Is SaaS a friend or foe of open source?
Summary: Even where SaaS companies let customers take back their data, they often don't let them take the code underlying it, Dries Buytaert of Drupal and Acquia wrote in a blog post.
Dries Buytaert of Drupal and Acquia is warning that Software as a Service is becoming a threat to open source and that clouds could create the same vendor lock-in customers sought to avoid with open source.
(This is Dries at last year's Drupalcon in Paris, in a close-up of a photo by Pedro Lozano. From buytaert.net.)
Even where SaaS companies let customers take back their data, they often don't let them take the code underlying it, he wrote in a blog post. Data without software is useless.
One of the main open source concerns about SaaS in the past has been that the largest open source outfits, like Google, don't support true copyleft through the Affero license. Google itself prefers the Apache license to anything copyleft, and this is fast becoming the norm.
Buytaert believes open source companies can disrupt this model through services like his own Drupal Gardens, which allows exporting of codes, themes, and data to any other Drupal hosting environment.
My own problem with Drupal Gardens is more prosaic. It is entering what has become a mature space. It would be tough for me to move my current Typepad blog over there, for instance, or this WordPress blog. It would take technical expertise most users don't have.
Also, the online excitement has moved on. Blogging, as a frontier, is so last decade. The talk today is all about social networking, about tweeting your tweets, either as part of a dialog or just for publicity. The lock-in, in other words, has already occurred and the world has moved on.
The good news is there are many areas of enterprise IT, like healthcare, that on the whole remain frontiers. SaaS is a big player in these frontiers. If users can be made to understand the issues they might press for the changes Dries seeks.
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Talkback
Have you ever thought about....
Again the idea that you should have to make public the code for any service you offer that uses FOSS is ridiculous. And companies modifying code and not returning the changes is in no way dangerous to FOSS. It doesn't stop the developers from continuing their project in any way. It just makes the version used by whatever company work better for their particular situation. I thought that was the point of open source. Mind you the developer can usually make their own mods under and host a service for which the code is not available as well.
We all stand at the end of time?
<blockquote>Also, the online excitement has moved on. Blogging, as a frontier, is so last decade. The talk today is all about social networking, about tweeting your tweets, either as part of a dialog or just for publicity. The lock-in, in other words, has already occurred and the world has moved on.</blockquote>
The only thing we know for use is that we have little sense of what online life will be like 2-3+ years down the line. I think it's a bit premature to dismiss the power to publish any media oneself as something of yesterday. It's not "new" anymore, but if other media (printing press, television, for two) are any indication, it's way way way too early to try to define what online publishing is or isn't going to be. We're still at the test-pattern broadcast stage.
RE: Is SaaS a friend or foe of open source?
RE: Is SaaS a friend or foe of open source?
Tools like BAM! (www.bamtastic.com) are meant to let people keep their code AND data and move it anywhere automatically, freeing us all from the people trying to make a buck with the locked down SaaS hosting of open source apps.
RE: Is SaaS a friend or foe of open source?
RE: Is SaaS a friend or foe of open source?
People tend to want to reinvent themselves.
Full disclosure: I was the guy to Dries' right holding the ethernet cable when he chopped it in two (right when that picture was taken). Five minutes prior to that moment Dries and I were discussing the future of Drupal. He wants a world where the system falls away and it's all about the content and the people. If anything, we are moving towards a society that is tired of the technology getting in the way. Drupal Gardens takes one of the <a href="http://acquia.com/">most powerful Content Management Systems</a> and makes it stupid simple to start using. Soon, we will have a free square space that lets you export the whole of the code. Amazing.
No clouds fo rme, thanks.
One "problem" is that too many people, including a lot in the various industries, see Open Source as nothing but "free" applications when it is so much more than that!
The clouds are again a very single-source-based problem, even more so than our previous proprietary applications, since you never ever have the application on your own computer. Worse, you're at the mercy of the "concensus" of others for a lot of implementations as opposed to doing things the way they work best for YOU.
Once into a cloud in any way, much as street gangs operate, you'll never leave it with any ability to maintain your data without them. It might be Word 11 when you sign up, and Word 14 by the time you leave, and guess what? Word14 won't be for sale to the public! Pay many thousands as the clouders do, and you can have it; otherwise your just plain SOL. I wouldn't say that won't happen in probably several different ways, if I were to think it's an incorrect summation.
And that's all in addition to the currently recognized problems of hijacking your data and figures and rights as it goes into and out of the cloud, thru a gazillion nodes and servers. If they live long enough for that to occur, which won't take long, then you'll suddenly find a new, wonderful internet created and you will help pay for it by the bit, not the byte even! Just watch and see!
Nuh, uh, I'll keep my privates on my own machine, and the ability to maintain my designs right here at home on m,y desktop/laptop/LAN, whatever.
Usually clouds in the sky mean rain coming; I think it applies as well for applications, too. Where it had a good idea at first, closer scrutiny reveals insurmountable problems ranging from being trapped in one cloud to losing your rights to the data and to all the crim8inals/hackers out there anxious to start their new life's work with only one place they have to concentrate on, or one set of similar servers, however they end up related.
No clouds for me, thanks.
RE: Is SaaS a friend or foe of open source?
Open formats
As far as friend or foe, if the SaaS companies contibute code (and I believe Google and Amazon do contribute code but correct me if I'm wrong), then they are still friends.
just my 2 cents anyway.
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RE: Is SaaS a friend or foe of open source?
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