Free Network Services
From Devwiki
Benjamin Mako Hill
The last decade has witnessed the rise in network-based computing. Wikis are merely one important example of a the power and possibilities of a network and server based model. But this move toward centralization has also consolidated political, economic, and technical power and raised important issues for the advocates of free software and free culture. This presentation will present some of the problem presented by centralized network and web services and by wikis in particular. It will discuss some of the projects currently working to address this issue and, in particular, the work of the Free Software Foundation and a working group working to address some of the problems of free network services.
The last decade has witnessed a rise in the role of computing as a service, a massive increase in the use of web applications, the migration of personal computing tasks to data-centers, and the creation of new classes of service-based applications. Wikimedia projects are one group of important examples of the power and importance of this shift and the positive role that it might play in our lives. But the move toward centralization has raised important concerns and problems for for the advocates of free software and free knowledge. There are many other examples that inspire less optimism.
For example, by separating use and distribution of software, network models have reduced the relevance of GPL-style copyleft which treat modified web applications as if they were private software. Much more importantly, the movement of software off of personal computers has reconfigured power relationships between users, their technology, and the content they create and interact with. The shift has complicated questions of ownership and control in ways that free software and free culture advocates do not yet know how to address.
This talk will walk through the problems that network services have caused and present some initial work on solutions. It will describe my work with the FSF on the launch of a new license, the AGPLv3, that re-addresses copyleft in the context of network-services. While the license marks an important first step, the access to source code alone provided by the AGPLv3 does not make the users of web-services free. Wikimedia has struggled to make its own services free as well and, in the process, has helped explore the space of what a free service might look like. In both organizations, work and thinking about these problems is far from over.
I will also present the work of a small group of free software and free culture activists, thinkers, and scholars gathered by the FSF to identify the important questions that web services raise and to that has started to probe the answers. What does freedom mean for the users and developers of network and web services? What is at risk? What should the free software and free culture communities, and the Free Software Foundation and Wikimedia Foundations in particular, do to ensure that software, culture, content, and its users, stay free in this new technological environment?
