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

[VanL]

On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 1:13 PM Russell McOrmond <russellmcormond at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> 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.
>

If you are referring to the classical Microsoft Office, I don't think that
anyone would disagree with you.

If you are referring to Microsoft 365, and the landscaping company had some
sort of arrangement that allowed you to execute some portion of Office 365
in order to further your business with the landscaping company, then I
don't think that is as clear.

Microsoft would consider you a "user." The landscaping company would
probably be charged for your access as a "user" under their account. You
would be subject to Microsoft's terms and conditions related to your use of
O365.


> 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 is not what is being debated. What is being debated is whether
Microsoft should have the ability to unilaterally cut off access to or the
ability to work with documents that you uploaded to their service.



> 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.
>

You have a reasonable conceptualization of who a "user" is. But that is not
the only reasonable opinion.

Thanks,
Van
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