List of Figures

2.1 Proprietary and non-propietary presence
2.2 Context for Libre Services
2.3 From concept to reality
2.4 Transformation of free software into Libre Services
5.1 Free and Proprietary Software Domains
5.2 Conceptual Foundations

List of Tables

4.1 The By* Family of Services
4.2 By* Instance Examples
5.1 Engineering vs. Business Polarization
5.2 The By* Family of Services
5.3 By* Instance Examples
5.4 Revenue Streams
5.5 By* Services Status (as of Q1 2007)

Chapter 1
About This Document

Non-Material Capitalism is Capitalism which rejects Copyright and Patents. Neda’s By* Libre Services is an instance example of Non-Material Capitalism. By* Libre Services are copyleft and patent-free.

This document describes the long-term strategic vision for Neda’s By* family of Libre Services. Additionally it creates a framework for cooperative execution of that vision. If the concepts, services and business models that we present in this document prove to be correct and successful, then the so called Intellectual Property Regime is demonstrated as a failed experiment.

We are a group of engineers with a vision for the future of the global Internet. The basic underlying principles of our vision are these:

By “correct” we mean that these models bring far greater beneﬁts than their proprietary counterparts. The beneﬁts we speak of are not a set of abstract idealizations, conceived without reference to the practical realities of the world. The Free and Libre models bring real and practical beneﬁts to all relevant constituencies, including societal, engineering, and business.

The Free Software model is now well established as a viable reality, and is being energetically moved forward by others. Our strategic vision concerns the second underlying principle: the Libre Services model. Our goal is to establish Libre Services as a viable model for delivery of Internet Services, and eventually as the dominant model, worldwide.

The public dimension of this initiative is fully described in a document called the Libre Services Manifesto, written and published by the FPF. This document is available at: http://www.libreservices.org/

The present document, titled Neda Strategic Direction Statement, provides a complete description of Neda’s long-term business direction and strategy. Our strategy is based fundamentally on the Libre Services model, and therefore a complete understanding of our strategy also requires a complete understanding of the Libre Services model. This document therefore includes the Libre Services Manifesto as a subset. This document also includes a description of the commercial constructs Neda has built on top of the Libre Services model. Our goal is to provide in a single document everthing required to understand what we are doing.

1.1 Document Organization

This document consists of a collection of articles. Each article is self-contained, and can be read and understood on its own. Together, these articles provide a complete description of Libre Services, the By* family of services, and Neda’s strategic vision. Since each article is written to be self-contained, some material may be duplicated in more than one article.

1.2 Document Formats

The Neda Strategic Direction Statement and each of its constituent articles is available in multiple formats, including HTML, PDF, PostScript, and text-only. You can view or download documents in any of these formats from the Neda website at http://www.neda.com

1.3 Who We Are

Throughout this document we frequently refer to ourselves in the ﬁrst person. The question may be asked, who are “we”? The following is a description of the persons and organizations involved in this initative.

Part I
Communal and Societal Dimmensions of Libre Services

Chapter 2
Libre Services: Concept and Model

Executive Summary

The Internet has created an enormous new offshoot of the software industry: the Internet services industry. This industry has become a key medium, not just for day-to-day communications and productivity, but also for the expression of information and ideas.

However, this vitally important new industry exists entirely in the form of the traditional proprietary software model. Within the general software arena, the free software movement is well established as an alternative to proprietary software. But as yet, the free software movement has no formal presence within the Internet services domain.

We are a group of engineers with a vision for the future of Internet services. We believe that the free software movement as we see it today is just the beginning, and the next major evolutionary phase of free software is its strong emergence into the Internet services arena.

We believe that the intellectual property ownership mechanisms of patents, copyright and trade secrecy, as they exist today, have almost no legitimacy at all within this arena. At bottom these ownership mechanisms are business constructs, intended to provide competitive advantage in a commercial context. That they do. But they do so at great cost to the broader society. Some of the societal costs are obvious; others are more subtle and indirect. But the costs are real, and very far-reaching. They include:

Instead of the proprietary software model, we are advocates of the free software movement, in which software is treated as a communal resource, freely available for reuse by anyone. Our ultimate vision is a completely open software industry, in which all computing and communications is based entirely on free software.

