Richard Stallman and Cloud Computing Why we should avoid the could…

Who is Richard Stallman? Founder of the free software movement Software should be free Founder of the GNU Project He basically wrote most of the code for the Linux operating system Part founder of the open source movement Open source should be available for software for independent developers and further development Open source Guru - He wrote most of the GNU operating system Huge privacy advocate

What is Cloud Computing? Internet based applications - - Word processors - Photo editing - anything else non processor / gpu intensive Internet based services - internet storage - hosting and mid transfer storage - private business networking - web development

Who’s Behind It? Google - Google Docs - GMail Microsoft - to be announced at PDC2008 Amazon - Elastic Compute Cloud AKA EC2 AT&T - AT&T Synaptic Hosting CISCO - WebEx and PostPath Google’s Predicted Cloud Computing Vs. Computer Based Programs Note: All these companies already have internet based systems in place or are in the process of developing them

How are They Related? Stallman was interviewed by The Guardian and had this to say about cloud computing: - “It's stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign” - “Somebody is saying this is inevitable — and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true”

Related Continued - “One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control” - “It's just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenseless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software” Note: One of the biggest issues that Stallman has with cloud computing isn’t necessarily the concept of server farms and online storage but users not having access to the code of the programs which they use through remote servers. This give them “a loss of control”.

What You Must Realize Stallman has a lot of influence in the computer technology world because of who he is Stallman tends to be extreme in his opinions Stallman is privacy crazy When Stallman wants to make a point he tends to rant He comes off as a little crazy sometimes Richard Stallman from “What is Free Software?”

Some Real Facts About the Cloud This technology is still in its infancy though it technically began in the 1990’s with the ATM networks The only servers that are currently truly capable of handling such a large user load are those owned by very large corporations - i.e. Google, Microsot, and Amazon - This will create a market that’s very hard for new companies to access based off of starting costs Theorists suggest that cloud computing will see a drastic price jump for users once it truly takes off Although cloud computing can be a very reliable technology, a business that relies on a cloud based infrastructure vs an in house infrastructure may experience issues with getting good / person IT support

Example #1 Amazon Web Server Downtime Amazons EC2 system was downed by intermittent connectivity failures for 18 hours Downtime directly affected businesses relying on their services This has shown that “the cloud” has many potential points of failure - One of them being hardware reliability

Example #2 Steamload Meltdown The company formerly known as Steamload collapsed - Steamload was a prestigious online storage service This left many paying customers without access to their online data including pictures, music, movies, and more - these customers were both recreational and corporate The data was in tack (supposedly) but the users had no access to it Many of the previous customers never received their lost data This shows that even if the service is reliable the integrity of a company in the cloud may not be

Example #3 Davidairey.com Website was HiJacked via Gmail hack The domain name was being held ransom by an internet “pirate” AKA an internet “cracker” Gmail hacked through filter auto installed upon visiting website “to use Google’s free GMail service for anything business- related is naïve” This website tells you step-by-step how to HiJack a Gmail account the same way davidairey.com was HiJacked This This shows that to rely on an online service such as Gmail appose to an internal service / desktop based program can make you more vulnerable to security threats and “crackers”

Example #4 I’m in Your Google Docs, Reading Your Spreadsheets A feature in Google Analytics allows any person with access to that account to give valuable information regaurding businesses inner workings to any outsider This happened by accident to David Gallagher - Logged into his account one day and found many official documents for 130 websites - Most belonged to HeartLand Newspapers There was no one he could truly contact to report the error With this information he could have easily harmed the company and even have controlled certain aspects of their web sites and web traffic

In Conclusion Cloud computing isn’t necessarily a bad thing It shouldn’t be used for business purposes Stallman has a habit of being very accurate with his predictions regarding the computer industry and new technologies - If theorists are accurate, then the public may see a decline in cloud computing upon the raising of service prices

Discussion Question With the experiences so far in the cloud computing market, does this seem like a technology that’s going to truly take off or a temporary term that will fade with time? Given that the majority of the users of cloud applications are NOT programmers, is it really a good idea, as Stallman stated, to make the source code available AND controllable for these programs?

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