I realize that makes me sound crazy, but after years of reflecting on software, privacy, data ownership, and decentralization, I have not been able to avoid the conclusion that Stallman was basically right.
If your data lives in a cluster with a bunch of other people's, it's a tempting target, both to legitimate businesses and to outright theft. It's only a matter of time before someone gets it, as the constant parade of breaches and data sharing scandals show, and once it's out there you can't undo it.
I have speculated that open source services that are easily self-hosted (start the installer, enter a domain name, and pick a cloud provider) might be a passable answer to the desire to have both accessibility, shareability, and independence.
Funding their development is trickier, obviously.