We are proposing a radically new, completely non-proprietary model for the delivery of Internet services. We call this the Libre Services model.

Libre Services are an extension of the principles of free software into the Internet services domain. They are Internet services that may be freely copied and reused by anyone. They are a communal resource, not owned by anyone, freely available for use by society at large. Any company, organization or individual can reproduce and host any Libre Service, either for their own use, or for commercial or non-commercial delivery to others. The Libre Services model exists in relationship to the proprietary Internet services model of AOL, MSN and Yahoo, in an analogous way to how GNU/Linux exists in relation to Microsoft Windows.

This is a radical departure from the existing commercial model, with societal beneﬁts that are equally radical and far-reaching. The Libre Services model provides a range of critical freedoms that are entirely absent from the proprietary model:

Libre Services are the right way to deliver Internet services to the user. Our goal is to establish Libre Services as a non-proprietary alternative to the existing proprietary services industry.

In this article we describe the Libre Services concept, and how we intend to turn it into a reality. A key component of our bootstrapping strategy is a project-based model for collaborative participation. We have deﬁned a set of independent, self-contained projects required to move this initiative forward. This allows efficient, coordinated collaboration on multiple bootstrapping tasks in parallel.

2.1 Introduction

2.1.1 The software development process

Software development is an inherently cumulative and collaborative process. It is cumulative in the sense that new software is created by assembling existing software constructs into ever more complex and powerful constructs. And it is collaborative in the sense that it is readily amenable to joint, collective development by large numbers of organizations and individuals.

For this reason software has a unique capability to undergo rapid and complex evolutionary growth. This is nowhere better demonstrated than by the extraordinary growth and vitality of the Internet itself.

However, this evolutionary capability depends critically on freedom of action. It depends on the freedom of the software engineering community to reuse existing software constructs, and engage in collaborative development, without restriction. Any restrictions placed on this freedom inhibit the growth potential of the software and Internet industries.

By contrast, the conventional business model is based on asset ownership, and denial of that ownership to competing companies. In the case of the software industry, asset ownership is effected by means of a proprietary software model, in which software ownership is maintained by means of patents, copyright, and trade secrecy.

However, these ownership mechanisms cut directly across the essential freedom of action that gives software its unique evolutionary capabilities. All three mechanisms explicitly deny access to existing software constructs. They prevent software reuse and collaborative development, and therefore inhibit the natural software development process.

The proprietary software model is in fundamental conﬂict with the nature of software itself.

2.1.2 The free software movement

Twenty years ago Richard Stallman understood this very well, and he and others formulated the principles of free software, a completely non-proprietary software model [?]. Under this model software is a communal resource, freely available to the entire software development community without any restrictive ownership mechanisms.¹

In 1985 Stallman and others founded the Free Software Foundation [?], an organization dedicated to the promotion of free software. They did the necessary intellectual work to formalize the principles of free software, created written materials to deﬁne and promote the free software concept, and established a framework for collaborative development of free software projects.

This early work led eventually to the creation of GNU/Linux, the foundational software for the entire free software movement [?].

Twenty years later, this movement is mature and robust. It is fully proven as a viable development model that can equal or exceed the capabilities of the proprietary model.

2.1.3 Our philosophy

We believe that the intellectual property ownership mechanisms of patents, copyright and trade secrecy, as they exist today, have virtually no legitimacy at all within the digital domain.

Many of our laws and practices serve to balance rights between potentially conﬂicting constituencies. As originally conceived, and as practiced within the material domain, these intellectual property mechanisms may well serve this purpose. But within the digital domain, they do not.

These ownership mechanisms confer unquestionable competitive advantage on their owner. But they do so at unacceptable cost to society at large. Patents, copyright and trade secrecy explicitly prevent the cumulative and collaborative development processes that give software its unique potential. As a result society is denied the full realization of this potential.

We believe that the proprietary model is the wrong basis for the software industry. Instead, we are advocates of the free software model, in which software is treated as a communal resource, subject to complete freedom of action by anyone.

