FSF Helps Launch Autonomo.us To Focus On Freedom In Network Services

mako writes "The FSF just announced the results of a meeting it held on software freedom and network services. They are hailing the launch of a new group called Autonomo.us to follow up on these issues and the publication of the Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services which lays out a set of recommendations and guidelines for protecting freedom for software as a service." Update 22:07 GMT by SM: Corrected language incorrectly crediting FSF with creating Autonomo.us.

Comments

Inaccurate.

[byolinux]

This group is seperate from the FSF.

The FSF news story explains that.

Re:Inaccurate.

[owlnation]

This group is seperate from the FSF.

So it's autonomous then?

Sooo...

[oneal13rru]

Since Network Services are now Free, my packets are insisting I ask if anyone can give them advice on how to unionize... they have T-shirts...

Re:Sooo...

[oneal13rru]

Meh, try Ex-Lax. Always speeds up my tubes.

Good domain name

[nine-times]

This may be a bit off-topic, but my initial response to the headline was, "That's pretty clever, but I'm surprised someone hadn't already registered it." It seems like every word ending with a "us" got bought a while back when people first figured that whole thing out.

So out of curiousity, I went looking to see what was at some of those websites. They're all ad pages-- nothing is at any of them, really. It's a sad state of affairs with DNS that there has been such a land-grab and so many domains are taken by people whose only intention is to put up some filler ad pages in the hopes that someone might happen along.

Eh, anyway, it's nice to see someone got ahold of one and are using it for something.

You mean domain squatters?

[WiglyWorm]

They're not "taken by people whose only intention is to put up some filler ad pages in the hopes that someone might happen along."

They're there simply to sell for a profit in case someone wants to come along and use that name. It's a big business, right up there with buying potential misspellings of popular domains and putting up ads for their competitors.

Reverse Psychology

[postbigbang]

Up to this point, there hasn't been a single Anonymous Coward to post on a thread that's about anonymo.us

Splendid!

No, u

[tietokone-olmi]

Your mistake is in assuming that the user is a passive consumer. This would seem to be just your conforming to the ideas pushed by the proprietary software industry, which has sought for the past four decades to make the users of their products as passive and helpless as possible.

Your other mistake is in assuming that because far less than one percent of users make noises about wanting to modify the source code of whatever, that 99% don't want to.

The interesting thing is, though: why would you want the FSF to not make noises about things like this? Would you perhaps like all users to be passive and helpless? Or is this an "open source"-like compromise proposal, where the FSF makes exceptions to their principles in exchange of vaguely defined and ultimately useless "credibility".

New flash: not everyone thinks like a geek

[ClosedSource]

So what you're saying is that despite the lack of any evidence that a significant percentage of users want to modify source code, it might still be true.

I agree, it might, but given the fact that most users don't have the technical skill to modify code and there's no evidence that they wish to start hiring software consultants, I'd say the more probable truth is that they don't care.

Re:New flash: not everyone thinks like a geek

[TheRaven64]

I think you are missing something, and that is that the ability to modify the source code is the means not the end. If you don't have this ability, then you are subject to vendor lock-in, which is something most people in businesses do understand irrespective of whether they are geeks. You have no second source (something else they understand). Something that may be critical to your ability to compete is under the control of a single external organisation (and you can bet they understand this one). It doesn't matter to a business that they can't modify the code, it matters that more than one company is competing to do it for them, giving them lower prices (something else they understand).

In a related story...

[The Living Fractal]

Alaska based company Craptaculo.us is launching its website in a self-deprecating campaign against all websites which try to cleverly use the TLD suffix to create a new word. Craptaculo.us feels that del.icio.us is enough already, thank you.

First on Craptaculo.us' radar are:

http://fung.us/ - website about eating strange mushrooms and the wild tales that people share. eating mushrooms is bad.
http://co.ck/ - needs no explanation
http://gu.ru/ - complete lying bastards, they're not good at ANYTHING

More to come.