Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Project

[cool-RR]

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 2:04 PM, Jason Self <jason@bluehome.net> wrote:

dotcommon@autistici.org wrote ..

> i have visited http://librelist.com/ and i had the same impact: a non-free
> SAAS implementation
> this was because i could not find neither any free software license
> (GPLv3?) specification about the mailing software run by librelist.com,
> nor
> any source code of the mailing software to download, nor any website free
> software license (AGPL?) specification...

The availability (or lack) source code definitely goes to the question of
whether it's free software or not (and I hope it is, because otherwise the
server operator has lost their freedom), but whether it's free software for the
/user/ of that server doesn't decide whether it's SaaS or not [2].

cool-rr@cool-rr.com wrote ..

> I am not sure what you mean by saying "I suspect this is a non-free SaaS
> implementation". Are you suspecting that Librelist is not open-source?

No -- They're talking about something called Software As A Service (SaaS.) This
is a new issue our community is grappling with. Please see the links at [1] and
[2] for more information.

Also, something to be aware of: Our community is focused on software freedo, not
"open source." Please read [3]. Please use the "free software" when referring to
software which has the four freedoms. :)

[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html
[2] http://aws.bluehome.net/saas.html
[2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

Thanks you, Jason and al3xu5 for raising these issues. I didn't notice that the Librelist site doesn't link to the code and the license, though I'm quite sure it's all FOSS. This looks like a mistake on Librelist's part. I've asked on the mailing list for Librelist and when I have answers I will post them here.

Ram.