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Stallman Worried About Chrome OS
dkd903 noted that Stallman is speaking out about the risks of Chrome OS and giving up all your local data into the cloud, pushing people into "Careless Computing." Which is a much more urgent concern than something like calling it GNU/Chrome OS.
Anyone who reads and understands the free software definition can see that web applications and "cloud computing" fail to meet the definition. The users are not free to modify or study the applications, and lacking access to the actual program files, they certainly cannot redistribute the applications to others...
So why would anyone be surprised the RMS takes issue with an OS that is designed to be cloud-centric?
Palm trees and 8
He previously called the cloud a joke. But here is the reality of the situation. I like having my email available on multiple devices. I like how easy it is to use web services rather than run my own cloud. I'm voluntarily allowing Google to serve ads to me in return for free services.
And for most non-technical users who can't figure out how to back-up their data, automatically saving their data in the cloud is better than having no back-ups at all.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I don't want my information in the cloud.
Neither do I want the inevitable yearly charge for constant upgrades to the latest Cloud software. I bought MS Office *once* for ~$80 and have been using it for thirteen years. (Likewise I bought Final Fantasy 10 for $20 and have been playing it for ten years. In contrast Final Fantasy 11 requires a ~$5 per month constant fee.) No thanks. I want to OWN my software not rent it.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Like most other expressions of concern that come from brother Stallman, the geeks hear him, and keep merrily on with technological progress. Not that his concerns are never valid, but he has become the Chicken Little of geekdom.
In this case, however, I believe his concerns are completely valid. People store personal information on Facebook, whose privacy policies are a constant subject of debate and, it seems, in constant flux. Information security aside, when I store my credit card information on my home computer I can feel safe that no one is going to get at it who I don't want to get at it. When I give it to some entity in the cloud, who knows what could happen without my knowledge or consent.
Sometimes I am left wondering just how much "progress" cloud computing and web apps really represent. So you can edit your documents and photos using a web app instead of a desktop app...where is the progress? We were accessing files remotely years before cloud computing, so what exactly is it about the current methods that represents "progress?"
Just because you are using new methods to accomplish the same thing does not mean that you have made "progress."
Palm trees and 8
I'd argue a more nuanced position: relative to his value system, which he is quite upfront about, Stallman is actually extremely accurate, sometimes verging on "prescient"("The Right To Read" written a fair few years vs. Amazon's remote kindle wipes or Apple's 'cryptographically blessed software only' smash hit... for instance).
However, his expressions of concern are basically never of the form "Technological development X won't work", which would be disprovable simply by making it work. Rather, his expressions are of the form "Technological development X will reduce the freedom of users and/or developers and/or both, which is bad". That isn't a statement about the possibility of Technological development X(indeed, he basically doesn't bother issuing statements of concern about stuff he thinks won't happen), and is almost always true for the various Xs he has warned people about.
I started using personal computers back in 1981 because I wanted to be able to run my software whenever I wanted, and not be dependent on the (university's) mainframe system being up. Today, I can't imagine using the cloud for anything other than as a backup, and then only with strong encryption.
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
...the geeks hear him, and keep merrily on with technological progress. Not that his concerns are never valid, but he has become the Chicken Little of geekdom.
Perhaps the rest of us have the task of making sure it's not just 'the geeks' who hear him. Stallman has a valid and important point here, and I suspect most Slashdotters agree with him. But the non-geeks are the ones who most need to hear the message, and they'll only hear it above the din of Google's grand pronouncements if we all scream it out loud, long, and often.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Or, in what can only have been a black joke on Redmond's part, Microsoft's "Rights Management Services"... Somebody was stroking a white cat and laughing insanely when they hit upon that one...
> Stallman warns would-be hackers not to download the LOIC software being pushed as a method of expressing anger with sites that have acted against Wikileaks - not because he thinks the protest is wrong, but because the tool's code is not visible to the user. "It seems to me that running LOIC is the network equivalent of the protests against the tax-avoiders' stores in London. We must not allow that to constrict the right to protest," he notes. "[But] if users can't recompile it, users should not trust it."
