Re: [RFR] Press release about Debian on public clouds
On 03/21/2013 05:50 AM, Michael Dorrington wrote:
> Both using the upcoming Wheezy release to do cloud computing
> and using SaaS to do cloud computing are being discussed here.
Ahem... How to put it ... Well ... No ! :)
>> Exactly what freedom do you loose using a public cloud?
> The same freedoms you lose by using non-Free Software and more, as, for
> instance, you don't even have a copy of the software.
If you choose to use, for example, to run few VMS on one of the
service providers that use Openstack, on a public cloud of let's
say, eNovance, HP or Rackspace, then you do have a copy of
the software.
Reading what you just wrote, it appears to me that you may
be a bit confused.
(the truth is that Openstack isn't fully free, because every
provider has implemented billing with proprietary things, but
first this is currently being addressed, and 2nd, this is off-topic,
so let's please not discuss that)
>> As
>> someone else (Charles?) stated, it's the same as running
>> your website on a shared hosting server... You can still leave,
>> and setup your service on another platform, or set it up in
>> your garage if you wish...
> This argument is a bit like "Running non-Free Software that uses a free
> format for its data is the same as running Free Software on the same
> data." Actually, running on a public cloud is worse than running
> non-Free Software as I explained above.
That would be truth if there was only AWS. But that's not the
case any more, and there is many more providers now, using
free software.
> As I've explained above, you can run a cloud computing solution using
> non-Free or Free Software on your own hardware or you can use Software
> as a Service to get that cloud computing solution.
Which software as a service can be free or non-free,
that is where I draw the line.
> I hope that people
> who believe in Free Software understand this and for cloud computing
> solutions will recommend using Free Software and warn against SaaS.
I do recommend to use only free software. But there is nothing
wrong to use SaaS, if the software running that service is free,
and can be installed somewhere else and still be useful. That
is all what I've been working on for 10 years.
> To quote the article by RMS I linked to: "Don't use someone else's server
> to do your own computing on data provided by you." This warning is
> about exactly what public cloud computing is.
Is it that for you, you are only using free software when you are
using a dedicated server ? Or perhaps, you really need to own
the server, so then only collocation is fine ? (eg: renting isn't fine,
while buying is ok) And then, do you need to own the switch as
well ? And the data center ? And the power grid ? Would you
consider that renting a hosted virtual machine isn't acceptable ?
I think that all the considerations in the above paragraph aren't
correct, and that if you use free software from top to bottom, it
doesn't really mater what your contract is with the hosting
company, and how much you own of the infrastructure.
I also think you are miss-interpreting RMS here.
Cheers,
Thomas
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