Comments on: Notes on UbuntuOne

By: Raphink

Raphink — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:17:11 +0000

Thank you Jim, you just summed up what I wished to say for a few days.

@Ryan: yes, it’s a service, just like a mail server, or a jabber server, or an http host, and a lot of people prefer to run these on their own machines, either for privacy issues (do we know if UbuntuOne encrypts data on the server?) or for reliability (if my server crashes, at least I know who to call to fix it). Here is an example: this service could be very interesting for a big company, but it’s obvious that they wouldn’t rely on an external service for that (at least my company wouldn’t do that). By stating that this is a service as an excuse for its proprietary nature, you make the whole XMPP project a joke (not even talking about Apache).

By: Nico

Nico — Sun, 17 May 2009 12:07:08 +0000

Good blog entry !!

By: bigbrovar

bigbrovar — Sun, 17 May 2009 05:35:44 +0000

Well said, i have nothing more to add, took the word out of my mouth.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sun, 17 May 2009 02:08:03 +0000

Its a service. Since it isn’t running on my computer I don’t particularly care if it is open or not. The important thing is that, as Vincent said, the protocol is open, which means your data can’t be held hostage. I see no downsides.

By: Daeng Bo

Daeng Bo — Sun, 17 May 2009 01:48:15 +0000

It appears that stating something as simple as “I don’t think it’s in Canonical’s best interest to enter the proprietary software business” will get you flamed to near death, even if you acknowledge that it’s Canonical’s code and they get to license it however they want ( http://blog.ibeentoubuntu.com/2009/05/about-ubuntuone-post-that-is-sure-to.html ). I don’t know why there’s so much vitriol spewed over this subject or why C’s supporters are so quick to bring out the stick. I would like to think we could have a reasonable conversation.

By: Zac

Zac — Sun, 17 May 2009 01:22:08 +0000

People are reading too much into this. It has only just started and people are whinging.

Tim: The baby has just taken its first breath and already he is a convicted mass murderer?

Bring on Ubuntu One!

By: Vincent

Vincent — Sat, 16 May 2009 23:07:28 +0000

One advantage is that, IIRC, Canonical does make the protocol open, so you could build your own backend and connect it to your desktop instead of Canonical’s offering. If that even ever comes into existence, though, it will without doubt not be as good as Canonical’s offering will be. Ah well, we’ll see what happens, I guess.

By: ethana2

ethana2 — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:05:01 +0000

edit comment 3 line 1 : s/majority/minority

By: ethana2

ethana2 — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:04:26 +0000

I say once nonFree OSes hold the majority of the market, we’ll have plenty of time to quibble over stuff like this. As it stands, I don’t care about what software is used by web services I rely on, because my laptop is running a proprietary BIOS and using proprietary nVidia drivers. Many people I know still use Windows, so, proprietary EVERYTHING. Pick your battles.

By: Tim

Tim — Sat, 16 May 2009 19:08:21 +0000

Quote from bug #1:

Non-free software is holding back innovation in the IT industry, restricting access to IT to a small part of the world’s population and limiting the ability of software developers to reach their full potential, globally. This bug is widely evident in the PC industry.

Maybe Mark should read it from time to time.