[HacktionLab] the open web - help requested

[Alan Dawson]

On Sat, Jan 08, 2011 at 12:45:12PM +0000, m3shrom wrote:
> On 07/01/2011 22:35, sam at bristolwireless.net wrote:
> 
> Anyone got any others - or even any thoughts about what new technology
> and even new expectations of technology are doing to personal freedoms.
> Is it realistic for people pushing open technologies to be able to keep
> up with proprietary technologies? Should we even try?
> 

On the license front there is the GNU Affero License
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html
which is designed to protect the freedoms of users of web services in the same way that the GPL protects software users.

Hyperactive, Statusnet, and I think all the http://www.mysociety.org/ projects are examples of Affero licensed software. 

There is the Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services, which I remember being interesting
http://autonomo.us/2008/07/franklin-street-statement/

I recently just found this http://unhosted.org/manifesto.html

Which offers "Freedom from Web2.0's monopoly platforms.
Free/libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) frees us from having to install proprietary software on our terminals. But installable software is losing ground to hosted software (websites). The server software is often open source (e.g. LAMP), but the website itself as a software product is almost always proprietary. There is an obvious reason for this: Even if an Affero license allows us to download the website's source code, only a commercial company can finance the thousands of servers needed to host a successful website. To make things worse, hosted software has more power over its users than installable software, because it forces you to put your user data on servers owned by the same company that publishes the software. If you want to use Google Docs, you have to reveal your work to a Google-owned server (what Richard Stallman calls "careless computing"). "

There was this http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0811/msg00065.html on corporate versus non corporate technology too.

Hope this helps

Alan Dawson
-- 
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