Moving into the cloud, loosing your freedom?

I am a fan of the recent cloud computing hype. I have my own attempts to merge into the cloud.

I am also a fan of opensource software, of which the FSF and GPL are important proponents.

Google, Facebook, Twitter and friends, with all their free cloud applications lured me into thinking that the cloud and opensource are best frinds.


But recently two articles opened my eyes:

The JavaScript Trap by Richard Stallman (founder of GNU and FSF):

Silently loading and running non-free programs is one among several issues raised by "web applications".

GPL's cloudy future by Jeremy Allison (lead Samba developer):

In such a world, service providers can use GPL-licensed code in proprietary back-end server farms with impunity. This seems contrary to the spirit of the authors of much of the GPL-licensed code used in this way, although it strictly complies with the license.

Well, this does not yet stop me from using cloud applications, but I think it is important to realize that there are not just Alphas in this brave new cloudy world...

follow me on twitter, I need some friends :-)