Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the GNU operating system, has said cloud computing is "stupidity" that ultimately will result in vendor lock-in and escalating costs.
"The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do," Stallman was quoted as saying in a report by The Guardian on Monday.
Cloud computing, the latest marketing description for a notion put forth by computer-industry companies in recent years, moves most of the computing power — and sometimes data — to servers maintained by companies such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon. A classic example of cloud computing is Gmail, offered by Google.
Stallman said cloud computing forces people to hand over control of their information to a third party. His objections echo his long-standing belief in non-proprietary software.
"One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control," Stallman said. "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 defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software," he said.
Stallman dismissed cloud computing as industry bluster. "It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign," he said.
"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," Stallman added.
Talkback
Yep, iI am totaly with him, I mean why risk it in a world that is unstable? Imagine a situation where you are held to ransom by hackers, the server holding all your data gets hit by a missile, or the hosts for your data fall on hard times and turn to extortion themselves.
I talked about this in my first blog for ZDNet.
http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10008560o-2000578623b,00.htm
I have known of Stallman since the mid-80's, when he was pushing GNU Emacs (as part of the GNU project) and I was working on Gosling Emacs. I've always had a lot of respect for him - you've got to respect someone who believes so whole-heartedly in something, and dedicates themselves to it for so many years - but I have not often fully agreed with him, because his views have always been quite a bit more extreme than my own.
But in this case, I have to say that I agree with him 100%. I don't see any good reasons to surrender control, storage, and access of your data, or your programs and applications, so some other party. There are far too many questions about security, reliability, availability and more for this to be my preferred solution, or one that I would recommend to others.
jw 1/10/2008
While I agree with Mr Stallman I think it is inevitable. Just as all the money will someday be controlled by one or two financial institutions, I think a majority of our computer programs, & apps will be on third party servers, controlled by one or two companies. There will always be those who will oppose this solution, but they will be few and far between. Just like today we have leaders and followers, and the followers far out number the leaders.