The new conventions of non-material capitalism

We further believe that the free software movement as we see it today is only the beginning. It is the ﬁrst manifestation of a much bigger cultural shift: a shedding of the traditional conventions of material capitalism, and the adoption of a new set of conventions based on non-material capitalism. Western capitalistic societies are rooted in the historical conventions and institutions of material products and materially-based services. In the digital domain these conventions appear in the form of the proprietary software model.

But in the non-material world, there is a better way of doing things. The power of free software derives from a relinquishing of the traditional intellectual property conventions. Instead, free software is based on a set of principles that allow powerful generative forces to come into play. Thus traditional copyright is rewritten in the form of copyleft; ownership of software via patents is relinquished in favor of patent-free protocols and software; self-interested software hoarding via trade secrecy is relinquished in favor of a convention of openness and sharing.

The result is a culture of creative freedom and collaboration, based on collective pooling of resources. Twenty years after the fact the premise appears very simple: in the digital domain there is more to be gained by collective pooling than by individual ownership.

We believe that these principles apply, not just in the digital domain, but throughout the non-material domain in general. We believe that these principles have equivalent power and can bring equivalent beneﬁts in many ﬁelds throughout the sciences and humanities. We invite other professions to look critically at the free software movement, and consider applying its principles to their own ﬁeld of endeavor.

But one thing at a time. The next natural extension of free software is its extension into the domain of Internet services.

2.2 The Subscriber Services industry

The Internet has created an enormous new offshoot of the software industry: the Internet services industry² . By Internet services, or Subscriber Services, we mean any service that is provided to a user via the Internet. Some examples are:

And many other types of service. The above list is far from complete, nor is our simple categorization of services in any way deﬁnitive. Subscriber Services is a new industry, not yet 20 years old, and still undergoing a process of disorganized self-deﬁnition. Thus far evolution of the industry has been driven by a multitude of ad hoc commercial initiatives, and it remains in a state of cheerful chaos.

Nevertheless, the scope of what we are describing is extremely large. In effect, it is the entire global Internet itself.

2.2.1 The industry today

Though still undergoing chaotic evolution, the Subscriber Services industry is well established. In 2006, generalized Internet services are provided by several large providers such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo. These major providers deliver a broad range of services to their subscribers, including most of the examples given above. Google is also aggressively moving into the generalized services arena, rapidly augmenting its core search service with a variety of additional services.

In addition to the major providers of generalized services, there is a wide variety of providers of specialized services, such as classiﬁed advertising (Craigslist), auctions (Ebay), airfare and vacation booking (Expedia), job listings (Monster.com), dating (Match.com), car trading (AutoTrader.com), and numerous others. We can expect that over time the large general service providers will provide many of these specialized services too, so that the industry will consolidate into a small number of dominant providers.

In addition to the variety of new services that the Internet has enabled, a fundamental change is occurring in the way traditional software applications are being provided to the user. Before the appearance of the Internet services industry, software applications were either run locally, on the user’s own PC, or perhaps on a remote server on a local area network.

But now traditional software applications are migrating towards a service-based implementation. Many user applications that hitherto have been implemented as local stand-alone applications, are now being implemented as Internet services, in which the user is provided with the same or similar functionality via the Internet.

This represents a fundamental shift in the focus of the software industry. The focus is moving away from software as a product, and towards functionality as a service. This trend is just now becoming widely recognized within the industry, and there remains confusion about its exact nature and implications. This general confusion is reﬂected in the multiplicity of terms used to refer to this trend, such as “software as a service,” “information technology as a service,” and “transformation of software into services.”

2.2.2 Domination of the proprietary model

All these developments—both the evolution of the Internet services industry, and the migration of traditional software into a service-based implementation—are taking place almost entirely in a proprietary context. Even Google, despite any pretensions it may have to the moral high ground, is based on proprietary software, heavily defended by patents, copyright and trade secrecy.

Figure 2.1 shows the presence of the proprietary and non-proprietary models in both the software and services arenas. Within the general software arena, the non-proprietary model has been fully formalized in the form of the free software movement. The principles of free software have been clearly articulated, and formally codiﬁed in the form of the GPL and other open-source licenses.