LOIC's source code is available on SourceForge.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/loic/
It's a choice - that's market economics for you. The models exist, and thrive, because demand is there, or at least there are enough people who are willing to sacrifice conventional ownership to play the game or use the software.
Welcome to the modern world: you don't like the product, don't buy it! Buy something else, something which does suit your needs. Or, if that doesn't exist, build it yourself, or help start an OSS project to do it instead. And, if all of that is impractical or impossible to finance, then you've probably found the reason why no-one else is doing it that way.
Of course, there is market momentum, the incumbent's advantage, monopolistic misbehaving etc, but that's what regulators are for (when they're left to do their job properly). However, "the cloud", downloadable content and subscription-based RPGs exist because there's a gap in the market. Think you can do better? Fill it yourself!
Rant over...
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
People store personal information on Facebook, whose privacy policies are a constant subject of debate and, it seems, in constant flux
People store information on facebook with the purpose of sharing it. Anyone using facebook for private storage does not understand the purpose of facebook.
I guess you're probably joking but just in case...
RMS
I see the comments filling up with RMS is irrelevant, chicken little!, etc.. If you really don't know who he is give the site a read; I learned a lot about the software industry reading articles by Richard. Give this a try as well. Better yet, buy a copy!
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
However, there is a bigger problem: people who use Facebook may actually lose access to their own data. At any time, Facebook could terminate your account, and suddenly hundreds of pictures and messages become inaccessible. This should not be a problem...except that some people actually do depend on Facebook to store these things for them, and would have no recourse if their access was suddenly terminated. Suddenly, people become beholden to Facebook's rules, which they have no say over.
Palm trees and 8
As much as I'd really, really love to dismiss Stallman as a lunatic, I can't help but realize he's been right about most everything he has predicted. Most of the world thought he was silly when he predicted the rise of "Tivoization" where most of us would be running free software but not have the ability to modify it because of hardware controls... Hm, I don't know about you but that seems awfully close to the current state of Android right now, with phones being made to prevent people from adding/removing programs or operating systems on it. The problem is, on almost every prediction RMS has made, he has been spot on. The integrity of the "cloud" is questionable when you realize who is running the cloud, companies with a large amount of money in advertising.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
You don't need to have backups of your data
Really? You actually trust Cloud Supplier X to a) be taking usable backups of your data and b) not decide to shut down your account and delete all your data?
Good luck with that.
which exists with its own life, totally independent. imagine that, this cloud is created by millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people running p2p based clients on their devices. imagine that this cloud uses the collective computing power of these hundreds of millions of people, and with top encryption.
it cant be controlled. it cant be killed. it cant be censored. it cant be outdone. its everywhere.
that is the kind of cloud i would be willing to move into, without hesitation.
something after the format that bitcoin project uses http://www.bitcoin.org/ ( i know this is the second time i linked this, but im enthusiastic )
Read radical news here
Stallman is actually extremely accurate, sometimes verging on "prescient"("The Right To Read" written a fair few years vs. Amazon's remote kindle wipes or Apple's 'cryptographically blessed software only' smash hit... for instance).
Or the Java trap.* (Meaning it's not enough for Sun to be friendly to the OSS/free software community, it has to guarantee those freedoms with appropraite licenses. Also GPLv3 was before the Oracle takeover.) Sun wasn't applying the GPL license to Java and OpenOffice until some anti-Java activism from Stallman.
* It doesn't mean I don't develop in Java. Actually, I like it pretty much, and the licensing of Mono isn't any better either. They're just not on the same level of freedom as e.g. Gnome.
and who care the least.
We are geeks.. we think and care about technological issues around privacy and freedom and security. They are a big deal to most of us. This seems to blind us to the fact that most people don't really care.
