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RMS Says "Software As a Service" Is Non-free
BillyG noted an RMS interview where he says "'Software as a service' means that you think of a particular server as doing your computing for you. If that's what the server does, you must not use it! If you do your computing on someone else's server, you hand over control of your computing to whoever controls the server. It is like running binary-only software, only worse: it's even harder for you to patch the program that's running on someone else's server than it is to patch a binary copy of a program running on your own computer. Just like non-free software, 'software as a service' is incompatible with your freedom."
I have a business problem which a properly programmed computer can solve. I can either;
a) Hire a programmer, or a team of programmers, to create this application for me.
b) Utilize a proprietary application, with a contract to protect my rights.
Is the proprietary application free? No, but it does increase my efficiency 10x over. Would I get that kind of increase by hiring the programmers? Not after you take it to account all of the overhead I have with that plan. It just doesn't make business sense to go with option A, regardless of my personal belief on the topic.
As for my client? Ya, they simply do not care.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Richard_Stallman
The difference being that my phone and power have a specified up-time (that might even be set by government mandate, I'm not sure) that is much higher then my ISP uptime.
Most small to medium businesses that I know of use consumer grade DSL or cable connections that are notorious for going out weekly for minutes or hours, and yearly for a day or more.
Because the software required to make the hardware or make it work is non-free.