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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.
We love you, we really do. But your delusional and increasingly demented ravings give all supporters of free software a bad name.
And if you're going to represent the opinions of a large group of users like you do, would it kill you to buy a nice shirt and a razor?
Yours
The free software community.
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.
Latency can be a problem. Speed of light and all that.
You also lose control and confidentiality.
None of RMS's concerns are related to the concept of "cloud" computing. His issues are with proprietary computing.
It's stupidity.
I'm not a big fan of black and white formats.
Nor am I a big fan of people who paint reality to be only black or white.
There are shades of gray.
For anyone to stand up and pronounce this as either 100% good or 100% bad is laughable. I'm certain Google & Amazon will/have found a completely viable and useful application for cloud computing--I mean unless I'm mistaken I think it's already working with Open Social. I'm sure it will have at the very least a niche application in computing. It might be very small, it might be very big. But to call it complete stupidity is quite ignorant.
'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.'
Uh oh, look at this! Oh no! Stupid stupid stupid! Just because businesses and proponents want it, doesn't necessarily make it evil or stupid. That's being shoved down my throat and self fulfilled prophecy and ... bad stuff ...
... we may have a candidate for cloud computing! Why not let some other company/people provide the cycles? Surely one could dream up some application even if it is merely a trivial/novel concept.
Furthermore, if the source code is GPL and the application is public and the data is not sensitive
My work here is dung.
Then dey get yer sugar, then dey get yer women, then dey get yer money!!! DONT DO IT!!!
It's very very rare that I'd agree with Richard Stallman since his "user community" agenda is rarely in line with real freedom for developers (unfortunately Stallman favors users over developers), but this time I'd have to agree with him about cloud computing and the dependencies it creates for people, projects and companies "hosted" in the cloud.
Cloud computing is web hosting gone wild on steroids... however every company or software system that you rely on is another dependency that could cause problems for you down the road. Be careful which systems you use in your magical web app built upon cloud computing systems... a house is only as solid as the strength of the cards (infrastructure) it rests on...
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.
For most users, the loss of control of there data and the other privacy issues that concern us arent really all that important. What matters to them is how easy the software is to use. Compare creating a gmail account to downloading and installing a normal mail client, setting up the pop / smtp servers and so on. In setting up a gmail account the hardest part is deciding on what your address should be (or reading the captcha). The trouble with most technical people is that they assume everyone else to be technical, when this is rarely the case. Hell I'm a programmer by trade and I cant even be bothered finding out how to put line breaks in my post!
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
The vast majority of computer users are not system administrators. For them, having someone -- whether it's the company administrator down the hall, or Google somewhere out there -- shepherd their data is a great reassurance.
99% of people don't host their own websites, so they depend on someone else to do it. Would Stallman say it's bad for those people to give that person or hosting company control over their data?
I've never been much of a fan for the idea. Although I can recognize some of the potential benefits, I don't see an overall advantage. How much data are we really willing to give over to Google, Microsoft, etc. Much like the DRM fiasco of interest as of late, what happens if Google decides to discontinue Google Docs? It's not just a "control" or "free software" issue. Cloud Computing isn't the answer; Competent Computing is the answer. IMO, the origin of this entire discussion is a fundamental underappreciation for the immense computing potential even the average computer user (with a computer that may be several years old) has these days. No one needs Cloud Computing. A bargain basement Dell these days is still a very good machine.
I'm actually giving a presentation on this in a couple weeks at an academic conference on innovation. "Cloud Computing" had another name in the 1970's, Time Share. Ask folks how well that worked back in the day. Two years ago I did a consulting gig at a Medical Supply company that was still running their inventory and billing off a 486 with DOS, I kid you not. Fortunately their software vender was still around and did offer an upgrade route, but they were pushing to use their new online based system. We shopped around at a few other medical software companies who were pushing the same thing.
The owners of the business were in their 50's and 60's. They were savvy enough with the computers, but everything kept coming back to what would happen to their data. End of the day, they would not trust their business data to an outside vender, period. And for good reason dealing with HIPPA and other privacy considerations. The only way out for the data is a modem that is used to connect to the state's electronic billing system for public aid & medicare and that's it. Not internet connection to the server or the workstations that connect to it.
