[License-discuss] Data portability as an obligation under an open source license

[Russell McOrmond]

On Fri, Jul 5, 2019 at 3:29 PM Luis Villa <luis at lu.is> wrote:

> If 'software freedom' means 'freedom for software end users (sometimes
> known as human beings)', then
>


If I hire a landscaping company, and that company happens to use Microsoft
Office, then it should be obvious that I am not a party to any agreement
between the landscaping company and Microsoft. It should be understood that
I am a customer/user of the services of the landscaping company, *NOT* a
user of Microsoft Office.


It should be understood as objectionable, against any reasonable
conceptualisation of freedom (software or otherwise), for Microsoft to
dictate any terms that the landscaping company can have with their
customers (me).


This scenario does not change if the service isn't landscaping, but instead
some service that is offered via a communications network (Cable
Television, ISP, Banking, SaaS, music streaming, telephone, etc, etc, etc).

The human beings that are software end users are the individuals and
companies that are running the software on their computers, not the users
of their service.


The Free/Libre and Open Source Software community should be aggressively
rejecting this transmogrification of the concept of who a software user is,
or any suggestion that third parties which have nothing to do with the
software itself (authoring or executing) are somehow software users.  Not
only should we be rejecting licenses with these clauses as being able to be
called "Free Software" or "Open Source Software", we should be lobbying our
respective governments to ensure that these types of clauses are never
enforceable within our jurisdictions (for me that is the Province of
Ontario, as contract law is provincial jurisdiction in Canada).


The thinking behind these clauses are dangerous and counterproductive for a
wide variety of reasons:


* If you want to regulate the behaviour of communications service
providers, then this needs to be done through government regulation.
Trying to use contracts associated with software licensing will impact very
few companies (if any, as organisations who would carry out activities you
dislike would simply not use the software).

* Trying to impose these changes in contracts is a distraction from trying
to regulate the specific allegedly bad behaviour.

* Expanding the scope of exclusive rights has most often transferred power
from individual to corporations -- if part of the alleged goal of these
licenses is to grant more influence to individuals (developers, software
users, and users of the services provided by software users) then being an
example of scope expansion will always be counter-productive.  We should as
a community be lobbying governments to reduce the scope of these exclusive
rights in order to protect software freedom, not expand them.


I'm pretty sure I know how FSF thinks about this philosophically; their
> definition of software freedom has consistently extended to *user*-control:
>
>


The FSF has had individuals that have had beliefs that are contrary to
others, and what representatives have said publicly has been inconsistent
at various times.  Like any group of people they can make mistakes,
sometimes being willing to cut down some trees because they mistakenly
believe they block their view of the forest.


Your conceptualisation of user control is very different than mine.   Users
of software are those who are executing the software on computers they
control.   In the narrow example of SaaS you bring up, the SaaS provider is
the user of the software: their clients are not.  Extending software
freedom to user-control means the opposite to what you are suggesting:
software freedom for user-control means that the mere use of software by
the SaaS provider shouldn't be hindered by software authors or third
parties (such as their clients).

While I believe that software freedom should remain focused on software
users (meaning, those actually running the software on hardware they
control), that doesn't mean I don't separately believe that SaaS companies
should be regulated.  I just believe that software licensing, especially in
the context of software freedom, is exactly the wrong place to be thinking
about those issues.


Just because you have a hammer, doesn't make everything a nail.

-- 
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>

Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property rights
as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! http://l.c11.ca/ict/

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