Free Software, Free Society: selected essays of Richard M. Stallman. 2nd edition.

The term “cloud computing” is a marketing buzzword with no clear meaning. It is used for a range of different activities whose only common characteristic is that they use the Internet for something beyond transmitting files. Thus, the term is a nexus of confusion. If you base your thinking on it, your thinking will be vague.

When thinking about or responding to a statement someone else has made using this term, the first step is to clarify the topic. Which kind of activity is the statement really about, and what is a good, clear term for that activity? Once the topic is clear, the discussion can head for a useful conclusion.

Curiously, Larry Ellison, a proprietary software developer, also noted the vacuity of the term “cloud computing.”[1]

He decided to use the term anyway because, as a proprietary software developer, he isn’t motivated by the same ideals as we are.

Commercial

Please don’t use “commercial” as a synonym for “nonfree.” That confuses two entirely different issues.

A program is commercial if it is developed as a business activity. A commercial program can be free or nonfree, depending on its manner of distribution. Likewise, a program developed by a school or an individual can be free or nonfree, depending on its manner of distribution. The two questions—what sort of entity developed the program and what freedom its users have—are independent.

In the first decade of the free software movement, free software packages were almost always noncommercial; the components of the GNU/Linux operating system were developed by individuals or by nonprofit organizations such as the FSF and universities. Later, in the 1990s, free commercial software started to appear.

Free commercial software is a contribution to our community, so we should encourage it. But people who think that “commercial” means “nonfree” will tend to think that the “free commercial” combination is self-contradictory, and dismiss the possibility. Let’s be careful not to use the word “commercial” in that way.

Compensation

To speak of “compensation for authors” in connection with copyright carries the assumptions that (1) copyright exists for the sake of authors and (2) whenever we read something, we take on a debt to the author which we must then repay. The first assumption is simply false, and the second is outrageous.

Consumer

The term “consumer,” when used to refer to computer users, is loaded with assumptions we should reject. Playing a digital recording, or running a program, does not consume it.

The terms “producer” and “consumer” come from economic theory, and bring with them its narrow perspective and misguided assumptions. They tend to warp your thinking.

In addition, describing the users of software as “consumers” presumes a narrow role for them: it regards them as cattle that passively graze on what others make available to them.

This kind of thinking leads to travesties like the CBDTPA, the “Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act,” which would require copying restriction facilities in every digital device. If all the users do is “consume,” then why should they mind?

The shallow economic conception of users as “consumers” tends to go hand in hand with the idea that published works are mere “content.”

To describe people who are not limited to passive use of works, we suggest terms such as “individuals” and “citizens.”

Content

If you want to describe a feeling of comfort and satisfaction, by all means say you are “content,” but using the word as a noun to describe written and other works of authorship adopts an attitude you might rather avoid. It regards these works as a commodity whose purpose is to fill a box and make money. In effect, it disparages the works themselves.

Those who use this term are often the publishers that push for increased copyright power in the name of the authors (“creators,” as they say) of the works. The term “content” reveals their real attitude towards these works and their authors. (See Courtney Love’s open letter to Steve Case[2] and search for “content provider” in that page. Alas, Ms. Love is unaware that the term “intellectual property” is also biased and confusing.)

However, as long as other people use the term “content provider,” political dissidents can well call themselves “malcontent providers.”

The term “content management” takes the prize for vacuity. “Content” means “some sort of information,” and “management” in this context means “doing something with it.” So a “content management system” is a system for doing something to some sort of information. Nearly all programs fit that description.

In most cases, that term really refers to a system for updating pages on a web site. For that, we recommend the term “web site revision system” (WRS).

Creator