Who’s Richard Stallman? He’s founder of the Free Software Foundation, and creator of GNU way back in the computing prehistory of 1983. (Wikipedia biography here.) And he has come out strongly against cloud computing.

What is cloud computing? Cloud computing describes a group of applications that run on the Internet, like Gmail or Google Docs. You don’t keep the data on your hard disk but, instead, log onto a service via your browser to access your email, documents, spreadsheets, virtual scrapbooks (i.e. photos) etc. . In the Guardian article where I’m getting all this from (via Good Morning Silicon Valley), Mr Stallman first comes out with a pearl of generic wisdom:

Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it’s very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.

And follows this up by a small fact that’s basically irrefutable:

“One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control,” he said. “It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.”

If you think I’m exaggerating, have a look at this related article from the Guardian, where Nick Saber got locked out of Google:

Suddenly, Nick can’t access his Gmail account, can’t open Google Talk (our office IM app), can’t open Picasa where his family pictures are, can’t use his Google Docs, and oh by the way, he paid for additional storage. So, this is a paying customer with no access to the Google empire.

and only found out when he got the “Your account has been disabled” message flash up on the screen. The other reason the overarching use of cloud computing is a stupid idea, and not just because you can get locked out of your own private and/or work data at the whim of a complete stranger, is the EULA (End User License Agreement). For those of you who have mail, documents, photos on various sites, did you read the EULA when you signed up — well aware of what rights you were clicking away — or did you just jab ‘Accept’ and move on? Thought so. Did you know about the part in Google’s Chrome browser EULA that initially said that, in using Chrome, you were giving Google:

a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

Now, Google has gone ahead and modified its EULA to flense all that badness completely, but if it wasn’t for some eagle-eyed geeks who actually read the damn thing, who knows what the Big G would have done with that paragraph and your data sometime down the track? But Google just says, it’s a mistake, dudes. Hey, it’s us. Google. We’re the coool company. We wouldn’t screw you over. Yeah, sure, it’s a legally binding paragraph in a legal contract between two parties, no matter that it happens via electrons on the Net, but we didn’t meeeeeaaaaaannnn it.

The question is, do you believe them? Was this an underhanded tactic on Google’s part? Or is Google Legal completely and utterly incompetent? I’m sure you’ll agree, both options are unpalatable.

Yes yes, I’ll admit I’m a grumpy, cynical woman. And perhaps Google is all ponies and unicorns. And maybe electronic voting machines with no verifiable paper trail backups are the best things to use in an election. But, (a) I ain’t betting on it, and (b) I *always* read the EULAs. And so should you.

EDIT: The revised bailout plan passed the House, of course. Barack Obama voted Yes, Joe Biden voted Yes, John McCain voted Yes.