-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 09/10/2011 11:54 AM, Julian H. Stacey wrote:
another tools for SaaS discussion on SFD should you come across such
No idea what SaaS was. I looked it up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SaaS "Software as a service" Just another marketing buzzword: "The concept of SaaS has been popularized by Salesforce.com, which coined the term "The End of Software" to differentiate its (then new) software-as-a-service approach .... Yawn !
...and an important one. Much like "Cloud Computing", I get questions phrased using such vocabulary all the time. Sorry I dropped it too fast here, anyone interested can read further on SaaS, for example articles like this: http://autonomo.us/2010/03/richard-stallman-on-saas/ I don't necessarily need or want everyone to agree on everything there, but I think it's important to remain critical while welcoming questions and discussions around some of the technical/ethical issues such tools may introduce. Different people reach different levels of readiness regarding setting their own services and ultimately being 100% free and autonomous. Just going through such an exercise regarding email, webmail and web hosting is a rare exercise.
Amusing bit: "Data escrow .... 85 percent of the participants wanted to take a copy of their SaaS data. A third of these participants wanted a copy on a daily basis."
People askng about SAAS & clouds could be told: Remote data & service clouds can evaporate.
They seldom do, but when they do... a notable example is Geocities, Can anyone cite others ?
A free app. or server one installs localy from eg an SFD CDROM/DVD, is an app. & data a remote admin on a remote SAAS server + cloud can't break for you by unexpected upgrade, service removal, bankruptcy, net outage, or deciding to go commercial & charge for next week.
I'd be careful there. Service removal can happen at many levels and in fact one of the arguments for using SaaS is lower cost of redundancy, higher availability, etc. -> again, not saying this is absolute truth, just one of the counter-arguments.
SAAS & clouds are not the direction UK government is going eg tax office & companies house (co. reg. authority) are pushing processing on to applicants PCs (Processing of PDF v. 1.7 editable forms for tax returns by Adobe Reader etc), Central servers are just for upload on completion, Not remote SAAS processing.
Hmmm local examples are even more interesting. I don't quite see the argument against SaaS on remote servers here, though. Regarding Michael's remarks: On 09/11/2011 05:09 AM, Michael Dorrington wrote: [...]
(At least :) Two things concern me about Diaspora:
1. The ability of the project to write secure code. Writing secure code is essential for a project of this kind. http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/09/22/security-lessons-learned-from-the-diaspo...
Given
the context and the nature of the project, and its current status (not even beta), I don't see a problem there. In fact it's interesting anyone else would actually care about it enough to check the code, blog about it, and explain what failed and can be improved there. I see a path and a goal, and people learning. I am deeply annoyed the devs use Apple systems, for example - how credible can their platform be if they don't even dogfood on FaiF ? Or why do they keep posting videos in YouTube only ? Some of us using their site raise such concerns, and there is room for that too. I also see an opportunity to learn more about the difficulties and current failures. Even if Diaspora fails spectacularly as a finished project/product, many lessons are there for the taking.
2. The contributor agreement. http://www.vedetta.com/a-few-notes-on-diaspora-the-diaspora-verdict The agreement itself is on Google Docs and requires a login to view it. FaiF?
Have you requested for it to be published elsewhere ? You know, that article has excellent information on many things needed for a project to be truly FaiF which would probably scare away anyone not willing to go through all the probems found. The main point I tend to focus on and amplify and I feel applies to many situations where we try to get people to use free technology and content, is "The current Diaspora flaws are fixable." Will they fix them ? Will people join to fix them or just sit around ? Is it worth our attention (or can we afford not to try and know this project) ? Again, I don't particularly embrace 200% or agree with everyone and everything about Diaspora, but not looking under its surface as a free software advocate seems like a lost opportunity on many levels. I'm also not using this as my sole "channel" to share stuff, so if any other social networks that have reached or target being FaiF are out there, I'll glaldy add them to my tools :) Cheers, Fabian Rodriguez Montreal, QC, Canada http://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:MagicFab ~ http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2011/Canada/Montreal -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: PGP/Mime available upon request Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk5su/EACgkQfUcTXFrypNUFqwCeMbd0E0SuxuUycp4xlO+xGnCg kjoAniv4Ap2nz4wj5s0a0M+CEz87iC5m =YUpl -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----