Did the timelines seem awfully aggressive to anyone? (June 1 service stops, July 31 all data is erased)<p>For a service that we were suppose to be syncing our lives to, that seems like a really abrupt, customer unfriendly ramp-down.<p>I would have expected something more like:<p><pre><code> 1. April 1 - no new accounts.
2. May 1 - can no longer add files to your existing account.
3. May - Dec - nagged/reminded constantly to pull your files down.
4. Dec 31 - All accounts closed, data "erased"
5. [BONUS] March '15 - Data actually erased to provide a few months of emergency
recovery for the few folks that didn't know and are emailing frantically that
their family photos are up there.</code></pre>
That always seemed to me a bandwagon feature, like Microsoft's SkyDrive: they saw DropBox succeeding, they figured it would be easy to emulate, and they learned otherwise when they tried it. The only way this change affects me personally is that it gives me one less thing to go in and switch off when I install a new Ubuntu system, but I'm glad they've got a pragmatic attitude toward the possibility of spreading themselves too thin.
I'm one of the heavy users of this. It integrates with all my devices better than other options. Google Still hasn't released a Linux client and the dropbox app has been very flakey for me in Ubuntu.<p>I've set my phone camera pics auto sync to all my devices. All my music and photos are backed up with Ubuntu One. When I upgrade my OS version, I sync all important files here. When I switched jobs late last year, my music was instantly available at my new office. When I'm working and I need a file on my Windows machine, I just throw it in Ubuntu One and switch keyboards.<p>I'm disappointed by this, but not surprised. They haven't been doing anything with the product in a long time.<p>I had hoped that just meant it was a stable product.
"Today we are announcing plans to shut down the Ubuntu One file services. This is a tough decision, particularly when our users rely so heavily on the functionality that Ubuntu One provides"<p>Ok, so do users really rely so heavily on Ubuntu One? If so, then why do you shut it down? If no, then why do you say they rely on it?<p>I believe they don't rely on it.<p>"The Ubuntu One file services will not be included in the upcoming Ubuntu 14.04 LTS release, and the Ubuntu One apps in older versions of Ubuntu and in the Ubuntu, Google, and Apple stores will be updated appropriately. The current services will be unavailable from 1 June 2014; user content will remain available for download until 31 July, at which time it will be deleted."<p>1.5 months? Really?
"we continue to believe in the Ubuntu One file services, the quality of the code, and the user experience, so will release the code as open source software to give others an opportunity to build on this code to create an open source file syncing platform"<p>"We will calculate the refund amount from today’s announcement, even though the service will remain available until 1 June and data available for a further two months."<p>Very respectable.
I find the second paragraph disappointing, but unsurprising. "Our strategic priority for Ubuntu is making the best converged operating system for phones, tablets, desktops and more." My hope is that the next design fad that out-fads the current "make my 30 inch high-res monitor look like a 3 inch screen" fad will be a step back towards actual usability. Convergence is a usability nightmare.<p>I'd rant more, but hey this is free software so I'll just switch to another distro.<p>viva la divergence.
I was (and still am) honestly baffled that Canonical never went about building and marketing Ubuntu One as a home directory backup service.<p>Maybe automatically encrypt and backup all text files in the home directory by default, and for free. Restore encrypted backup from Ubuntu One every time a user does a reinstall or upgrade. Charge users if they want to throw in media files or binaries.
We have entered the age of the storage wars....<p>The price cuts from Google last week were clearly an offensive move in this space. One of the best ways to refine a market is to run it at sustainable loss and watch those that cannot compete die off. Credit to Canonical for failing fast here. I hope they decide to reassess the situation and provide tooling for a BYOCS[1]-esque abstraction. This'll permit users to roll their data from one cloud storage company to another as they all start dropping off.<p>As a somewhat related aside: where is amazon in the consumer commodity SaaS world? No email, no calendar, no storage (albeit they do provide mp3 storage). Do they just have no interest in providing these user services?<p>[1] Bring Your Own Cloud Storage
Very awesome that they release the code.<p>I wish all companies would open source code they don't use anymore.<p>I mean it really doesn't cost anything pushing your old code in a github repo or something.
That's about as classy a product shutdown as you could wish for.<p>Pity this didn't work out financially for Canonical, and too bad for those users that came to rely on it (but this is the issue with pretty much any service that you don't operate yourself).
This is disappointing. I have all my backup files on Ubuntu One, and I've purchased extra storage as well.<p>Between various bugs, shit that just plain doesn't work, cancelled projects and now Ubuntu One, it seems Canonical likes shooting themselves in the foot... Maybe if they had actually marketed Ubuntu One and made it better they could be a Dropbox competitor. Then again, maybe they just don't have the expertise to make half of this shit work.<p>No wonder SUSE is a billion dollar company, Red Hat a multi-billion dollar company (with over a billion in yearly revenue), and Canonical a trust fund baby...
It was expected this kind of ubuntu branded services were not going to last long.
From its early beginning ubuntu has been pointed out for lacking a foreseeable long term future, being a nice experiment funded by a donation from the personal fortune of a rich guy,which will eventually run out.<p>Ubuntu one felt like an experimentation from Ubuntu to bring some money in, in hope to somehow contribute money to fund itself for lack of a better business model.
