Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Free as in Freedom Hosting/Cloud_Services

[libreplanet]

On Mon, 3 Dec 2012 10:34:19 -0700
Patrick Anderson <agnucius@gmail.com> wrote:

> What should users who care about freedom look for when trying to find
> a cloud/hosting provider?

If you can run the free software just like the cloud provider yourself,
then it is free. If you cannot, it is not free. 
> 
> Keeping
> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/network-services-arent-free-or-nonfree.html

If there is free software available on which I can run on my own free
hardware, then the cloud provider is not free. If the cloud provider
allows you to join their cloud using the exact same free software as
they do, then perhaps they are free. Perhaps a debate for another topic
and time.

> We cannot just be angry with them because of their size; what
> *exactly* are they doing or not doing to respect user freedoms?

non-free javascript, non-free firmware in their hosting environment,
and more unknown code on the backend.

> http://ImputedProduction.BlogSpot.com (is BlogSpot evil?  Why or why
> not?)

You can run free software as a blog on your own hardware, therefore
blogspot is non-free. You cannot download, inspect, and determine if
the code for blogspot is free or not. Evil or good are morality
judgments and irrelevant to the free vs non-free discussion.

-- 
Andrew
pgp 0x6B4D6475