Richard Stallman Warns of the Dangers in ‘Cloud Computing’
In what may be a sure sign of the apocalypse, Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation and Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, actually agree on something — cloud computing is for the birds.
In the interests of saving readers from stock piling water and canned goods, we should point out that their reasons for disliking cloud computing are somewhat different. Ellison thinks that it’s nothing new and mainly marketing hype.
And by and large he’s right. The underlying technologies at work in most “cloud” apps — think Gmail, Google Docs, Zoho, etc — have been around since the early 1960s.
Of course the difference between then and now is the user interface — you know longer need a computer science degree just to move files around on the web and store/backup/share them with friends and family.
As you might expect, Stallman is opposed to cloud computing on somewhat more philosophical grounds, namely using online apps means giving up your freedom. Stallman, best known for his free software movement, dislikes web-based solutions because not only is the software interface totally out of your hands, your data is suddenly in someone else’s hands as well.
Of course, Stallman isn’t alone when it comes to worrying about control over your documents. Many companies and consumers refuse to move their data to hosted applications and online tools for just that reason.
In fact, there’s a really interesting discussion happening on Reddit, with about equal numbers of people who agree and disagree with Stallman’s take on web apps. Those who agree tend to have two main reasons for ignoring the cloud: they’re concerned about who has access to and controls their data and they also generally already have some sort of home server or private online backup system in place.
Among those who think Stallman’s concerns are misplaced the reasons are pretty simple — convenience trumps control.
Sure, Google “reads” your e-mail to provide inline ads, and it also could at any given moment lock you out of your account, preventing you from accessing your own data. But, at the same time, Gmail has a very slick interface and provides some of the best spam filtering tools around, which makes it easy to use and, yes, convenient. For many users this is reason enough to hand over the controls to Google.
The question is where is the line? At what point does control over your data become more important than the convenience of today’s diverse selection of web apps? We want to know what you think — is Stallman right, should we keep our data closer to our chest? Or do you think he’s just being paranoid? Let us know where you stand.
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