In addition, the Free Software Foundation and other organizations exist to provide leadership and advocacy, and to serve as rallying points for participation. As a result of all this, the free software movement exists as a viable alternative to the proprietary model.

However, a corresponding set of non-proprietary formalizations does not exist within the services domain. Today, virtually all Internet services are provided under the traditional proprietary software model, and as yet the free software movement has no formal presence in this domain. A set of deﬁning principles has not been established, nor is there any leadership or rallying point for participation in the services domain, corresponding to the leadership of the Free Software Foundation in the software domain.

As a result of this there does not exist a non-proprietary alternative to the proprietary services model.

2.2.3 The problem: Governance by commercial interests

It also continues to undergo a process of consolidation. In the services arena, as in the general software arena, there are strong forces of convergence towards a small number of dominant providers, and eventually a monopoly. In the more mature software industry this has resulted in the Microsoft Windows monopoly, now with no proprietary competition at all.

The services industry is already undergoing a similar process of convergence, and this may continue until there is a monopoly in this arena too. Microsoft is a particular concern in this regard. With its dominant position in both user environments (in the form of Windows), and services (in the form of MSN.com), Microsoft can create a level of integration between its own proprietary user environment and its own proprietary service that cannot be matched by any of the other major players. Based on its operating system monopoly it can exercise dominance of the services arena in a way that the other providers cannot, and can eventually achieve a monopoly position there too.

This trend towards a commercial oligopoly or monopoly presents some societal concerns.

The Internet is a global public resource, and as such requires representation and advocacy for the public interest. Such representation includes maintaining technical standards and protocols, protecting civil liberties, and preventing unfair business practices.

Standards and protocols

In the technical arena of standards and protocols, public representation has historically been provided by standards organizations within the Internet industry, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). But service providers are under no obligation to use public protocols, and are free to deliver services using their own proprietary protocols. And if a commercial provider is large enough, in terms of number of subscribers, it becomes a de facto authority within the industry, able to establish its own protocols as an industry standard.

The history of Instant Messaging is a good example. Clearly the right answer for Instant Messaging is a set of non-proprietary public protocols, allowing global interoperability and open participation by all service providers.

But this is not what happened. Even though IRC (Internet Relay Chat) already existed as an open protocol for Instant Messaging, the major providers disregarded this entirely. Instead, each deﬁned its own set of proprietary protocols, in an attempt to take complete ownership of Instant Messaging functionality and deny this functionality to competing providers. The result was that each provider created its own island of subscribers, unable to communicate with the subscribers on the competing islands.

Only when the resulting dysfunctionality became unacceptable to their subscribers did the major providers address the issue. But not by adopting an open protocol—rather, by implementing interoperability gateways amongst one another. The major providers now have cross connectivity for Instant Messaging, but the underlying protocols remain proprietary, and smaller providers are marginalized and at a competitive disadvantage. In effect the major providers have created a cartel to take complete ownership of Instant Messaging.

The presence of the free software movement in Instant Messaging remains limited to a small island of IRC users, who are able to communicate with the proprietary subscribers via interoperability gateways provided by the proprietary service providers. The major providers thus continue to control the Instant Messaging arena, with the free software community provided for as a courtesy.

Thus in the technical arena such public representation as exists is ineffective. The large commercial providers are able to establish their own standards and protocols, and engineering standards organizations such as the IETF have become largely irrelevant.

Civil liberties

In the area of civil liberties there is no formal public representation at all, and protection of civil liberties remains entirely in the hands of the commercial service providers.

If the commercial providers could be relied upon to act in the public interest, this would be of no great concern. But such is not the case. The commercial providers are under no obligation to protect the public welfare. Their sole mandate is to pursue their own commercial interests, and these may be highly detrimental to the broader interests of society.

Two recent events demonstrate this very well. In the ﬁrst event, Microsoft recently shut down the Internet journal of a Chinese dissident, who had been expressing political views that his government found objectionable. In the second event, Google recently agreed to censor its search results in China, expunging web content that the government considers objectionable. Google will base its censorship decisions on guidance provided by Chinese government officials. So much for the moral high ground.

