Does he really turn against SaaS/Cloud? Software that doesn't run on your computer doesn't necessarily need to be in your control, right? As long as the clients are free.
It's gotten to the point where most cloud services are no longer managed instances of open source or even compatible software.
You could take a managed cloud PostgreSQL instance and migrate to something self-hosted if the prices were to hike up or something else happened that would necessitate it.
But how many of the cloud services in your stack does that apply to? Geocoding or routing? Push notifications and messaging? Payment gateways? Authentication and authorization solutions? File storage solutions? Web Application Firewalls?
Thank you, that was an enlightening text, made me understand better GNUs view of SaaS.
There are many cases where running a self hosted version is not feasible, which are also mentioned in the text. Social media and other services where the information is an important part of the service or software that can not be run on my own machine due to limits in my hardware. But outsourcing simple calculations that can be done locally is a bad thing I agree.
> Social media and other services where the information is an important part of the service or software that can not be run on my own machine due to limits in my hardware.
I mean, fediverse sites like Mastodon or Lemmy, or even something like PeerTube show that it's possible to at least run instances of a larger federated service, albeit the user experience could be better (the average person asking "What do you mean, I have to pick a server to join?").
Admittedly, video hosting is the hardest due to space and bandwidth requirements, though perhaps the real reason why none of these platforms see real widespread success is the network effect - most people already are pretty comfortably in popular walled gardens and don't feel like they want to switch to anything else.
The FSF has created the AGPL 16 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Affero_General_Public_Lice...), so it's not like they didn't see the turn that software was going into. But it was already a losing battle, because every developer wants to think they might become millionaire and won't use it.
Whether the software runs on my computer or not, if I am the user, I must be in control.
Whether the meal is prepared in my kitchen or not, if I am going to eat it, I must be in control.
AGPL is also the license you should use if you don't want big corporations to use your software. Big Tech even avoids GPL-3 and stick to GPL-2 from what I have noticed.
Note that AGPL does not actually protect your software from big companies (or small companies) running your software as a service. It requires them to contribute back or make source available when they make changes, and IIRC thats to the user (who could be an enterprise customer under some other agreement even, but none of this is tested in court).
If you want that sort of protection, BSL, SSPL, Elastic license, etc are what you want.
If you want to make Free Software, make it. Know that people you don’t like may use your software, even criminals may. That is what Free Software is. OSS is slightly different but similar.
If you want to make shareware, make shareware — no judgements on people who want to make money with their software and believe thats the best path.
I'm fine with big corporations use my software: the deal is that whatever they do with it, they must give it back to the users with the same license. Make it live beyond the company's existence and control. It's still better than my software being non-copyleft and being used by a company.
I wish they would give back all the profit as well but that's another topic and the AGPL doesn't touch that.
Just like you aren't in control of your software if you didn't write your compiler yourself, if you didn't build your compiler yourself, all the way down to the minerals.
You're never 100% in control, but that doesn't mean you should try and maximize it.
I really liked the idea of Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS): https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
It's gotten to the point where most cloud services are no longer managed instances of open source or even compatible software.
You could take a managed cloud PostgreSQL instance and migrate to something self-hosted if the prices were to hike up or something else happened that would necessitate it.
But how many of the cloud services in your stack does that apply to? Geocoding or routing? Push notifications and messaging? Payment gateways? Authentication and authorization solutions? File storage solutions? Web Application Firewalls?