Re: how much of a forge is SaaSS?

[Richard Stallman]

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  > Using a forge as a means of publishing and communication does 
  > require communication with other people's computer, either to view 
  > someone else's repos, or to let others view your repos.
  ...

You're basically right, with a few little exceptions.  So I'll comment on
the few points where I disagree.

  > Again, whether a service counts as SaaSS has less to do with the 
  > complexity of the computation, but the functionality.

That is mostly correct, but any communication activity can include
little pieces of ancillary of computing, such as figuring out who to
notify about a checkin.  I consider them part of the communication
activity, so they are not SaaSS.

  > > yes there is - you could operate the server yourself on a
  > > machine that you control - other contributors would get
  > > notifications from your server; but at least one of the team
  > > members controls that server
  > >

  > Who controls the server is less relevant. If it is SaaSS, the fact 
  > you / your project control it does not mean it is no longer SaaSS, 
  > as people with no control to the server will still be harmed when 
  > using your service.

If a project operates the forge, and its participants use it for
working on that project, that is not SaaSS.  In this case, _the
project_ is using the forge.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)