This is hardly as universal as you imply. I am as geeky as the next Slashdotter and could not care less about privacy or security, and my definition of "freedom" is likely as idiosyncratic as yours. Geeks are fascinated by technology and I suspect that the vast majority of them would gladly part with privacy or security in exchange for something flashier, faster, and/or cooler, especially if it's programmable.
Advice: on VPS providers
I think RMS arguments, all of them, can be summed up concisely as:
STOP LIKING THINGS I DON'T LIKE
Similes are like metaphors
RMS is always eventually right, years ago he was warning about Java and nay-sayers kept merrily nay-saying.
Look at the mess ORACLE has made of Java now.
He has eventually been right about so many things I was expecting that by now people would get it. Idealism is long term pragmatism.
But... the future refused to change.
The trouble with "the cloud" is that it's ended up like this:
"But it's free." That's how it starts. Look at the pricing history of cable TV. Watch what's happening to TV on the Internet. For a while, you could watch reruns broadcast shows on the Internet for free. Now, shows are becoming less available, more ads are inserted, and shows are disappearing behind the iTunes, Hulu, and Amazon paywalls. That's for reruns of content previously broadcast free to air.
So don't expect the "cloud" to stay free.
Those people deserve to lose their data. Period.
Stallman should be more concerned about the trend that caused this one: the drastically decreasing numbers of people who actually create stuff on a computer. Twenty years ago there were lots of geeks out there and Stallman's desire to modify and study other people's work was understandable. It is even understandable that he thought everyone should have these freedoms he so enjoyed. Today such an attitude is unthinkable; computer users no longer create stuff, they merely consume it. The current trend toward the extinction of the desktop and its replacement by mobile devices or cloud computing is the natural consequence of this change. You can't create anything on your smartphone except raw pictures and video. You can, however, consume content that somebody used a desktop to create. And so, each year, there are more and more consumers, and less and less content worth consuming. What will be the point of having the freedom to modify and study code when nobody wants to DO anything?
As much as I'd really, really love to dismiss Stallman as a lunatic
Why? Because he is fat? Because he has a long beard? Why the desire to dismiss a man you know to be right?
But... the future refused to change.
People store personal information on Facebook, whose privacy policies are a constant subject of debate and, it seems, in constant flux
People store information on facebook with the purpose of sharing it. Anyone using facebook for private storage does not understand the purpose of facebook.
I put information on Facebook in order to share that information with my friends and family...
I mean, I know Facebook does other things with that information, and for the time being I have accepted that. But that's not the reason I put things on Facebook.
In general I agree with RMS's position here. Entrusting our information to other parties is rather careless. But still, when he reacts to the industry's method of framing a discussion by careful choice of terminology by doing the same thing himself (i.e. "it's not trusted computing, it's treacherous computing!" or "it's not cloud computing, it's careless computing!") I can't help but think of a whiny kid in a schoolyard name-calling match.
And then, another fun twist: isn't this almost exactly the "client-server ideal" from years back? A thin client connecting to a server somewhere, offering convenient and reliable storage of your data from various terminals or devices? The only difference is that the server is owned by Google.
Bow-ties are cool.
I work for a company that, amongst other things, recovers thousands of stolen laptops each year. Many many of our consumer customers have no backups whatsoever and frequently call is repeatedly and desperately, hoping we've recovered their laptop so they can get back their baby pictures or term papers or music collection... The consumer market alone is ripe for a pure-cloud solution if for no other reason than the fact that Joe Average can not or will not back up their data.
Normally, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to Mr. Stallman, but in this case, I think he's spot on. First, it is nice to have access to your data anywhere you might be, on the other hand, the first rule in securing data is to limit access to it. If I'm at the local coffee shop, using an internet cafe computer, how do I know what has been cached or not locally. I don't, which means I should assume that everything is (from a security perspective) and not do anything that might disclose sensitive information like bank accounts and passwords. Oh, wait, to use the cloud services, I have to enter my password, so right there is a potential security problem.
