Network services

This page is for collecting information for a nascent effort to investigate freedom for network services by the Free Software Foundation. It is currently focused around a mini-summit that the FSF is holding on March 16, 2008. The summit is currently semi-private. This page is public but please do not link it publicly at this time.

The summit itself was announced with the following text:

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. These shifts have raised a host of important questions for the advocates of free software. For example, by separating use and distribution of software, these 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 and their software and complicated questions of ownership and control in ways that free software advocates do not yet know how to address.

This last year, the FSF launched a new license, the AGPLv3, that re-addresses copyleft in the context of network-services. While it marks an important first step, the access to source code alone provided by the AGPLv3 might not necessarily make the users of web-services free. Work and thinking about these problems is far from over.

On March 16th, the FSF will gather together a small group of free software activists, thinkers, and scholars to identify the important questions that web services raise for free software and to start to probe the answers. What does freedom mean for the users and developers of web services? What is at risk? What should the free software community, and the Free Software Foundation, do to ensure that software, and its users, stay free in this new technological environment?

Mini-Summit

Information including logistics, agenda, and attendees for the upcoming "mini-summit" on March 16, 2008 at the FSF offices is being put together on the Network services/Meeting page.

Reading list

Please review the items in the list and add anything important to this list. It is currently presented in no particular order. Most of these pages contain links to other sources. Please take time to review these links where you think they are helpful.

• The OKFN's Open Service Definition
• Luis Villa's Evaluating a Free/Open Service Definition Rough Draft
• Luis Villa's Free Open Services Definition
• Affero GPL Wikipedia Article and the old AGPL FAQ

Other work worth looking at:

• Talk by Gavin Baker on free services. Impress and PDF slides are available but the slide content is pretty thin.
• The Telematics Freedom initiative has a model which is based round contracts and extreme auditibility. It seems designed primarily with government and state-based decision-making in mind.
• Philippe Aigrain's categorization of web services

Additional unpublished reading material has been sent over email. If you are attending the meeting and not received something, please contact Benjamin Mako Hill.

Report Notes and Brainstorming

The major goal of the meeting is to produce a report that covers the following areas. Please don't hesitate to add or edit any of the following report. Let's collect, read, think through, and add as much information before the meeting.

1. Description of the problems caused by network services
2. Network services/Reference services - services which might or might not be considered 'open'
3. Network services/Current approaches to addressing or mitigating problems
   1. Licensing approaches to network services
   2. Model TOS approaches to network services
   3. Model privacy policy approaches to network services
   4. Definitions to highlight free services
4. Our recommendations to the FSF and to other concerned communities