Freedom and Autonomy for Network Services

Nearly a year ago I posted some thoughts on freedom for network services. In March the FSF invited a group to Boston to explore this topic. The meeting was at once a brain storming session and a cognitive map-reduce on the ideas generated. Today we have launched a site called autonomo.us, and a draft statement, the Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services. It reads in part:

Developers of network service software are encouraged to:

• Use the GNU Affero GPL, a license designed specifically for network service software, to ensure that users of services have the ability to examine the source or implement their own service.
• Develop freely-licensed alternatives to existing popular but non-Free network services.
• Develop software that can replace centralized services and data storage with distributed software and data deployment, giving control back to users.

The notes from the original meeting (collaboratively taken with Gobby) are quite interesting, and go into much more detail on many things. It has been a pleasure to be a part of this effort, and I hope we can help move the discussion and mainstream thought on network services to be freedom and principle focused, learning from and leveraging the free software and free culture movements. Thanks to the FSF and Mako for starting this process!