It makes sense to kill the experimentations that don't bring enough profit while consuming precious resources.
Anyone interested in porting the Ubuntu One code onto a new free, open source decentralized cloud network?<p>The spec is amazing, including client side encryption, fully anonymous, no single point of failure, no way for the network to be censored or shut down etc.<p>If interested check out [MaidSafe.net](<a href="http://maidsafe.net" rel="nofollow">http://maidsafe.net</a>) for overview, and if you want to talk code join us on maidsafe-developers Google Group. It's launching soon and it would be fantastic to have a Ubuntu One government as one of the first apps!
I've loved Ubuntu One for years. This is too sad, I would've wanted to have Ubuntu use it automatically for all kinds of things such as home directory backups etc.<p>Are there any good open-source self-hosted options that I could run on my little box at home? Preferably something that doesn't require a special setup or deployment on a server.<p>I could imagine there are file-sync solutions that just need an operable SSH account somewhere and merely automate the use of rsync to do the transfers, watching files and taking care of conflicts.
This is so bad, I deployed my sites using Ubuntu One.<p>However I'm very grateful they decided to opensource it, at least I have a hope to keep implementing it.
This is tragic and I am baffled how flawed their argument is.<p>>Our strategic priority for Ubuntu is making the best converged operating system for phones, tablets, desktops and more<p>If Ubuntu One wasn't of their strategic priorities, then certainly they didn't have their priorities right.
Wouldn't it be better if they partnered with someone like DropBox to provide a migration path? Possibly a transparent migration path? Then convert Ubuntu One to a relabeled version of DropBox.
I for one (no pun intended) actually liked Ubuntu One. In the age where the DropBox installer for Ubuntu was funky and running it headless involved downloading a Python script and running it in a screen session Ubuntu One provided a much better experience.<p>That said, I was never one to pay for DropBox or Ubuntu One because their pricing was just a little too expensive. The free tier got me enough space to share a few random files, and if I needed more than a few GB's, I've got my own infrastructure for that.
How can I self-host Ubuntu One? <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7516047" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7516047</a>
Considering the fact that Ubuntu breaks sometimes on laptops, a online storage for backing up important files had been a good service for me. Now that it will be down, I have to configure some 3rd party software in order to get the automatic backup process. On a brighter side, I feel the Ubuntu on my laptop is getting more and more stable(no breaking for past few month in fact), so online backup may not seem that necessary now for me.
I never liked their storage service. On top of that, all the videos files which I stored in their server got lost previously, so I never cared to use their service again. It just showed the filename of the video and displayed it's size as zero bytes. A quick google at that time showed me that other peoples had also lost their files and Ubuntu didn't even send a apology mail for that. (But text files was present.)
Fair... It was never their core business and never skyrocketed. And I'm a heavily user of the service.<p>Any other good alternative, maybe FOSS, except Dropbox?
"Our strategic priority for Ubuntu is making the best converged operating system for phones, tablets, desktops and more"<p>I guess a server OS is also not a strategic priority. Oh well. What is a good Debian-based server OS that is a bit more up-to-date than Debian (and also a strategic priority for its developer)?
Perhaps they can use their freed-up resources to nudge Google along with the Drive client for Linux:<p><a href="https://tools.google.com/dlpage/drive/?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://tools.google.com/dlpage/drive/?hl=en</a><p>"Running Linux? Stay tuned - Drive for Linux isn't ready just yet."
Canonical should buy Dropbox and integrate. That'd give others (The Goog, AAPL, MSFT) pause for thought and give the Ubuntu folk a key differentiator versus the other Linux Distros. If they can't afford it they should figure out how to afford it. Beg, borrow or steal :)<p>That's my .02€
I can see disabling new signups but not shutting the service down and erasing everyone's data - it doesn't bode well for Ubuntu in the enterprise or anywhere else trust and longevity are important.
Thank you! Ubuntu One is a buggy, laggy mess and frankly an embarrassment to Canonical. What would be neat is if they made a GUI for BTSync, and sold pre-configured hard drive space for it!
I imagine this service had a low adoption rate and is costing Canonical money at a time when Mark is putting all his eggs in the phone/pc convergence basket.
To be honest. Ubuntu One never worked for me. Dropbox is a much better alternative.<p>What are other alternatives to Ubuntu One? If they are smart, the partner with dropbox.
I am trying to install Ubuntu One now. Just to see what happens. It tries to install but then gives a "The application has closed unexpectedly".<p>Are people who have Ubuntu One installed being notified? I backup with Ubuntu One and haven't got any 'imminent shutdown' messages.
Oh no, Ubuntu is shutting down a service despite "our users rely so heavily on the functionality"... clearly this means we must never trust Ubuntu again!<p>At least that's what people on HN say every time other companies launch something new.
The only reason it's not sustainable anymore is because send-all-my-searches-to-Amazon will be opt-in, so they will have to start paying for s3. The deal where Amazon would give away cloud storage for OS-level privacy has changes since they announced the opt-in.
Maybe the NSA came for their files and they don't want to shill on their users but also got one of those security letters so they can't say anything about it. Maybe this is a heroic move for us against the US government and we'll never know. Might explain the hasty timetable too.