I work around a college town with several folks who are on the cutting edge. I just built online ordering system for another company that is hosted off a dedicated server. Every day the interns came in, the first thing out of their mouths were, "Why don't you just use Amazon?"
My short answer was, "I know how this will scale. If it gets hammered, add more servers, load balance it out, and cluster the database when it comes time. I've done it before and it will work. And until something better comes along and is proven, stick with what you know."
Most smaller businesses I chat with are not comfortable with the idea of other people hosting their critical data. Basically my conference topic is that we'll see something close to the Adobe Air model where applications can run either online or from the web in some type of VM and enable users to still save their work locally. Whether that be a hard drive or USB thumb drive. No matter how cool a web app is, if I can't run it while I'm not connected and can't save data to my local machine, it is not going to replace traditional desktop apps anytime soon.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
If there's one person in this industry who has been consistent over the years it's Richard Stallman. You may not agree with his views: that personal freedoms are more important than technical merit or convenience but you have to admit that he has never drifted from his what he believes in. He's also proven that he is willing to use real hard work (e.g., in the form of code) to promote the principles of his beliefs.
I think few people would realize how much different the computing world would be without the positive influence he's had on our industry.
Also, the record for many of his writings are pretty right on track. Just as an example: A decade ago the idea that you might need special "rights" in order to read a book might have been perceived as .. oh, what are the words people are using now? "raving" or "lunacy". Yet today Digital Restrictions Management embedded in eBooks, games and multi-media are a real thing -- and a real threat to personal freedoms.
Now, I'm just speaking for myself, but when RMS speaks, I will stop and read -- or listen (and be grateful I still have the freedoms to chose to do so) :-)
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
He says "Oracle's Ellison is selling cloud computing products and poking fun at his own marketing. Stallman is opposed to the cloud because he thinks it locks users into proprietary, non-open source software. Guess which one is a billionaire?"
Regardless of the merits of Stallman's views, that's just a fucking stupid statement. Like someone defending Rush Limbaugh's factual accuracy by pointing to his ratings.
Like someone rebutting concerns over monopolies by pointing out the existence of robber-barons.
This space available.
Don't forget a shower!
And I've known him for over 30 years. But just as a stopped clock is right twice a day, sometimes RMS is spot-on.
This is such a case.
For the cloud computing providers, the impetus behind the mad rush to cloud computing is first and foremost to lock users into a single provider. A secondary impetus is to give the provider unfettered access to all users' data.
What RMS doesn't mention, but of equal concern, are the disconnects between what the various players say, and what other players hear.
For example, cloud providers say "use our cloud, and you don't need to have an expensive IT department." IT department heads hear "use their cloud, and we don't need to have expensive IT engineers."
Cloud computing is potentially far worse than proprietary software since the cloud has much greater reach. Once anything is in the cloud, it is difficult to do things unless everything is in the cloud.
A company which is annoyed with Windows can add a Linux box to the mix, and gradually move stuff from Windows to Linux. With the cloud, it is all or none.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dddAi8FF3F4
How fucking dare anyone out there make fun of RMS after all he has been through.!
Here's mine complete cry:
How fucking dare anyone out there make fun of RMS after all he has been through.! He lost his aunt, he went through a divorce. He had two fuckin kids. His husband turned out to be a user, a cheater, and now he's going through a custody battle. All you people care about is... readers and making money off of him. HE'S A HUMAN! (ah! ooh!) What you don't realize is that RMS is making you all this money and all you do is write a bunch of crap about him. He hasn't performed on stage in years. His song is called "give me more" for a reason because all you people want is MORE! MORE-MORE, MORE: MORE!. LEAVE HIM ALONE! You are lucky he even performed for you BASTARDS! LEAVE RMS ALONE!...Please. ESR talked about professionalism and said if RMS was a professional he would've pulled it off no matter what. Speaking of professionalism, when is it professional to publicly bash someone who is going through a hard time. Leave RMS Alone Please... ! Leave RMS Spears alone!...right now!...I mean it.! Anyone that has a problem with him you deal with me, because he is not well right now. LEAVE HIM ALONE!
About your second point: you accept "magic box" services every day of your life. You put your money in a bank and trust that they're gonna give it back when you ask for it. You pay a cable company to provide you internet, and trust that none of their techs are reading your email. You use your credit/debit card at countless businesses, and trust a whole chain of people not to swipe your card number.
