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The flaw of Software as a ServiceThe flaw of Software as a ServicePosted Aug 30, 2007 0:47 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46)Parent article: Ruminations on software freedom
The deeper problem here isn't the fact that Microsoft software phoned home.. but rather, the fact that an important service went offline for 19 hours.
When any external service/server holds your data and suddenly becomes unaccessible, what are you to do? Can't get to your e-mail, your photos, your payroll data, your business plans, your pr0n, or other important data?
It's for reasons like this I host my own "critical" services. Even if a backhoe (or as they're called in Florida, hurricanes) comes along, I can still get to my data, and nobody can hold it hostage or change the terms of service on a whim.
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The flaw of Software as a Service Posted Aug 30, 2007 2:46 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] It's a difference of perspective.
Microsoft's software does not allow you the freedom to host your own version of this critical service. Free Software does.
It's probably the same thing that happened to Skype. It's software does not allow you to host your own version of whatever-skype's-servers-do-for-you on your own systems. If it was Free Software it would.
Depending on how you look at it, the freedom provided by Free Software is what makes Open Source Software work, what allows it to be a better development methodology.
Despite all the friction that you see between the 'Free Software' ra-ra camp and the 'Open Source Software' lets-not-scare-the-squares camp.. without the 'Software Freedom' none of Linux or any of the major products used and developed on Linux would ever work. It simply would of never gotten this far being just a 'shareware OS'.
It would just be a toy for software elitists... like BeOS is.
The flaw of Software as a Service Posted Aug 30, 2007 9:33 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] What's worse is that it's not just a single point of failure: it's a *wholly unnecessary* one, from the point of view of the users. All it can do is hurt you.
The flaw of Software as a Service Posted Sep 6, 2007 6:06 UTC (Thu) by eduperez (guest, #11232) [Link] The deep problem here is that people who own a Windows operating system did not pay for a service, they payed a license to use a product on their own computer. When I pay to the telephone company for the service, I know that such service may be interrupted if a line breaks. When I buy a car, I do not expect it to stop working even if the manufacturer's headquarters set on fire.
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