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Stallman Says Cloud Computing Is a Trap

Posted by kdawson on from the head-out-of-the-clouds dept.

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.

3 of 621 comments (clear)

  1. he's right, but he's also wrong by jipn4 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. yeah he's right by globaljustin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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:

    has become a core part of the rise of Web 2.0 applications

    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"...

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  3. Re:Mod Parent Up!! by marcello_dl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

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