Both of these actions were taken at the request of the Chinese government, and both companies complied because this was in their commercial interests: they did so in return for access to the Chinese market. This was a quid pro quo arrangement, in which a political favor was exchanged for a commercial one.

Despite the simplistic justiﬁcations offered by their respective public relations departments, the fact is that Microsoft is silencing freedom of speech, and Google is degrading freedom of information. These are clear trespasses against basic civil liberties.

These are stark illustrations of how commercial interests can be highly injurious to the human condition. Any doubt we may have about the hazards of entrusting Internet governance to the commercial providers is surely dispelled by these examples.

2.2.4 The solution: Free software presence in the services domain

In the general software arena, the free software movement and GNU/Linux play an essential role in providing a non-proprietary alternative to the Windows monopoly. It is imperative that a similar non-proprietary alternative be established for the services industry. Without such an alternative, Internet governance will remain largely in the hands of commercial interests.

All the basic principles of the free software movement carry over into the services domain. In particular, Internet services are amenable to similar cumulative and collaborative development mechanisms to software. And as in the case of software, these mechanisms depend critically on the appropriate freedom of action.

But in order for these mechanisms to be replicated in the services arena, the proper formalization is required. This formalization must include: a coherent model for non-proprietary services, a deﬁnition of the concept and principles, creation of industry-wide awareness, a framework for collaborative development, leadership, and a rallying point for participation. In short, an equivalent movement to the free software movement is required in the Internet services arena.

2.3 The Libre Services model

We are proposing a radically new, completely non-proprietary model for the delivery of Internet services. We call this the Libre Services model.

Libre Services are an extension of the principles of free software into the domain of Internet services. Free software allows complete freedom of action: it may be copied and reused without restriction. Libre Services provide equivalent freedom of action: they are Internet services that may be copied, modiﬁed, reproduced, extended, and redistributed in their entirety. Libre Services are:

They are a communal resource, not owned by anyone, freely available for use by society at large. Any company, organization or individual can reproduce and host any Libre Service, and deliver the service to others. Or any group of individuals can host the service for themselves, thus acting as their own service provider.

The Libre Services model exists in relationship to the proprietary Subscriber Services model of AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Google, in an analogous way to how GNU/Linux exists in relation to Microsoft Windows. Both Libre Services and GNU/Linux are open and free models, and both provide the essential freedom of action that is absent from the closed model.

2.3.1 Technological context

Figure 2.2 shows how Libre Services ﬁt into the overall free software context. The left side of the ﬁgure shows the general technological requirements, and the center of the ﬁgure shows how these are realized today. It should be noted that this realization represents the general industry environment, and speciﬁc implementation choices we have made, at the time of writing in early 2006. This realization is open to future change and evolution.

The ﬁgure is not unlike the common “hourglass” representation of the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) and Internet architectures, in which a high degree of heterogeneity at the upper and lower levels is bridged by a common set of protocols in the stem of the hourglass.

Figure 2.2 has a similar shape, but here we are showing how a high degree of heterogeneity among hardware platforms and user environments is bridged by a unifying set of software components. At the bottom of the ﬁgure is the hardware level, consisting of the large number of hardware platforms and architectures available for client side and server side computing.

GNU/Linux

In the open-source software world, the key enabling component is the GNU/Linux operating system, providing a complete environment for open-source software development. Linux, the operating system kernel, is the unifying interface for running GNU on a wide variety of hardware platforms.

(To place things in historical perspective, the GNU Project was founded in 1984. The earliest version of the Linux kernel was released in 1991.)

Debian

An important development in the evolution of the open-source software movement was the appearance of GNU/Linux distributions, or complete GNU/Linux software packages, assembled together for easy installation and use. The ﬁrst of these appeared in 1992, soon after the ﬁrst release of the Linux kernel.

Distributions play an essential role within the GNU/Linux framework. The integration of the various GNU/Linux components into a usable system is not a simple process. Distributions eliminate the need for a developer to locate, download, compile, install and integrate a large number of necessary components into a working GNU/Linux system. Instead, the complexities of system construction are handled transparently by the distribution software.

