From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Google modules integration Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 11:50:26 -0400 Message-ID: References: <878w3a1x9s.fsf@keller.adm.naquadah.org> <1284140876.2505.23.camel@dell-desktop.example.com> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1284220322 10150 80.91.229.12 (11 Sep 2010 15:52:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2010 15:52:02 +0000 (UTC) Cc: julien@danjou.info, dave@lab6.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org, carsten.dominik@gmail.com To: Thomas Lord Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Sep 11 17:51:56 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OuSMr-0003zH-UE for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 11 Sep 2010 17:51:54 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:53043 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1OuSMr-0007NS-6h for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 11 Sep 2010 11:51:53 -0400 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=50171 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1OuSLN-0006Oo-Ck for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 11 Sep 2010 11:50:22 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OuSLL-0007xH-Ei for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 11 Sep 2010 11:50:21 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([140.186.70.10]:51628) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OuSLL-0007xD-C7 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 11 Sep 2010 11:50:19 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OuSLS-0005QG-7V; Sat, 11 Sep 2010 11:50:26 -0400 In-reply-to: <1284140876.2505.23.camel@dell-desktop.example.com> (message from Thomas Lord on Fri, 10 Sep 2010 10:47:56 -0700) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:129990 Archived-At: Google's primary proprietary "hook" there is, of course, its proprietary databases. Given that raw data, rather than simply and affordably sell copies and let people write their own programs to use the maps, Google hords the data in order to gain a monopoly over what programs may be used to process it. This is a lot like the Google search engine: What the service does is let you look through their data. That is not SaaS. You would like it centered upon a particular cemetary of historic significance, you would like to highlight some famous landscapes, and you would like to compute and highlight a route of travel that hits a customized list of landscapes. That is still looking at their data rather than doing your own computing. Two elements are involved in producing your map: a lot of data - a huge database - plus some programs that take your input, do some computations on them, and give you back results. That, per your definition is SaaS and Google Maps is an example. The user's "input" is simply a specification of which part of their data the user wants to see. The point of SaaS is that the site does nontrivial computing that, by nature, is your computing. In these cases, it is trivial. So I think you are treating insignificant amounts of "your own computing" as significant. With that interpretsation, all web servers appear to be SaaS. Even in a purely static web site, the user provides some input -- a URL -- and gets a result depending on the input. So that is the wrong criterion.