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Stallman Says Cloud Computing Is a Trap
stevedcc writes in to tell us about an interview with RMS in The Guardian, in which he gives his views on cloud computing, with a particular focus on user access to data and the sacrifices made for convenience. "'It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign,' he told The Guardian. 'Somebody is saying this is inevitable — and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.'" Computerworld has a summary of some of the blogosphere's reaction to RMS's position.
He is right that cloud computing is a potential threat to the progress we have made on free software, open standards, etc. However, he's wrong that it's marketing hype. Being able to move noisy, power-hungry hardware somewhere else and have other people deal with repairing and replacing it is a big win.
Fortunately, since a lot of cloud computing uses virtual machines, you do get full control and it ends up being not so much of a threat to free software. If anything, FOSS is a natural match to virtual machines, in the cloud or elsewhere.
I am in disbelief over anyones the acceptance of the idea. Relinquishing control over your data to an outside source seems unfathomably retarded, no matter what kind of spin is put on it.
I am thinking that your problem is both immaturity and the assumption that cloud computing is supposed to replace everything. Well, it's not. No, it's not supposed to replace those applications where you put in your credit card info or social security number (whatever the hell that is). It might claim that it can but why would you do that?
Brace yourself but there are in fact applications for things like ec2 from Amazon. What if I wanted to design an informative website that might provide details and directions to a brick & mortar store while at the same time store comments from users?
I'm not putting any spin on this, I'm just pointing out that Cloud Computing has a place. It might be smaller than what the companies tell us, it might be larger than what we think. But to outright rule out a potentially cheap, distributed, robust service like this as a developer is really really closed minded. I'm personally willing to give it a chance as I build on open source frameworks and have a lot of applications I would like to toy with that don't deal in sensitive data. And I don't have a whole lot of change laying around to do it!
My work here is dung.
Businesses want to make money. The trend is business thinking is "why sell them something when we can rent it to them and keep charging them indefinitely."
RMS hits it right on when he says web-based applications are really an effort to change the market so that every computing function is on a pay per use or subscription basis. Look at itunes DRM if you want to see the future of "cloud computing"
It's all marketing.
As an aside, from TFA:
I was amused that the writer of an article about how "cloud computing" is hype used another one of those hype buzzwords that have no concrete meaning whatsoever..."web 2.0"...
Thank you Dave Raggett
Right now all the "cloud computing" I do is free: I use windows Live services, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Notebook. Having these things online and accessible from anywhere is a great convenience and I'm almost always connected to the net anyway so it makes sense for me to use them.
BUT, If they ever think they are going to get a dime from me for these things they are wrong. Offline and free alternatives still exist and will exist forever, I don't need to use these "cloud computing" services. I only use them now because they are free. I even remove the ads on Live and Gmail so they really are making ZERO revenue from me beyond the value of the data they can mine--and they can go right ahead since the whole point of that is to show me targeted ads which, imagine that, I'm never going to see.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
It is pretty hard actually. Their financial models depend on vendor lock-in, lack of privacy (from them), precise control of their software (ads, "premium" features, etc.), or all of the above.
Free software could allow you to encrypt your data automatically from the service provider, to migrate yourself and your data to a compatible competitor, or to implement "premium" features yourself. But what's in it for the service provider?
Gmail's popular because it's free. Try monetising it.
Like Google's already done, with the ads, and the premium accounts?
If you charge less, you're eating your desktop division's lunch.
If you don't have a desktop division, that means you're eating your competition's desktop division's lunch.
If you charge more, you're providing less service for more money, because the company ultimately doesn't own its data.
That assumes an identical featureset.
Consider Exchange vs Google Apps.
Exchange is going to have tighter integration with desktop apps like MS Office, and Office has more features and better support for legacy formats. It's also very likely you do backup inhouse, which may be required by your industry, and is probably going to give you more peace of mind. And it's not dependent on any third party, save for Microsoft, and there only for updates -- if Microsoft.com went down, your exchange server would still be up.