If I was going to be paranoid about lack of transparency and control in paid services, there are a dozen other every day things I would be more worried about than my GMail account.
If you have not got the in-house skills or time to run your own IT department, then storing all your data in a clod can make a lot of sense.
CloudBiz does all your back ups, web hosting, ...
You, and your associates/sales reps/... can access your data on the road with no need to set up your own VPN servers etc.
Small business people want to focus on their businesses, not on setting up and maintaining IT. They don't service their own cars & delivery vans, so why should they run their own inhouse IT?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Of complaining about cloud computing by saying this:
'It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign
By saying this:
Computerworld has a summary of some of the blogosphere's reaction to RMS's position.
Emphasis mine.
Using one media driven piece of hype to denigrate another media driven piece of hype seems...well, silly to me.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
You make a very well reasoned explanation of this.
Stallman is still a crackpot. A curious combination of fanatic, technologist, and luddite. :)
I don't know quite a lot about how food makes it to my dinner table. If it stopped working, society as we (ok, I, for those of you hand-cranking your OLPCs) would screech to a halt and massive starvation would ensue.
And yet, having everyone not only KNOW how to make their own food, but actually do it because the mega-farms, chemical producers, grocers and their massive supply chains might screw up is plainly stupid.
Yes, we create new technology. New business models. Some of them entail relying on the new technology and new business models. The choice is not between Stallman and the hallelujah choir. The choice is risk/benefit, like always.
Stallman is not part of the market for this service. His sky will perpetually be falling. I figured out years ago that I'm a market outlier. What I'm willing to buy has no real relation to the market as a whole. Stallman needs to learn this, or perhaps just the Slashdot crowd does. What Stallman finds objectionable is more or less irrelevant as far as the business world is concerned.
"Upload all files to google apps."
"May the force be with us."
"We have to be able to get some kind of access to our files up or down."
"Well how could they slip that in the EULA if they're required to ... to notify us of changes? Break off the upload! The EULA still gives them full access!"
"I don't see that in the EULA, are you sure?"
"CANCEL UPLOAD! ALL USERS CANCEL UPLOAD!"
"Take evasive action. Green group, stay close and re-check section 57."
"Admiral, we have additional insane EULA requirements in section 47."
"IT'S A TRAP!"
But I would have just a bit of an easier time hearing what Stallman has to say about anything related to the internet if he actually used the internet, as in with a browser.
Since he didn't invent the term, forever.
And the brethren went away edified.
Well, in Gmail's case, you can use POP3 and store a copy locally.
You can, but do you? How many people do this? And that's just gmail, which is just glorified webmail.
A lot of the stuff going on with 'cloud computing' isn't piggybacking on decades old standards, and has no real fallbacks.
How do you back up your facebook content?
Not really; it's either one or the other, or a split of both. You can't have legal currency stored under your mattress while still having it in the bank at the same time; if you could, you'd be able to just continually withdraw as much as you'd ever need.
Right, that's what makes your DATA different. With DATA you CAN have it in multiple places at once. You can have it under your mattress and in the cloud at the same time... in theory at least. In practice its rarely that easy.
I agree that without a backup there is a risk, but it's not the world-ending thing that RMS makes it out to be.
What good is the 'freedom' to do what you want with your software and your data if you subscribe to someone elses software, and give them control over your data?
Imagine a world with strong protections over real property rights, but everyone has been convinced to live in hotels where the property isn't yours so the rights don't apply, at least not to you.
Right now all the "cloud computing" I do is free: I use windows Live services, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Notebook.
Absolutely none of that is Free.
You have the source for nothing. If they go away, you cannot continue to use them on your own server. If they lack a feature you would like you cannot improve on them.
"Cloud Computing" is simply commercial software delivered on-demand, with the same benefits and drawbacks.
In fact you're a little worse off because you can't even disassemble the server source to see how it works (possibly offset by the benefit of being able to more easily examine some of the UI code in browser based systems).
RMS is right about what happens if no-one truly owns software they use... I don't know that he's right about cloud computing in general because you can run your own truly Free software in the cloud... but software as services, he is right to issue warnings.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Finally, while many people admire and respect Mr. Stallman, he's never claimed to represent anyone.
While I seriously doubt that (that he's never claimed to represent anyone), it's possible. His MO when writing code is to create a giant steaming pile of crap and then depend on others to fix the problems and maintain it.
