RMS and Clipperz Promoting Freedom In the Cloud

mbarulli writes "Clipperz and Richard Stallman recently launched a joint call for action to bring freedom and privacy to web applications. 'The benefits of web apps are many, but quite often users lose their freedom to study, modify and discuss the source code that powers those web apps. Furthermore, we are forced to trust third parties with our data (bookmarks, text documents, chat transcripts, financial info ... and now health records!) that no longer resides on our hard disks, but are stored somewhere in the cloud.' Clipperz and RMS urge web developers to adopt the new AGPL license and build their applications using a 'zero-knowledge architecture,' a framework for web services that has been derived from Clipperz online password manager. A smooth path toward web apps based on free software that know nothing about you and your data."

Comments

Re:Sorry, guys

[value_added]

Any time you hear one of these incredibly stupid, meaningless buzzwords you know for certain that the word's user is completely ignorant of the subject he is talking about and wants you to think you are the ignorant one.

Normally I'd tend to agree, but I'm afraid you're wrong in this case. From the Wiki cloud article:

The term Cloud Computing derives from the common depiction in most technology architecture diagrams, of the Internet or IP availability, using an illustration of a cloud. Cloud computing gained attention in 2007 as it became a popular solution to the problem of horizontal scalability.

If you're unfamiliar with a typical network diagram looks like, the illustration in this Wiki article should make things clearer.