Did the timelines seem awfully aggressive to anyone? (June 1 service stops, July 31 all data is erased)
For a service that we were suppose to be syncing our lives to, that seems like a really abrupt, customer unfriendly ramp-down.
I would have expected something more like:
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.
Almost everyone will have at least one completely up-to-date copy of their files. It's just a matter of signing up for a competing service and re-uploading. Four months seems like a long enough time to accomplish that.
Two months notice plus two months of shutdown time? Luxury. If you want to see abrupt then MochiMedia's 2 weeks notice announcement that they were going away and taking with it probably the largest ad network for Flash games along with metrics, highscore systems, versioning, distribution and more was abrupt!
Everyone will wait the last second to get their data back (and complain about the cramped service) anyway. And it's not like an OS upgrade which could potentially break your apps or lose your data. It's just a mattee of pushing the sync button to get all your data back on your local drive. People will largely have time to find an alternative solution or buy a small storage device until EOS. Afaic, Ubuntu is pulling the plug on a very good service in a reasonable fashion: we should be thankful they kept it running for so long.
It was barely used and very easy to replace with free services like Dropbox. I'm sure the few users it did have are savvy enough to migrate off within the relatively short time frame.
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.
Yeah, and honestly the setup in early versions was horrible. I tried so many times to make it work and gave up in the end. They shouldn't have released it so early back then when it was obviously not production ready.
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.
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.
I'm disappointed by this, but not surprised. They haven't been doing anything with the product in a long time.
I had hoped that just meant it was a stable product.
For Google Drive, inSync works well on Linux: https://www.insynchq.com/linux (and supports multiple accounts which GDruve doesn't support on any platform)
Same here. I have been using Ubuntu One file services extensively on a free account while at university to backup my assignments, projects and whatnot.
I used the service because for me it was better than the Dropbox app and it integrated nicely in Unity (though that could have changed in the mean time, I haven't checked it in a while).
This being said, it did have its warts (for example sometimes when uploading a file the app hung for no reason; there was even one time when I had some files reverted to an older version).
I understand their decision and I think it is better to discontinue a service than to keep it running without improving it.
I guess it's time to switch...
You could try SugarSync? It's fairly flexible and, if you're the type of person who can stomach it, works flawlessly under wine. There are solid native mobile apps and a good web interface, too.
Google Drive's app on Mac is rubbish. No progress indication for uploads - yes! that basic feature is missing. You just get a tiny icon in the menu bar that flickers to indicate progress, and you are none the wiser. Google really are the "me too" company.
You could try ownCloud, though you have to go through setting it up (and have somewhere to run it). There are hosted solutions but I don't know how good they are.
"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"
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?
I believe they don't rely on it.
"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."
> 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?
From the article:
> Additionally, the free storage wars aren’t a sustainable place for us to be, particularly with other services now regularly offering 25GB-50GB free storage.
In other words, they can't compete with Dropbox, Box, SkyDrive, Google Drive, and whatever flavor of the week is next week. It's a distraction, so they're focusing on making the OS better and getting out of the cloud storage business.
They can probably tell that there are people who rely on it (active usage logs and all that), and to those people this is a Big Deal. But those are also the people that would be underserved by U1 going forward, so it's best if they get out now.
I think today is the 2nd of April, so they are providing 2 months less a day to continue using the service as normal, and an additional 2 months (for a total of 4) for users to download their data (but presumably not upload new data.)
I rely on it heavily. I have my home folder backed up and synced across machines on Ubuntu One. But I am using the free tier < 5GB. I will have to move on to other alternatives.
I guess it wouldn't have been sustainable for them, seeing as others are giving a lot more in free tier. So they would have had only a handful of paying customers.
"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"
"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."
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.
I'd rant more, but hey this is free software so I'll just switch to another distro.
I don't understand why you would choose a distribution based on a vague "strategic priority" statement you found on some web page rather than any technical reason. Maybe you just meant to complain about Unity for the 4 millionth instance on HN?
I was (and still am) honestly baffled that Canonical never went about building and marketing Ubuntu One as a home directory backup service.
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.
The standard Ubuntu install includes Deja Dup, which does encrypted backups to Ubuntu One. I don't remember ever seeing much marketing of this feature from Canonical, though.
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.
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?
I mean it really doesn't cost anything pushing your old code in a github repo or something.
That's not true. The code must be checked for licensing issues; certain parts may depend on components they don't intend to release, or on third-party ones they can't release. It must also be checked to make sure it doesn't have any security implications (credentials, information about internal architectures, etc). Finally, releasing it may expose them to patent attacks of which existence they might not even be aware.
