The FSF simply has one goal: that all users can access and modify the code of all software they use.
If I access photos.google.com, I am a user of photos.google.com – yet I can not access the code. This is a problem.
You are misdefining "user" here.
If I access photos.google.com, I am a user of photos.google.com – yet I can not access the code. This is a problem.
You are misdefining "user" here.
He makes it clear his issue is only when the site is doing something that could be done locally (in the photos.google.com example, if you are sharing the photos with others that could not be done locally) or if there is unfree javascript running on your computer (which is a very different issue than the one you're raising - you can access and modify the javascript, but it is nonfree).
If I install Wordpress on my own server and do modifications to it for my own purposes, I am nothing more than a user of Wordpress.
> If I access photos.google.com, I am a user of photos.google.com – yet I can not access the code. This is a problem.
If you borrow my own laptop and use one of my applications installed on it, would you also like access to its source code?
And here we have the crux of the matter ... GPL was about distribution as defined by copyright law. AGPL is no longer about distribution, AGPL is an EULA, restricting what users (yes) can do.
> If I install Wordpress on my own server and do modifications to it for my own purposes, I am nothing more than a user of Wordpress.
You may feel that way, but at the end of the day, this distinction is up to whoever wrote the software and chose its license.
Do they want to give freedoms to you (the installer of Wordpress) or to the end users (users of your website). They wrote it, they decide.
In the FSF spirit: yes.
It's the same concept with the AGPL---I have no right to modify the source code on someone else's server; I'd need to install it on my own.
If you had to have access to the source code for everything you used, it'd be an almost impossible burden. rms takes public transportation in Boston, for example. Those terminals are interactive touchscreens, required for payment and printing tickets. He'd be unable to use the transit system.
From stallman.org:
> However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don't refuse to touch them. I will use them briefly for tasks such as browsing. This limited usage doesn't give my assent to the software's license, or make me responsible its being present in the computer, or make me the possessor of a copy of it, so I don't see an ethical obligation to refrain from this. Of course, I explain to the local people why they should migrate the machines to free software, but I don't push them hard, because annoying them is not the way to convince them.
> Likewise, I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone, or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then. (I do consider what those machines and their owners might do with my personal data, but that's a different issue, which would arise just the same even if they did use free software. My response to that issue is to minimize those activities which give them any data about me.)
> That's my policy about using a machine once in a while. If I were to use it for an hour every day, that would no longer be "once in a while" — it would be regular use. At that point, I would start to feel the heavy hand of any nonfree software in that computer, and feel the duty to arrange to use a liberated computer instead.
> Likewise, if I were to ask or lead someone to set up a computer for me to use, that would make me ethically responsible for its software load. In such a case I insist on free software, just as if the machine were my own property.
https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
So using someone else's computer is a similar problem to SaaSS---you're relying on someone else for your computing:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
How about the freedom to refuse to use someone else's computer unless I can also see the source code?
I have that very same right with any Service-as-a-Software-Substitute as well
The whole “origin myth” of why Stallman did what he did was based on being unable to use a printer. As computing moves to this model where your computer is more of a TV, that problem moves and as an individual you lose sovereignty over your data.
That has many other implications — there are many discussions here of what third party doctrine means in a legal sense. I don’t know that software licensing is the solution is the best answer, but it’s an honest attempt to address a serious problem.