Google Apps has tighter integration with Google services, and, generally, better functionality for sharing documents and collaborating online. It has the additional advantage of outsourcing backup (Google can do it) and distribution (none needed), while being available anywhere. And depending on what you need in the way of desktop hardware, it's entirely possible you might not need any desktop software besides a browser -- which gives you many of the maintenance advantages of thin clients.
It is, in other words, apples and oranges. For some, Google Apps is a compelling alternative -- even worth paying for, possibly worth paying more for.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
From what I've seen, the only people using Google are kids who don't know that it is not the email service but rather they, the email user, that is the product. A product Google sells to advertisters, marketers, etc.
Hey, it's fine for your personal email, and they have an $$ Enterprise edition that just barely doesn't suck compared to their competitors, and they are fighting the good fight against wireless so maybe thank god we can get stuff the Japanese and Europeans have had for years.
RMS is right, with the cloud it's just like any other hosted service. You are at the mercy of the provider. Personally, I like having my server with me and decide what it can or can't do. I can decide how vigorously I want to enforce the SLA, I can decide what type of processor, cooling, hard drive, etc. for my purposes. With the cloud, you are dependent on unreliable hardware that's supposedly magically made reliable because of redundancy. But guess what, if I drop a connection I drop a connection, regardless of how many servers I have waiting for me to reconnect to.
It's not paranoia driving this. RMS was around in the mainframe days when all computers were, you guessed it, a service. It sucked. IBM and Ma Bell ruled the world, and the only time you could play with a computer was at a university, and only for few minutes. Nowadays we depend on computers a lot more for our daily lives, banking, shopping, communications, etc. And to make the single point of failure AGAIN back to the network, which is and always will be the weakest link, is a bad idea. Better to write better standalone software that can tap in and extend itself. Why does everyone want everything controlled for them anyway? Isn't there any DIY spirit anymore? Beyond that it doesn't make sense to ride everything on your network connection, the one thing you will never have any control over.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
one thing i like about Gmail and Google in general is their stance that it's the user's data,
You're right about the exporting capabilities, but if you read your TOS you'll see that it's quite clear that anything that gets submitted there is Google's data. They haven't pressed this at any time I've seen, and their behavior patterns treat the data like it (mostly) belongs to the user, but that's not the actual legal state set forth.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Hey, seen him in person this summer, Stallman is as clean as the next hacker... oh wait. Seriously, he's clean.
And he is mostly right. Cloud computing is a trap UNLESS your local machine is a dedicated local node of the cloud that can work stand alone, communicating with free protocols and free software, form a competing cloud and so on. That is, if you can say bye to the cloud service without experiencing any loss of time and data.
BTW are there such web2.1 services around?
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I do thank RMS for the many contributions he's made to the free software movement. It is probably true that if it hadn't been him, it would have been someone, but the fact is that he's done a lot. It's also true that he is a zealot who does as much to hurt his cause as he does to help it. He seems determined to piss off the creator of one of his license's most successful products, He publishes screeds against anyone who disagrees with him, he refuses to compromise in any way, and he talks down to the people he is trying to convince. Surely he must realize that cordial public relations with your allies is a good thing? That sometimes compromise and "baby steps" toward a goal are more valuable than no progress at all?
RMS is attempting to solve a problem which has technical, philosophical, and social components. Having a superior technical and philosophical argument are only half the battle. The rest involves convincing people, a lot of people, many of whom have minimal understanding of either the technical or philosophical underpinnings of the situation, that he is right. He has proven to be consistently bad at this. At best you can say that he has won over a percentage (though not all, or even most) of those most able to fully appreciate all facets of his argument. He's made no inroads at all with people who aren't "geeks" and frequently annoys or seems to work against even those who support his ideals.
The man has his good points. He's done some really good things. He's also one of his own worst enemies. It never killed anyone to be nice and it certainly never hurt someone who claims to be working for social change to, you know, be social. If he is really incapable of being polite and politic, if he is really unable to bring himself to cut his hair, trim his beard, and wear some nice, well pressed clothes, than surely he can find a person in the FSF to be his voice and his face so he can sit in his dark little room writing code and manifestos?
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.