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A comment on Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software (2014). Parent comment

Re:Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software (2014) by voxic11 on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @10:31AM (#24481586)
You are equating non-free software and cloud SaaS. There is no reason the software can't be free and also be available as a cloud SaaS offering. This is exactly what Canvas, the application mentioned bt the gp, offers. It is free and open source software but most users opt for the cloud SaaS offering so that they don't need to host it themselves and take on the maintenance and IT costs.
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Re:Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software (2014) by solidasparagus on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @11:24AM (#24482253)
I think it's unlikely that Stallman would consider a hosted offering of Canvas to be 'free software'. But I agree with you that it can be both SaaS and free.

Although at that point I question what advantage free software gives you - you can't change it and you are still at the mercy of the hosting company since you aren't able to host it yourself.

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Re:Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software (2014) by michaelmrose on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @06:39PM (#24487562)
Paying someone to run something you can and in the future could run yourself could in theory be wholly compatible with the ideals of free software and user freedom.
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