I know from personal experience that he is a control freak. All "official sanctioned" GNU code is owned by him, by copyright assignment. It is not enough for software to be under the GPL. My only direct experience was a phone call right after I had taken over the job of Mr. XEmacs and he told me how he must "wage war" (direct quote) against me and XEmacs because even though we were true blue GPL, he must have FSF copyright assignment.
The Emacs source code which we inherited and forked is littered with 1000+ line functions, 6+ levels of nested if-else and assorted other crap that looks like it was being written to violate as many rules of good programming style as possible. The amount of time it took to get the code in a state where we could display CJK fonts in Emacs (and in a stable state) was staggering, especially considering that we were basing our work off the good folks' at ETL Mule.
I have no respect for the man, no respect for his (programming) work. I find the names Linux/GNU and worse GNU/Linux to be as childish and offensive as the children who like to write Micro$oft and M$ and similar crap. (You might as well also write "you can't spell gOatse without the Gates and a big O". It's equally as witty.) Anyone can develop userland tools. Only a handful of people, of which Richard is NOT one, can develop a successful kernel.
On the other hand, he wrote one of the most insightful and brilliant papers in ACM history describing the architecture of Emacs and he does deserve credit for initiating the GNU project, thus inspiring many folks including myself to publish our work and help out on other projects.
Of course, even you write insightful things from time to time. No one is completely good or bad.
RMS is right. Cloud computing is big business' push to turn what was a previously unacceptably democratic computing paradigm into one that can be controlled by only those players with enough funding to set up "clouds".
The migration away from mainframes in the 80s was supposed to avoid just the problem with massively centralized computing: I.e., the problem that centralized computing forces everyone to be doing the same thing or at very least, conforming to the same design parameters.
Personally, I like my PC. I don't want to be constrained to only doing things that can be done in "cloud space". Having an OS that I can do whatever I want on, in absolute privacy and not having to rely on corporate policy to be at least partially friendly to me is something that I value. I don't want Google, Yahoo or Facebook letting the government look over my shoulder, or their big corporate buddies using their data to shove ads down my throat. It also means that I can't just buy a computer and use it as much as I want for no extra cost. Now I have to pay Internet bills, plus whatever software service charges will be applicable in this new forthcoming cloud.
On another note, cloud computing makes it *impossible* for the masses to implement proper privacy policies or cryptography. You think it's hard at the moment to get people to use secure email? Try implementing privacy when everyone's using Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo.
So called SaaS/cloud computing is just a way to ensure that the big end of town gets to watch and control what everyone else is doing, and bill them by the month.
Thanks, but no thanks.
I hate printers.
You put your money in a bank and trust that they're gonna give it back when you ask for it.
I trust that they'll give me my money back because they're a heavily regulated industry with a lot to lose if they don't. A "cloud computing" business has nothing to lose except your business.
You pay a cable company to provide you internet, and trust that none of their techs are reading your email.
Really? I have an idea how easy it would be for them, so no - I don't trust that my ISP is not reading my email. My internet comes from a phone company, not a cable company, and most of them have already wiretapped phones (and got away with it) so why wouldn't they read my email?
You use your credit/debit card at countless businesses, and trust a whole chain of people not to swipe your card number.
But if any of these people misuse my card, I have some legal recourse - and my liability is limited to $50. On the other hand, if I keep my businesses customer communications in my GMail, and then Google stops offering it, I could potential lose thousands of dollars and, here's the biggie, have no recourse.
In any case, it's hard to reconcile your praise of RMS's ACM Emacs brilliance with saying, "His MO when writing code is to create a giant steaming pile of crap and then depend on others to fix the problems and maintain it."
I know you are also twitter, but that does not matter.
The paper was brilliant. Full featured computer programming languages as extension languages for applications *are* a brilliant invention and how many billions of dollars has Microsoft made from copying it? Give me a couple of weeks to get my references down and some spare time and I think I'll write in my journal about that. The world needs to know.
I was terrified of the implications of Gnus 5 accidentally executing code, especially after finding stack overrun errors in the XEmacs 19.14 base code I inherited and kept a careful watch over what larsi was doing, though being the sharp guy he is, did his usual brilliant job.
