Qt Could Go Proprietary, KDE Relationship and Qt-Based Free Software in Jeopardy

Re:Qt Could Go Proprietary, KDE Relationship and Qt-Based Fr... by jlokier on Monday June 01, 2020 @08:19AM (#23377674)

I have a hard time imagining how a host can let multiple customers exercise their freedom to modify the shared host software, each customer thereby wrecking the service for the other customers, or at least destroying the service level guarantees that presumably are being paid for.

With regard to the individual software each customer uses, often small/niche hosts do allow each customer to inspect and modify the software. That's kind of the point of cloud VM hosting, that you "have root" and can even modify your kernel if you wish.

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Re:Qt Could Go Proprietary, KDE Relationship and Qt-Based Fr... by dTal on Monday June 01, 2020 @01:45PM (#23381351)

This is a little nuanced. If we're talking about a cloud VM that you, personally, have root on, then indeed the software you choose to put on it can be considered free software (if you alone are the user). However, that software is not a service - the infrastructure that allows you to run it is the service (and obviously not free, although you're probably fine with that).

But that changes if you publish an interface to the software on your cloud machine, and allow others to use it. Now it's a "service" and that software is no longer free, because you have denied the four freedoms to its users.

Software as a service cannot be free software - it is a fundamental contradiction.

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