Our initial Libre Services implementations are based on the Debian distribution of GNU/Linux [?]. Debian was founded in 1993, and has emerged as the most practical and reliable distribution for software engineering development. Equally important, Debian fully conforms to the philosophy of the free software movement. The Debian project is guided by the Debian Social Contract [?], an explicit statement of the philosophy and guiding principles of Debian.

Libre Services Integration Platform

The Libre Services Integration Platform (LSIP) is a generalized framework for developing Libre Services. All our initial implementations are based on LSIP.

LSIP is a set of tools, policies and conventions for services development and deployment. It provides a uniform, disciplined environment for transformation of software into services, integration, and service aggregation. It allows efficient integration of free software components into coherent services.

LSIP is the key technological component of Libre Services. It is the component that makes generalized, large-scale services development practical and efficient.

User environments

Libre Services are implemented as server-side software entities, typically running on servers at the service provider’s premises, remote from the user. The user interacts with the service using his or her own computer, and may do so using any of a wide variety of user environments, such as EOE (Emacs Office Environment), a web browser, thin client, or KDE (K Desktop Environment). These are shown at the top level of Figure 2.2. The link between the user environment and the service is the Internet itself.

Since Libre Services are completely open, there are no proprietary restrictions on which user environment can be used to interact with the services. The Libre Services model allows any user environment to interact with any service using any hardware platform.

2.3.2 Beneﬁts to society

Libre Services bring the cumulative and collaborative development characteristics of free software into the services arena. They are open to completely unrestricted, large-scale collaborative development, and therefore have an ability to undergo complex evolutionary growth that cannot be matched by the proprietary model. In terms of richness of functionality, they have the ability to surpass the proprietary model completely.

In addition to straightforward end-user functionality, Libre Services also provide a number broader societal beneﬁts.

Engineered for the user, not for business

In both the free and proprietary models, software is created by engineers. But the motives driving the engineering effort are entirely different under the two models.

In the proprietary model, engineering acts at the behest of business. And the prime directive of business is to make proﬁt. Though corporations like to proclaim that their number one concern is the customer, this is a ﬁction. The welfare of the customer is of concern to the corporation only insofar as it relates to proﬁt; beyond that it is meaningless. Under the proprietary model, service providers can and frequently do act directly against the interests of the user.

But in the free software model, engineering does not take place within a business framework. Instead it is a collaborative effort, undertaken by many organizations and individuals in a variety of diverse environments. Therefore the dependence of engineering on business imperatives is severed. The engineering effort no longer takes place at the behest of business. Instead it is driven by fundamental, constructive engineering motives: the desire of the software engineering community to create applications of real value to the user.

The resultant software is therefore fully aligned with the usage, requirements and interests of the user. It is built to beneﬁt the user, not to beneﬁt business.

Civil liberties: Services operated by the user, for the user

In the proprietary services model, the service provider and the user are two separate and distinct entities. All policy decisions regarding operation of the service are made by the provider, with little input from the user.

In particular, the user is entirely subject to the provider’s actions regarding civil liberties issues such as privacy, censorship, and freedom of speech. The provider’s actions are taken based on commercial considerations, and these actions may constitute serious violations of the user’s civil liberties.

As we have noted, commercial providers can silence dissent and enforce censorship in order to gain access to foreign markets. As we will note in the next section, they can also cooperate in government intrusion into their users’ personal and private affairs. Commercial providers have also cooperated with enforcement of censorship and freedom of speech restrictions by monitoring web logs and bulletin boards, erasing banned content, and reporting offenders to government authorities.

Under the Libre Services model, however, any group or community of people can host the service cooperatively for themselves, and operate it according to whatever policies they see ﬁt. The Libre Services model thus breaks the separation between the provider and the user—they can now be one and the same.

Libre Services can be operated by the user, for the user. The civil liberties of the user are thereby assured.

Privacy and security

In the proprietary services model, user activity can be monitored without the user’s knowledge or consent. There are two forms of monitoring that present societal concerns:

In the case of commercial monitoring, any aspect of a user’s activities can be recorded and reviewed by the service provider. This includes the content of incoming and outgoing e-mail, search queries, websites visited, products and services purchased—indeed, any service usage that is technologically available to the provider can be monitored, without the knowledge or consent of the user.

