[pmoriarty]

Software as a Service is a huge threat to Free software in particular, and Open Source in general.

This is why I release all my own software under the AGPL.[1][2]

I also try to avoid using SaaS as much as possible. But this is going to remain very difficult until fully decentralized, peer-to-peer communication networks become widespread.

As long as centralized forums like HN, centralized mail services like GMail, and centralized social networks like Facebook dominate, it's going to be hard for you to keep your data out of their hands without refusing to participate in electronic communication at all. While any sort of data, from email to TCP packets, flows from your own machine through others outside your control, this will remain the case.

Complete freedom will require complete isolation. Anything less will be a compromise. Everyone will have to determine where they draw the line for themselves.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License

[2] - https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

[jacquesm]

This should be periodically reposted or sticky somehow:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/

John Walker was pretty prescient when he wrote that.

(and in case you don't know who he is: he founded Autodesk).

[MrDom]

> But this is going to remain very difficult until fully decentralized, peer-to-peer communication networks become widespread.

Do you think they ever will? There's not much financial incentive for companies to embrace decentralized p2p and there's a clear financial incentive for SaaS. Until that situation reverses itself, we have a problem.