[mattw]

Thanks for the link. What I take away from it is that Stallman's full opinion on SaaS is internally inconsistent, either that or I am completely misunderstanding him. The "Distinguishing SaaS from Other Network Services" section was exceptionally incoherent; here's one quote:

> Multiplayer games are a group activity carried out on someone else's server, which makes them SaaS. But where the data involved is just the state of play and the score, the worst wrong the operator might commit is favoritism. You might well ignore that risk, since it seems unlikely and very little is at stake. On the other hand, when the game becomes more than just a game, the issue changes.

So, SaaS is okay so long as the "risks" are sufficiently small? Who defines that risk, me? So that makes it okay for me to use Google Docs, since I deem the risk of Google doing something evil with my documents to be small? (Well, no, because Stallman explicitly calls out Docs as unacceptable. So I guess I better not use that.)

Or from the conclusion:

> Don't buy or install “thin clients”, which are simply computers so weak they make you do the real work on a server, unless you're going to use them with your server.

...thus violating the "essential freedoms" of anyone who uses your thin clients?

This is (one of the reasons) why it's so hard to take Stallman and his "four essential freedoms" seriously.

[papachito]

> So, SaaS is okay so long as the "risks" are sufficiently small? Who defines that risk, me? So that makes it okay for me to use Google Docs, since I deem the risk of Google doing something evil with my documents to be small?

Yes, if you don't put anything too private in there, it's ok (according to him), he also said in another interview that it's ok to use Facebook as long as you don't put any private stuff there.

> ...thus violating the "essential freedoms" of anyone who uses your thin clients?

Could you explain why it violates "essential freedoms"?

[mattw]

> Yes, if you don't put anything too private [on Google Docs], it's ok (according to him), he also said in another interview that it's ok to use Facebook as long as you don't put any private stuff there.

Actually, he says the opposite. Docs was his "clear example" of SaaS:

Which online services are SaaS? Google Docs is a clear example. Its basic activity is editing, and Google encourages people to use it for their own editing; this is SaaS.

And, of course: "don't yield; don't use SaaS". So Google Docs is out, regardless of what goes on it.

> Could you explain why it violates "essential freedoms"?

Because according to him you should never do "your" computing on anyone else's machine. Since he says it's okay to set up thin clients if they're using your server, I guess he must have meant you can set up a bunch of thin clients for yourself to use, since if anyone else used them they'd be using someone else's (your) server to do their computing.

Of course, he also says it can be okay if you sufficiently trust the person running the server (provided it's a person and not a company)...which again is not consistent, because even if you trust the operator you don't have the ability "to study and change the source code so it does what you wish", which is one of his "essential freedoms".

The whole essay left me with the impression that Stallman was just trying to avoid being completely written off by sane people (in the unlikely event that hasn't already happened). This was actually a surprise, because it previously seemed abundantly clear to me that Stallman didn't care at all what other people think. But since SaaS so obviously provides vast benefits in some cases, and people naturally want to take advantage of those benefits, he has to find loopholes in his philosophy instead of taking the hard line of consistency. This inevitably results in contradictions, because his premises were not reasonable to begin with.