Comments on: What is Ubuntu One ?

By: Rodger

Rodger — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:02 +0000

One of three questions:
Can not log back into Ubuntu1
Is there “defrag” program for Ubuntu
Had a person needing help (the site is locked would have helped if I could), just learning linux and slowly learning the program language.
Rodger

PS: Is there a “down and dirty” place where I can talk to a human about basic programming with linux, understand binary, oct, hex, etc.

By: 65Bits Episode 119 : Freshly Squeezed and MmMMM Good : Singapore Entrepreneurs

65Bits Episode 119 : Freshly Squeezed and MmMMM Good : Singapore Entrepreneurs — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:15:27 +0000

[...] [4] HP recalls 70,000 notebook batteries because of fire hazard, [5] Acer Aspire Timeline, [6] Ubuntu1 is in beta now, [7] Google goes down, [8] Microsoft vs Apple Ad wars, [9] End of NextBus? [10] Singapore TweetUp; [...]

By: Ubuntu One enfada a los usuarios | MuyLinux

Ubuntu One enfada a los usuarios | MuyLinux — Tue, 19 May 2009 09:07:15 +0000

[...] y Open Source. Aunque el cliente de Ubuntu One sí es de código abierto, la parte del servidor aún es algo misteriosa y muchos creen que Canonical ha utilizado una filosofía propietaria, quizás con la excusa de [...]

By: mariuz

mariuz — Sat, 16 May 2009 06:39:06 +0000

Talk is talk facts are facts
you can’t be half way free or open source like orcle or microsoft
canonical should put the server part in bzr and make it free and open source

i can give you one example for such an service (cloud stuff) that is made open
http://laconi.ca is the open source part for the service http://identi.ca

ahh and by the way ubuntuforums are propietary and many other things in ubuntu or should i say canonical land

By: Stefano Forenza

Stefano Forenza — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:31:28 +0000

@Statik: thank you! also, corrected the post, that was my incorrect guess.

@yungchin: reading it again I think only pretty specific services may be omited. PPA stuff for example (warning: that’s just a random guess, to be intended just as a poor example). My guess is that Launchpad will be released as complete front-end, leaving to the user the duty to hook it to this or that back-end service.

@Vadim: yeah, an iFolder comparison may also be good but I guess would be a little too much OT in the post. Also I saw Jorge and other guys on Ubuntu Planet asking for someone to step up and package iFolder. That has to be not that easy though, as currently it seems to use Mono 1. (I may be wrong on this point though)

By: Vadim

Vadim — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:04:53 +0000

Good stuff. Might want to point out that iFolder isn’t exactly friendly to get setup on a non-suse distro either (which is why I never bothered with it)

By: yungchin

yungchin — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:53:45 +0000

Hi, thanks for the link. Yeah, not sure what that means either…. I guess it means “not all of it” Weird part is where he says licensing might preclude releasing some parts – they used proprietary bits in the backend??

By: Elliot "statik" Murphy

Elliot "statik" Murphy — Thu, 14 May 2009 04:12:59 +0000

Hi Stefano, fantastic article, some of the most thoughtful and balanced analysis of Ubuntu One that I have seen so far. You definitely seem to be understanding all the details

One minor correction to your article – we haven’t added all the launchpad accounts to the waiting list for Ubuntu One invitations, that would be kinda weird. We did send invitations to everyone who was an Ubuntu member, we thought that would be only appropriate to give Ubuntu members the first look at the service, so that we could have some good and productive discussions at the upcoming Ubuntu Developer Summit. Absolutely anyone can request an invitation at this point though, although it requires you to have a launchpad account since we are relying on Launchpad OpenID for authentication (it made more sense than writing a new authentication system). We’ll be making some changes to the authentication in the future though, to simplify things more.

You are absolutely 100% correct in your observation that we aren’t trying to exclude other platforms, versions, distros, etc. we are just trying to get some things working and we had to start somewhere

Thanks again for your nice post.

By: Stefano Forenza

Stefano Forenza — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:41:32 +0000

@yungchin: well, that’s just a uncomplete sentence I forgot to complete while writing the post. I don’t remember what I really wanted to say there, but see sabdfl’s answer about launchpad at this link:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/openweekJaunty/AskMark
I’m still sure about what it means.

Also I’m not sure Launchpad will be released as one package or just the individual piece without the glue.

Nor I’m sure they’ll be able to make it for July.

By: yungchin

yungchin — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:28:53 +0000

I think Canonical are going wrong on this one completely. It will cost them massive amounts of goodwill in the FOSS community, and for what?

They’ve gathered the biggest mindshare among Linux desktop users already, and it didn’t take any proprietary software to get there. If they had used existing open-source tools to build this, and released everything under an Affero license, I would have bought services from them anyway, even at a slight price premium, and not from some other company (like DropBox) that means nothing to me personally. Why? Because they’re a trusted entity to me.

What are they afraid of? That someone will run off with the system and offer it on OpenSUSE.org? Well if that would happen, so what? It’s not as if those users will now come to Ubuntu for this. They’re tribe members, not just any customers. That makes it all different.

I really think this is a mistake.

One question though:
“We’re still waiting for the full release of Launchpad, by the way (promised for July 2009, and unlikely to happen, )”
It’s another two months until July. Do you have personal reasons to mistrust Shuttleworth?