In arguing against Mr. Stallman's position, many point out how the use of computers has changed since the internet and how everything is now in the cloud. That might be fine if you are updating FB or tweeting, etc. But if you are a business, do you really want your employees transmitting sensitive corporate information over unsecure and unencrypted lines? Plus, in the past, if the salesperson lost their laptop, their data was exposed. Now, if they lose it, the data of everything they might have access to on the corporate site is exposed.
Also, for cloud computing to really be effective, people need broadband. Didn't they just report, yesterday, that 68% of the country (US) does not have access to broadband (3mbit or greater speed)?
Cloud computing sounds like a great idea, but, how do you secure the data? Is everyone going to have a FOB, like a lot of banks use for online banking? What about when the cloud is unavailable (anybody hear about the DOS attacks by anonymous)? The current notion of storing everything on the internet on somebody else's server doesn't seem like the most logical thing in the world (other than from a marketing perspective).
I wonder if Wikileaks had been using chromeOS and was accused of violated google's acceptable use policy, what would have happened to their data. We've already seen what happened to their funds with paypal and the major credit cards. Why would we think google would be any different?
Lame way to try to discredit a valid point.
I don't understand since when is it obligatory to trash on Stallman every time he's mentioned?
If we take a broad definition of system software (where system utilities are included), it is, in fact GNU/Linux. Even the narrow definition does not make it invalid, but it does make a lesser point (standard C library, one of crucial parts of the OS is GNU, and perhaps some would say GRUB fits here too).
In any case, if you want to trash Stallman do it on its own time, and for a good reason. For example his ethical views that do not concern software: Abortion, sterilization, etc.
SaaS, on the other hand is a threat. And not a small one. ChromeOS' point is to be a cloud client. Where the cloud is proprietary software.
Also, I think it's a useless OS, but that's another issue.
Wow, you pretty much said the equivalent of "Just look at how she was dressed, she was asking to be raped." or "All people should expect to get ripped off when purchasing a product, therefore we should not hold the seller responsible."
These companies promised a bill of goods. What you believe the customer should have expected does not diminish the companies' responsibility to deliver said goods as promised.
You did prove my assertion that cloud based services should not be trusted. Thanks to your assertion not only should they not be trusted, but don't expect society to hold them accountable since you should have known better to use them in the first place.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Is it just me or does any of this sound familiar. It seems ever since the data center lost control of the data by the introduction of those toys (called the personal computer, back in the day), they've been trying to get it back. We've had citrix servers, remote access, thin clients, etc. Everything with the notion that all you need is a dumb terminal or a scaled down pc not much more than a dumb terminal and everything you need will be taken care of on the back end.
We've seen that model fail over and over, why would cloud computing, using the internet instead of coax or leased lines be any different? If you like the idea of somebody else having the ultimate control of your data and how you can access it, great, go for it. However, if you are concerned with who at google, or wherever has access to your data, what will they do with it, etc., then why would you ever want this. Wasn't it the slashdot crowd that was upset not too long ago because google was scanning emails for marketing purposes? What will happen when they do it to your corporate documents and corporate emails?
Thin clients were supposed to hold down costs, eliminate upgrade headaches and make everyone more productive. That didn't happen. Now we are told that cloud computing is the answer, and yet, all it is is repackaging of the old thin client model, but run on a public network with a third party corporation serving up your data. And this is supposed to be good, how?
Why? Because they were lied to and told (by entities like Facebook, among others) that "the cloud" was a good, safe, convenient place to put that stuff? Because they believed what they were told? Because they're not educated on the topic like we are?
That's such an asshole thing to say I don't even know how to respond. People are kept ignorant, dependent, and in the dark by forces larger and more powerful than they. They need help, not disdain. Take your snide comments and gtfo.
And the horse you rode in on.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!