This form of monitoring is much less of an issue in the case of Libre Services because, as we have noted, the service is designed to beneﬁt the user, not a commercial entity. Since the service is not created for commercial beneﬁt, there is no great incentive to include commercial monitoring capability within the service.

But to the extent that commercial monitoring remains a concern, the Libre Services model can provide complete guarantees of privacy. In the case of proprietary services, based on closed software, monitoring can take place because the community of users has no way of knowing what the software is actually doing. But in the case of Libre Services, the complete openness of the software permits veriﬁcation and authentication that the service is completely free from all monitoring activity. The community of users is able to know exactly what the software is doing, and that it is doing no more and no less than they wish it to do.

Much more worrisome than commercial monitoring is monitoring by the government. National governments may have very broad powers to monitor their citizens’ usage of Internet services. In the USA, an agency with sufficient authorization can compel a service provider to disclose all available information about a user, and cooperate in monitoring all communications and other service usage, without the user’s knowledge or consent. The FBI’s controversial Carnivore system, for example, is designed to capture all e-mail traffic for a particular targeted individual. Post-9/11, the necessary authorization can be provided simply by association, at several levels of remove, with someone the government considers to be a person of interest for national security reasons.

In the proprietary services model, covert government monitoring is possible because the user has no way of knowing what the service provider is doing. In particular, the provider is under no obligation to disclose government monitoring to the user. But in the case of Libre Services, any individual or organization can prevent covert monitoring by running the service for themselves, rather than leaving it in the hands of a third-party provider.

In addition, by eliminating the separation between the provider and the user, the Libre Services model makes current monitoring practices impractical. Under the proprietary model, a government agency conducts monitoring activity by directing its compliance demands against a well-deﬁned commercial service provider. But under the Libre Services model the oligopoly of commercial service providers has disappeared, to be replaced by numerous private self-providers.

The government can still come knocking and demand access to a user’s information. But it must now direct its compliance demands against a multiplicity of individual persons and organizations. And it can no longer do this without the user’s knowledge.

Service stability and continuity

In both the free and the proprietary worlds, software applications and services can be discontinued. The provider of the application or service can go out of business, or may decide to discontinue supporting the application. In either case the user may be left with an investment in an “orphaned” application. But the dynamics of how this occurs, and the effects on the user, are very different under the two models.

In the free software world, application extinction occurs because of migration of the community of users away from the application towards other, better applications. Extinction occurs because of a process of user-driven convergence, based on the genuine merits of alternative solutions.

In the proprietary world, applications are left orphaned not by the actions of the users, but by the actions of the provider. And these actions may be taken for reasons that have little to do with the actual merits of the application, but may be based on purely business considerations.

Because of these differing dynamics, application orphaning is a gradual and organic process in the free software world, whereas in the proprietary world it can occur suddenly and without warning.

Thus in the free software world, continuity of applications and services is much less of an issue than in the proprietary world. Applications persist based on their merits, and where they do not persist, this is to the ultimate betterment of the industry and the user.

But to the extent that service continuity is of concern to the user, the Libre Services model provides guarantees of continuity that are completely absent from the proprietary model. First, since the services are a communal resource, the user is not tied to any particular service provider. The effect of the Libre Services model is to decouple the service functionality from the service provider. If a provider goes out of business or discontinues providing the service, a user can simply go to an alternative provider, and be assured of receiving a functionally identical service.

The same consideration applies to the availability of technical support for the service. Again, since the service is a communal resource, the user is not tied to any particular vendor for technical support. Under the Libre Services model, technical support remains readily available for as long as the service itself remains available.

Finally, under the rather implausible scenario in which an entire Libre Service inexplicably disappears, but an organization remains fully committed to the orphaned service, the organization still has recourse. Since Libre Services are implemented entirely in free software, the organization has guaranteed perpetual access to the software. If necessary, the organization can reproduce and operate the entire service for itself.

Complex integration of user environments with services

As indicated in Figure 2.2, Internet services work by communication over the Internet between a client application running in the user environment, and a corresponding server application running within the service.

