Talk:Draft statement

This looks great, a few thoughts: I guess I think it's worth continuing to encourage traditional free software in this statement, instead of focusing exclusively on the network-accessible components. So, maybe saying something explicit about hosting free network services on machines running free operating systems, for example. A lot of this happens anyway via the chain of derivative works, but it's not necessarily the case and I think it's good to call attention to it. I also think it might be good to emphasize the community aspect of free network services more, maybe by encouraging developers to have their projects link to and/or be interoperable with other free network services. My last suggestion might be a bit more controversial, but it would be to encourage people to not fund their free network service projects with proprietary software advertisements displayed on their sites. These things aren't necessarily part of the definition of being a free network service, but if we are giving advice or best practices I think they might be appropriate suggestions. --JohnSullivan 18:32, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Hardware Sharing
The article says Users should: ''Consider very carefully whether to use software on someone else's computer at all. Where it is possible, they should use Free Software equivalents that run on your their own computer. Services may have substantial benefits, but they represent a loss of control for users and introduce several problems.''

User lose some control when they share hardware, but sharing hardware can be worth the value of cooperation.

We, the users, could host Software Service Freedom immediately if we could just learn to cooperatively share hardware.

Hardware is needed for all production, including Software Services. Software users are also Hardware Consumers because Software requires Hardware.

Hardware has initial and recurring costs that somebody must pay. Non-owning consumers already pay all costs, AND they pay profit.

When the consumers own enough hardware, they pay all those same costs of production, but that is all they pay. They don't pay profit. Owning Consumers also have direct democracy over the hardware they cooperatively own.

A consumer who owns sufficient hardware pays only the costs of production. He also has full control of how his material or data. Property ownership in the physical sources of that production gives him the final say.

What if we, the consumers, could figure out how to collectively fund the purchase some of our own hardware that we could then hold in cooperation?

We could then use that hardware to host a Free Network Service.

But we need to outline how to share hardware in cooperation or we won't reap those benefits. All users must have hardware freedom or the cooperation will be stifled.

This is similar to scheduling processes to run on computer hardware. Not everyone can use the network simultaneously. There must be allocation routines, and even auctions to slice that hardware up across time.

It is already common for people to have joint property holdings. These co-owners already set policy over their divisible portions.

So private property can be used by a group to create a sort of pseudo-public property from within the current system. It is a sort of syndicalism.

Current public services (from traditional governments) tend to be vastly inefficient and usurps local control.

Current private services (from traditional corporations) is sometimes more efficient in some measure, but there is still the lack of local control and that problem called profit.

Treating "price above cost" (profit) as a consumer's investment keeps ownership distributed during growth.

Notice owner profit is highest when consumers ownership is lowest.

Consumers pay more when they have no alternative, so profit should be treated as an investment from the consumer who paid it so that they slowly gain the alternative of real ownership. Thus, as the consumer funds the purchase of more Capital, the ownership of that growth becomes the real property of the very person who needed that increase in access in direct proportion to the amount that they were destitute.

What about outsiders? How does the service grow as the number of consumers increases? Consumers will always remain in local control if the profit they pay is treated as their own investment in more productive sources, and that ownership is maximally divisible.

Paying a price above cost proves there is not enough hardware to meet peak demand, so an overbid (price above cost) is used to fund the purchase of more of that kind of hardware. Treating that price above cost as an investment from the user/consumer who paid it insures each consumer gains ownership in the physical property needed to exert the control required to be autonomous. -- Patrick Anderson 18:13, 20 July 2008 (UTC)