[FC-discuss] An essay introducing the FC movement to students -request comments and criticism (Jonah Bossewitch)

[MJ Ray]

Asheesh Laroia <freeculture at asheesh.org> wrote:
> So at least, that's not a good reason to tell Parker to stop using Google 
> Docs.  I imagine (in all seriousness!) there may be good reasons in other 
> lines of argument.

I've got two lines of argument:
 - rights
 - standards

By posting your writing on Google Docs, you are agreeing to Google
doing pretty much anything they want with it, cost-free, including
advertising and marketing Google.  They also get veto over your
writing.  In particular, "you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive,
royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and
distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of
displaying, distributing and promoting Google services. Google
reserves the right to syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed
by you on or through Google services and use that Content in
connection with any service offered by Google. Google furthermore
reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any
Content in its sole discretion." 
http://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en/terms.html

Once published, the page is visible with any browser, but it is not a
valid web page - my simple test page failed the W3C validator with 36
errors - impressive for a two-line page. The exports as Text, PDF and
OpenDocument seemed OK, but not much better at first glance than
Mozilla or OpenOffice will do if you give them the html, and you
probably have those already if you can use Google Docs and its
OpenDocument export.

I don't see the attraction or the reason for the Google Docs hype. If
you want to post web pages, using your own editor, putting a wiki on
your web space or getting a free wiki are all much easier to use,
easier to bugfix and might even produce valid web pages. If you want
to use a Word Processor, using one on your local PC is not much more
processor-intensive and things like OpenOffice will probably produce
better output.

Hope that helps,
-- 
MJ Ray - see/vidu http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
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