He has a good point, we should discuss this...
Am Dienstag, 16. August 2011, 23:05:58 schrieb PaulK:
Hello. I am a strong free software supporter, trying to help in any possible way free software to move forward. I'm involved in the French Trisquel community mostly as a translator and in Replicant, the 100% free Android version as a developer. Now that I introduced myself, here's the subject of this mail: the psview software included in the http://www.pdfreaders.org/ list.
My big problem with this software being in that list is that the way you present it "psview (online)" suggests that this software is to be used online on the http://view.samurajdata.se/ website. Although this software is indeed free software, using it online on the server the user doesn't own makes it Software as a Service (SaaS) : this is bad because the user has no control over the computing that is done on this server while it handles the user data to return back only the output.
Even if the software that runs on the server is apparently free software and that the source code is given, the following issues remain: * We have no way to be sure that the source code that is distributed is actually what's used on this software: we have to trust the good will of the person who owns the server.
- Even if the code is free, we have no guarantee that the person who
owns the server won't keep the files we submit and do a nasty use of these.
- We don't know on the top of what it runs : the system running on the
server may contain some non-free parts that could do a nasty use of the data we send to the server.
etc. These are not individuals problems in themselves but consequences of Software as a Service.
Promoting such uses is not, in my opinion, promoting freedom. And this opinion seems shared with Richard M. Stallman, who wrote an article about this called "Who does that server really serve" (I guess you already know about it): http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html .
Perhaps promoting the use of this server the user has no control over wasn't your intention: maybe your intention was to mention that such a software exist and since it's free, can be used by anyone on a server they own. This makes the use of this software respect the user freedom and can indeed be encouraged.
Anyway, when I went on this page and saw this, my impression was that you recommend using this on the server the link points to.
I suggest you to add some information along with the link to this software on the http://www.pdfreaders.org/ website or to remove the link to it (but this is perhaps a bit too much, even if I'm convinced that almost all the users who'll click on this link won't download the software to use it on their own server but us it directly on this server, thinking they're taking good care of their freedom).
Thanks for the attention to my message, I'm looking forward to hearing from you.