In the proprietary model, a particular service is tied to certain speciﬁc user environments. The service can be accessed only via one or two user environments, typically a web browser, and possibly also a dedicated client application provided by the service provider.

Under the Libre Services model, however, there are no proprietary limitations placed on integration between the User Environment layer and the Libre Services layer in Figure 2.2. Since the service is completely transparent, the dependence of the service on any particular user environment is severed. Thus any user environment can be integrated with any Libre Service.

Furthermore, a much more complex level of integration is possible. In particular, free user environments (i.e. user environments based on free software) can be integrated with Libre Services. And since both the client and server sides of the service are now completely transparent, this permits a highly complex level of integration between the two. This allows the development of Internet services with a power and versatility that far exceeds what exists today.

For these reasons we believe that the free software movement as we see it today is just the beginning. Today, free software exists at operating system and application level. The Libre Services model brings the power of free software to the Services level, the User Environment level, and the integration between these two levels. The result will be a complete transformation of the Internet services industry.

2.3.3 Beneﬁts to service providers

The Libre Services model also brings important beneﬁts to the providers of Internet services.

A truly open industry

Under the proprietary model the Internet services industry is dominated and controlled by a few large providers. These dominant players actively stiﬂe competition by means of restrictive business practices, such as the use of proprietary protocols, highly aggressive patent assertion, and other practices based on ownership and control of intellectual assets.

Under the Libre Services model, however, there are no intellectual property barriers to business entry, and any company that wishes to host services can do so. This has major business consequences. The effect of the Libre Services model is to open the entire services industry to free market entry. This will result in unrestricted engineering collaboration and business competition, and will catalyze enormous industry growth. Libre Services will transform the closed industry of today into a truly open industry, in which all participants can compete on a level playing ﬁeld.

Collaborative development

In the proprietary model, small service providers can also be marginalized on the basis of service quality and functionality. A small proprietary service provider cannot compete with the resources of the large providers in their ability to develop new and better functionality.

Libre Services, however, are based on the large-scale cumulative and collaborative development mechanisms of free software. Any development contribution made by any engineer, anywhere, becomes immediately available to the entire constituency of service providers. In effect, the Libre Services model permits global pooling of engineering development resources.

This provides a level of cooperative development capability that far exceeds the resources of even the largest proprietary provider. Eventually the Libre Services model can surpass the proprietary model entirely in terms of service quality and functionality.

Industry representation

As we saw in the case of Instant Messaging, small proprietary providers can also be marginalized in terms of representation in industry decision-making, for example in establishing technical standards and protocols. This is because a service provider’s voice in such decision-making is based ultimately on the provider’s size, in terms of number of subscribers. The major commercial providers are thus able to exert a dominating inﬂuence over industry standards and policies.

The Libre Services movement, however, provides a uniﬁed voice of advocacy for all its subscribers. In effect the Libre Services model permits global pooling of the entire community of Libre Service subscribers as a single constituency for industry representation.

2.3.4 Our goal: Creation of the Libre Services industry

Libre Services are the right way to deliver Internet services to the world. As well as providing a number of vitally important societal beneﬁts, they are also the proper basis for a healthy, thriving and egalitarian services industry.

Our goal is nothing less than the creation of an entirely new industry: the Libre Services industry. Much as others established the free software movement twenty years ago, we are establishing the Libre Services movement today.

2.3.5 The need for a movement

Possibly the free software movement might have come into existence on its own, in some spontaneous organic way, even without the actions of the Free Software Foundation. We only get to experience one history, so we will never know. But at the very least the Free Software Foundation greatly expedited this process by explicitly formalizing the principles of free software. And quite possibly, without the Free Software Foundation or some other entity taking this initiative, the free software movement might never have come into existence as a coherent movement at all. In any event, 20 years later, the free software movement now exists as a viable alternative to proprietary software. Society is surely better off for having the choice.

Similar speculations can be made about the Libre Services movement. One could question whether there is any need for anything so grandiose as a “movement,” with a “blueprint” and a “manifesto.” Possibly it too might arise spontaneously, without requiring any explicit formalization. Possibly everything we are trying to achieve is destined to occur anywa

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