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Welcome to the autonomo.us wiki.

This page is for collecting information for a nascent effort to investigate freedom for network services, originally kickstarted at a mini-summit hosted by the FSF on March 16, 2008.

The summit itself was announced with the following text:


 * The last decade has witnessed a rise in the role of computing as a service, a massive increase in the use of web applications, the migration of personal computing tasks to data-centers, and the creation of new classes of service-based applications. These shifts have raised a host of important questions for the advocates of free software. For example, by separating use and distribution of software, these models have reduced the relevance of GPL-style copyleft which treat modified web applications as if they were private software.  Much more importantly, the movement of software off of personal computers has reconfigured power relationships between users and their software and complicated questions of ownership and control in ways that free software advocates do not yet know how to address.


 * This last year, the FSF launched a new license, the AGPLv3, that re-addresses copyleft in the context of network-services. While it marks an important first step, the access to source code alone provided by the AGPLv3 might not necessarily make the users of web-services free. Work and thinking about these problems is far from over.


 * On March 16th, the FSF will gather together a small group of free software activists, thinkers, and scholars to identify the important questions that web services raise for free software and to start to probe the answers. What does freedom mean for the users and developers of web services? What is at risk? What should the free software community, and the Free Software Foundation, do to ensure that software, and its users, stay free in this new technological environment?

Resources

 * Wish list of services along with existing work.
 * AGPL list: software and services licensed under the AGPL.
 * Social bookmarking - List of free software social bookmarking applications
 * Logo - Discussion of alternative logos for autonomo.us (we have a new one we're using on the website that a lot of us are very happy with)

Reading list
Please review the items in the list and add anything important to this list. It is currently presented in no particular order. Most of these pages contain links to other sources. Please take time to review these links where you think they are helpful.


 * The OKFN's Open Software Service Definition (OSSD)
 * Luis Villa's Evaluating a Free/Open Service Definition Rough Draft
 * Luis Villa's Free Open Services Definition
 * Affero GPL Wikipedia Article and the old AGPL FAQ
 * Kragen Sitaker's The equivalent of free software for online services
 * Libre knowledge definition
 * Libre Emblem and Draft "Libre Puro" License and discussion venue
 * Discussion with reference to libre network services.
 * Berry, D M. & Moss, G. (eds.) (2008) Libre Culture. Canada: Pygmalion Books.

Other work worth looking at:


 * List of decentralization stories compiled by Kragen Sitaker which help describe a series of the problems and issues raised by the shift between centralized and decentralized network services
 * Talk by Gavin Baker on free services. Impress and PDF slides are available but the slide content is pretty thin.
 * The Telematics Freedom initiative has a model which is based round contracts and extreme auditibility. It seems designed primarily with government and state-based decision-making in mind.
 * Philippe Aigrain's categorization of web services
 * Article on limitation of copyleft for network services by Gavin Baker
 * A Japanese article on limitation of copyleft for SaaS by Masayuki Hatta
 * Open vs. open vs. etc. by Mark Surman

Meeting
The first mini-summit was held on March 16, 2008 at the FSF office. Data on that meeting is available from the following places:


 * General meeting notes
 * Notes on particular websites
 * Log from IRC "backchannel"
 * Lists of meeting attendees

Report Notes and Brainstorming
One major goal is to produce a report that covers the following areas. Please don't hesitate to add or edit any of the following report. Let's collect, read, think through, and add as much information before the meeting.


 * 1) Description of the problems caused by network services
 * 2) Reference services - services which might or might not be considered 'open'
 * 3) Current approaches to addressing or mitigating problems
 * 4) Licensing approaches to network services
 * 5) Model TOS approaches to network services
 * 6) Model privacy policy approaches to network services
 * 7) Definitions to highlight free services
 * 8) Ideas and concepts left out of Free Software and/or Open Content definitions
 * 9) Our recommendations to the FSF and to other concerned communities