[okfn-discuss] Wikipedia as SaaS by the OSSD?

Thu Dec 20 17:03:14 UTC 2012

Hi Mike,

Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com> writes:

> Whether someone else's computer is doing something
> narrowly defined as your computing or not is not pertinent. Rather, is
> the service publishing its source as free software/open source, and is
> non-private data open knowledge?

I see two problems with this "orthogonal" definition of SaaS: 
(1) it doesn't really match the common meaning of the term and
(2) it is so broad than I don't see any website that it does *not*
cover.

I agree FSF's definition can also have some problems, but at least
it's narrow enough to limit the topic.

> We could use more examples, but honestly I'm not sure anything
> relating to Wave is intuitive for many people. And there's a
> distinction between software which is amenable to powering an
> OSSD-conformant service, and a service itself (eg
> MediaWiki/Wikipedia). Maybe Kune.cc is OSSD-conformant; I haven't
> looked closely.

Kune is just a website to facilitate online collaboration.

I think it is OSSD-conformant, but I'll forward the question to the
developers and let them reply if they can.

Regards,

-- 
 Bastien