If you cannot find a link with regards to Richard asking someone else to finish a crop coding job, feel free to contact me offline and I can put you in contact with someone who knows where the links are. It's like a multiple offense, but Richard naturally does development behind closed doors so it's not as easy to find the dirt as it with other Open Source software projects and people.
Oh, and the dirtiest thing I did in XEmacs development was to unilaterally decide that all the comments in XEmacs calling Richard Stallman an idiot and worse should be removed and did so without telling anyone. The changes were captured in posted diffs and CVS so I got "caught".
I regret doing that in a way, but not really. Personal attacks in source code just do not have a place.
No one owns GPL'd software. Assigning it to the FSF simply gives the FSF the ability to fight on your behalf.
And if we don't want or need anyone to fight "on our behalf"? Or about how Richard decided that manual changes could not move from Emacs to XEmacs, or XEmacs changes to Emacs without copyright assignment ...
For the first time (I've experienced divorce, hence war since then :-() someone declared war on me personally if I would not follow his dictation.
When Stallman blasted "cloud computing", I'm fairly certain he wasn't referring to website hosting.
As for Gmail and other web-based email services, that's a bit of a compromise. Many people like or need to be able to access their email from different locations and computers (at home, at work, on their iphone, etc.). Web-based email makes that pretty easy. There's definitely a performance hit (but maybe not compared to Outlook...), and there's a disadvantage in having your data not stored on your own computer, but the remote-access aspect for many people more than makes up for that. Unfortunately, for most people, there's no easy way to remotely access their home machines and run their email clients there, so we use webmail. (Even if you're a Linux user like me, it may not be possible to access your home computer; for instance, my workplace won't allow me to do remote SSH connections outside the corporate intranet, so even though I use Linux both at home and at work, I can't access my home computer from work to remotely run applications using SSH forwarding.)
Sorry but which email account can you NOT access from anywhere? I mean whether it's your ISP or your employer or your privately paid hosting, any half-decent email account provides IMAP over SSL so you can access it from anywhere. Most also have a web interface if you're at an internet cafe which doesn't provide any email client for you, and you're not tech savvy enough to get around restrictions and run your own client without admin rights.
OK, you like your PC. You don't mind maintaining it, running anti-viruses and so on. But you're not everyone. A lot of people want their services managed. Other people might want a way to manage peaks in demand without buying server infrastructure for the rest of the time (one of the commonest uses of S3 seems to be companies putting their catalogue images on there).
Maintaining a PC is not as hard as you imply...
For you and me, you are correct - it really isn't all that hard if you devote even a little time. However, professionally (and personally) I am regularly called on to fix other people's computers and for many people it clearly is hard. There are many reasons why of course but it is unquestionably beyond the capabilities of many people.
Sometimes it's because they can't be bothered, sometimes they don't have the time, other times they are afraid of screwing something up, and frequently they simply don't know how. I often joke that knowing how to maintain a computer is a great way to seem smarter than I actually am. Fix a broken PC and people think you are some kind of tech wizard - whether you actually are or not.
Plus a lot of folks simply don't have the time even if they know how. As an analogy I'm quite capable of doing my own plumbing but I do it so seldom it is more efficient for me to hire someone else to fix problems when they arise. Likewise a lot of my clients can solve their own problems but they simply don't have the time so they hire me.
So yes there are problems with cloud applications but there are problems with locally hosted applications too. There is no free lunch, it's simply a question of what works best for your needs.
That's exactly what liberal politicians want you to think, so they can gain power over you. "You're just a helpless weakling with no control over your future, destined to be a wage slave the rest of your life, so let us help you out". The whole idea is bullshit. The truth is, every rich person started out poor at some point. Somewhere in the family tree of every "rich" family is somebody who started off poor and worked their asses off to get rich.
Look at Barrack Obama. He loves telling people how hard it is to make it in America. How the deck is stacked against the poor. How "mean" everybody is. How he started off on the south side of Chicago, a poor "community organizer". If things were really anywhere near as bad as he says, he never could have become a rich US senator running for president. Yet there he is. Care to explain?
But my family *has* made it from very poor beginnings. At one point everything my parents owned fit in a small car. And that includes my sisters and I. The very fact that I'm able to have this conversation with you is proof that your "the poor are helpless" argument is bullshit.
The biggest problem for the poor are the people like you breaking their spirits, telling them they're hopeless and destined to have crappy lives. You should be ashamed.
Maybe not