Free software vs. SaaS: A matter of control? | Hacker News Reader

Free software vs. SaaS: A matter of control?

itworld.com

10 pointsabennett9 comments

I recently migrated over to Google Apps Gmail from my own personally managed, rock solid Postfix server.

I am comfortable with Gmail because, although I don't own the code, I still own my data.

---

Nothing is truly free as in beer. Free software doesn't cost me my money. Free software costs me my time. Gmail is cheaper in this regard.

I look at Gmail much the same way I look at my hosting provider: I don't own their infrastructure, data center or connectivity, but those are all sufficiently fungible that I can migrate away at any time.

---

The "new free" is all about owning and freeing your data. Owning your identity. As long as I own my domains, as long as I don't lock my data into a closed system with proprietary formats, I feel free.

Now, registrars and domains are what really make me nervous...

Richard Stallman's article (http://bostonreview.net/BR35.2/stallman.php) is definitely worth a read.

But I have a problem with the solution that he proposes, that software should be peer-to-peer capable to allow for collaboration, because that ignores all the other reasons why SaaS is so useful. I use Google Docs primarily because I can get at it anywhere.

The way I see it, the future lies in self-hosted web based software, or at least web interfaces to desktop software. Sure not everyone would use this (think wordpress.com vs. wordpress.org) but then at least you'd have the ability to control your own data.

I am a programmer, and I still can't fix free software I don't like. It's the same reason that people use off-the-shelf software in the first place -- DIY just takes too much time.

I always find it interesting in hosting forums when people complain about the operation of an open source product they are using not doing something they want it to do and getting really mad at it. The performance sucks, or it has a bug, or whatever...

Well, you know... it's open source and it's free. You can fix it if you want. But no one does, they just complain.

And if they do fix it, they don't commit the changes to get them integrated, so they can't upgrade anymore. shrug

How many people have the ability to actually improve something? Should those people not demand quality?

I can't engineer a car - does that mean I shouldn't get mad when my airbags fail to deploy? I can't cook well - does that mean I shouldn't be disappointed by a substandard meal at a restaurant?

You pay good money for a car. You pay good money for restaurant food.

A better analogy would be going to a food shelter, getting a free meal, then complaining that they didn't put enough salt on it, when the salt is right there on the table in front of you.

I've locally fixed issues that I discovered, and then submitted the patches back. In every case, those patches have been rejected because they weren't formatted correctly, or the project lead disagreed with my choice of design, or the team didn't like my haircut, or whatever.

After a certain point, one just stops bothering.

Two little errors:

(1): Even for a non-coder, there is a small difference between proprietary and free: vendor dependency.

(2): Even if makers of free software themselves can be sneaky, malicious code is less likely to slip through, thanks to peer review. (Of course this doesn't apply to one person projects.)

The conclusion, however, is right on spot: what really matters is control of data. Free software is just a mean. An indispensable one, but a mean nonetheless.

There are no direct effects, but there are indirect/secondary effects. For example you won't find OSS nagware/crippleware/popupware because any developer knows someone else will just cut the annoying parts out. Or you personally may not program python, but you do benefit from using python programs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com