Re: [autonomo.us] [okfn-discuss] Wikipedia as SaaS by the OSSD?

[Rob Myers]

On 19/12/12 21:15, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> The RMS definition hinges on whether someone else is doing "your
> computing", and you shouldn't allow this. OSSD (and the complementary
> Franklin Street Statement, which FSF associated people participated
> in, and FSF hosted a meeting around; see the autonomo.us site) is
> orthogonal. Whether someone else's computer is doing something
> narrowly defined as your computing or not is not pertinent. Rather, is
> the service publishing its source as free software/open source, and is
> non-private data open knowledge?

Yes Stallman explicity states in his essay that proprietary/free is 
orthogonal to SaaS, and that not all network services are SaaS.

I would argue that merely storing and accessing Open Data on someone 
else's servers "isn't your own computing except in a trivial sense". 
It's communication or storage. So the OSSD isn't necessarily trying to 
square a circle.

But by the time we get to a simple SPARQL query, it looks very much like 
we are doing our computing on someone else's servers.

- Rob.

PS - For me the classic example of SaaS that "everyone knows" is Google 
Docs, which Stallman does mention.