[pcwalton]

There are a whole lot of native apps I just won't use because I don't want to go through the hassle of installing software. The macOS App Store is bad; Windows installers are worse. Entering a URL is a lot less friction.

I don't think the user experience of Web apps has to be worse than native, but even if we grant that it's worse, I'll take it over the pain of installing apps. And, based on the experiences of numerous SaaS companies, I'm far from alone in this. A lot of native app developers wail and gnash their teeth about how the Web is a technically inferior solution (which, again, I disagree with, but let's leave that aside). But, from my point of view, native apps on the mainstream desktop platforms have consistently failed to get deployment right, and that's terribly important to users in practice.

Take, say, LibreOffice. Is it better than Google Docs? Sure, probably. But I have such basic needs in word processing and spreadsheets that the marginally better user experience of the native app doesn't make up for the added annoyance of downloading LibreOffice and keeping it up to date. All indications are that most users are like me.

[pjmlp]

Those SaaS are more than happy to have a Web wall to their products.

No more piracy, users only get access to the UI part.

They care use whatever they want from open source, without giving anything back and the world will only find out about license misuse if they employees speak out.

Best of all, they own their user's data, making it even harder to move away from them, than it ever was with Office formats.

[pcwalton]

Violating OSS licenses is far more common with e.g. desktop Windows software than with Web-based SaaS.

[pjmlp]

Well I cannot see what they run on their servers, so it is anyone's guess.

At least with native code I can check what is on my hard disk.

And given my experience, it is hardly the case any company outside the big SV ones or whose main business is unrelated to software, that actually bothers to contribute anything back.

[ake1]

the only widely used license that i know of that would get violated by this kind of use (i think) is the AGPL.

[pjmlp]

It is not only about violating licenses, rather leeching whatever software they feel like it, without give a cent back.

And there is no way to validate that.

[ake1]

i would assume they are not contributing but if i wanted to find out if they did, i'd ask them. should be fairly easy to validate if you know what they're contributing to.

while i agree with your point about this being sub-optimal for both software-development and free software as a whole, i think it is a separate issue.