Are today's online services consistent with GNOME's mission?

Are today's online services consistent with GNOME's mission?

Posted Jul 26, 2007 10:01 UTC (Thu) by ortalo (subscriber, #4654)
In reply to: Are today's online services consistent with GNOME's mission? by dhess
Parent article: An "online desktop" for GNOME?

"it'd be folly to win the desktop battle only to lose the war"

I totally agree with you on this. (Not withstanding the fact that, personnally, I am not at all convinced that this online desktop metaphor would constitute a positive evolution of computing.)
I also think that dogmatic positions should be avoided at all cost, especially with respect to the centralized vs. distributed, or remote vs. local visions of software architecture. In fact, it is my humble opinion that those defending these dogms always carefully hide the fact that, for a given task, one choice may be better than another; but that for all possible tasks, the right choice certainly is not always the same.

Applying that pragmatism to the OD idea and your remark about free (as in freedom) web services I'd like to share another personal opinion.
I wonder if public services is not *the* area where such a free software solution for fully online services would really be worth the effort.
Centralized management of data by public administrations is nearly unavoidable as the advantages of (technical) decentralization are not usually worth the cost for such big database management systems. Similarly, even though opening access to the widest users base possible is certainly useful (the famous "e-administration"), it is not really possible to offer something else than online and remote (carefully controlled) applications for such procedures which end-to-end control, in fine, *must* remain in the hand of public institutions. (I am speaking of really basic public services, like citizens identification, etc.)

Of course, nowadays, these online services are usually offered using proprietary software (and that extends to the client software too)... But imagine a full free software solution allowing states and their citizens to manage some administration procedures and documents online on a remote server.
If such a free software solution was available in fields such as demography, vehicles, taxes, safety services, etc., public institutions would probably consider it.[2] Whether they like it or not. For strong ethical reasons, but also for that very pragmatic obligation [1] which is the other side of "free". ;-)

We do not need to re-implement all the software coded by governements during 3 decades before gaining momentum on this. A few carefully chosen cases could prove useful already. But we need to write them entirely.
It could prove boring certainly to implement a boring procedure in its entirety, but I am sure there can be some fun too for those with a passion for multi-terabytes databases or careful anonymizing cryptographic algorithms...

[1] In my mother language it reads: "le souci des deniers publics"
[2] It has already started in some countries, but if I am not mistaken, it were not really fully community-driven initiatives...

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