could be a case study in debunking the claim that programmers are more logical and less prone to emotional manipulation than other humans. From everything I've seen, programmers are actually more emotionally sensitive than the rest of the population and thus are more susceptible to emotional arguments than logical ones. After all, logic we can trace and refute. It's harder to refute feelbad.

Mz• 12 years ago

Whether you agree with his stated goals/values or not, Stallman does us all a service by elucidating these issues. Because code and the constructs he talks about are "virtual" entities, it isn't readily apparent to most people what the actual consequences are of where and how and why things are done the way they are done. People often think these details don't matter, but they do. They think they don't matter largely because they don't understand how x thing leads to y consequence. Stallman does understand those relationships.

I myself struggle with the question of how I can put something out into the world such that it is freely available to theoretically anyone while also finding a way to pay my own bills. Writing code is not a big part of what I want to do. It is, in fact, probably a fairly small part of what I want to do. But it is a similar problem space. And few other people are writing anything that elucidates for me the details of why this stuff matters, how it matters, what the exact consequences are and so on. I find that very helpful in thinking through my own problem space.

So I will just briefly thank him here (not that I expect him to read this). I read a biography about him some months ago and that was a real step forward for me in my thinking through some of my own challenges. Thank you, Mr. Stallman.

mark_l_watson• 12 years ago

I admire Stallman. He is someone who really made a difference. That said, I find myself slightly disagreeing with him on web services:

It seems like in most cases the criticism of web services mostly are in loss of privacy and digital security. On the other hand to me the point of the (A)GPL is ensuring that computer users have the right to inspect and modify the software running on their own systems.

I understand that there is some overlap: using free software is likely (I think) to increase one's privacy and digital security.

tzs• 12 years ago

Do your text editing with your copy of a free text editor such as GNU Emacs or a free word processor. Do your photo editing with your copy of free software such as GIMP. What if there is no free program available? A proprietary program or SaaSS would take away your freedom, so you shouldn't use those. You can contribute your time or your money to development of a free replacement.

There are many kinds of freedom.

If I'm spending hours or days trying to get some inadequate free program to accomplish some task I need, or trying to work around the lack of a free program in that area at all, when there is a proprietary program that will quickly accomplish my task, NOT using the proprietary program takes away freedom. It enslaves me to spending hours on that task when I could be doing something I would enjoy more.

If it is a task that will be ongoing as opposed to a one shot, and so I might have some concern about getting locked into something, freedom maximizing would probably involve a mixed approach: use the proprietary tool, and toss in some monetary support toward some free software project working in that area.

vipstarry5• 12 years ago

In the case of Stallman's free software, the most important of freedoms are four specific forms: The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0). The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3).

The "freedom to get things done quickly" is a shallow freedom that leads users into a life of helpless servitude and social division. The reason this happens is because there are many people who write proprietary software which will help users do powerful things but the software will also have various restrictions that result in helpless servitude and social division. Stallman teaches that users who choose to accept these proprietary software with the restrictions cannot live in freedom as users are forbidden to control the proprietary software, the control over the software belongs to the owner of the proprietary software.

paulhauggis4• 12 years ago

To be honest, this is one of the results of accepted and encouraged copyright infringement over the past 15 years.

By taking away the rights of the copyright holders (IE: copying software freely without permission), they were forced to come up with something that can't be copied: software-as-a-service.

Who Does That Server Really Serve?

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