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Avoid lock-in

Posted Oct 7, 2008 23:47 UTC (Tue) by nas (subscriber, #17)
In reply to: Stallman vs. Clouds (Linux Journal) by vomlehn
Parent article: Stallman vs. Clouds (Linux Journal)

The key point, as I see it, is whether you are locked in. If you can easily switch (e.g. from GMail to a different email service) then I don't see a problem. You not only need to get your data out, it also has to be in a format that you can use with other programs or services. Mark Pilgrim's reasoning for switching from OSX seems relevant.

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Avoid lock-in

Posted Oct 8, 2008 3:28 UTC (Wed) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

> The key point, as I see it, is whether you are locked in.

Yes, exactly.

I do a lot of so-called "cloud" computing, but since I have my own hosting account, and wrote all the software that I use, I'm not locked in. I have had several occasions where the hosting company had a server go down, and that was an inconvenience to be sure, but I solved the problem by mirroring the account on another server. If someone starts dropping nuclear bombs I may be in trouble.

Avoid lock-in

Posted Oct 8, 2008 23:18 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Yes, like failing servers will be our biggest trouble if someone starts dropping nuclear bombs... You do realize that DSL lines would probably go down, right?