Stallman's new enemy: the cloud

[Christopher Browne]

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 8:56 AM, Neil Watson <tlug-neil-8agRmHhQ+n2CxnSzwYWP7Q at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 09:49:43PM -0400, Robert Brockway wrote:
>>
>> Quite right.  If a business risk is that the propriatory application in
>>  the cloud may disappear and render the user data useless, the way to
>>  address that risk is to avoid using the application in the first place :)
>
> From reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars triology I always invisioned
> the cloud as public infrastructure and also that one could host their
> own node.  Thus if the cloud goes off line you still have your copy that
> could be synced up later.

There's a variance in terminology here...

I don't believe RMS is indicating "generic computing infrastructure"
in his description.

He appears to be describing the use of applications "in the cloud,"
not the infrastructure that implements them.  I think that he prefers
not to use terms like "web 2.0" (which is more or less an
O'Reilly-based term).

If Google Maps goes off line, for instance, you DON'T have a copy to
"sync up later."
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