Troubling that Ubuntu One wasn't already open source.
Can anyone explain to me why every cloud drive is using their own proprietary protocols to do the same thing? Why we have to install a different client for each vendor? That's one thing that annoys me greatly, and I'll never use Dropbox as long as its syncing tool is proprietary.
Does anyone else remember when companies were proud that they were the custodians of a file format? Once things went to the internet it seems like that stuff is no longer important to companies.
That's about as classy a product shutdown as you could wish for.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
If interested check out [MaidSafe.net](http://maidsafe.net) 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] rkalla|12 years ago|reply
For a service that we were suppose to be syncing our lives to, that seems like a really abrupt, customer unfriendly ramp-down.
I would have expected something more like:
[+] [-] jonknee|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Marazan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fzltrp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schmichael|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k_bx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etfb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jodi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skc|12 years ago|reply
What is that based on exactly?
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mylons|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyleregeto|12 years ago|reply
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.
I'm disappointed by this, but not surprised. They haven't been doing anything with the product in a long time.
I had hoped that just meant it was a stable product.
[+] [-] amatix|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucianp|12 years ago|reply
This being said, it did have its warts (for example sometimes when uploading a file the app hung for no reason; there was even one time when I had some files reverted to an older version).
I understand their decision and I think it is better to discontinue a service than to keep it running without improving it. I guess it's time to switch...
[+] [-] WaxProlix|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jafaku|12 years ago|reply
What do you mean? I used it for years on both Ubuntu and Fedora, never had an issue.
[+] [-] 72deluxe|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] broodbucket|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] izietto|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sz4kerto|12 years ago|reply
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?
I believe they don't rely on it.
"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."
1.5 months? Really?
[+] [-] oddevan|12 years ago|reply
From the article:
> Additionally, the free storage wars aren’t a sustainable place for us to be, particularly with other services now regularly offering 25GB-50GB free storage.
In other words, they can't compete with Dropbox, Box, SkyDrive, Google Drive, and whatever flavor of the week is next week. It's a distraction, so they're focusing on making the OS better and getting out of the cloud storage business.
They can probably tell that there are people who rely on it (active usage logs and all that), and to those people this is a Big Deal. But those are also the people that would be underserved by U1 going forward, so it's best if they get out now.
[+] [-] eli|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pessimizer|12 years ago|reply
Do you really find it strange that some users could rely on a service, but that service is also not worth continuing?
>If no, then why do you say they rely on it?
Which is more likely to be wrong?
1) There exist users that rely on Ubuntu One
2) There are absolutely no users that rely on Ubuntu One.
[+] [-] mediocrejoker|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alokm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jagger27|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oconnor663|12 years ago|reply
"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."
Very respectable.
[+] [-] shanemhansen|12 years ago|reply
I'd rant more, but hey this is free software so I'll just switch to another distro.
viva la divergence.
[+] [-] pekk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shrikant|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] voyou|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dayjah|12 years ago|reply
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.
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?
[1] Bring Your Own Cloud Storage
[+] [-] lawl|12 years ago|reply
I wish all companies would open source code they don't use anymore.
I mean it really doesn't cost anything pushing your old code in a github repo or something.
[+] [-] icebraining|12 years ago|reply
That's not true. The code must be checked for licensing issues; certain parts may depend on components they don't intend to release, or on third-party ones they can't release. It must also be checked to make sure it doesn't have any security implications (credentials, information about internal architectures, etc). Finally, releasing it may expose them to patent attacks of which existence they might not even be aware.
[+] [-] Touche|12 years ago|reply
Can anyone explain to me why every cloud drive is using their own proprietary protocols to do the same thing? Why we have to install a different client for each vendor? That's one thing that annoys me greatly, and I'll never use Dropbox as long as its syncing tool is proprietary.
Does anyone else remember when companies were proud that they were the custodians of a file format? Once things went to the internet it seems like that stuff is no longer important to companies.
[+] [-] davidcollantes|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tdobson|12 years ago|reply
You should have been OwnCloud, not a Dropbox wannabe.
[+] [-] jacquesm|12 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] Mikeb85|12 years ago|reply
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.
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...
[+] [-] ta_ackack|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] happybeing|12 years ago|reply
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.
If interested check out [MaidSafe.net](http://maidsafe.net) 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!
[+] [-] yason|12 years ago|reply
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.
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.
[+] [-] mariocesar|12 years ago|reply
However I'm very grateful they decided to opensource it, at least I have a hope to keep implementing it.
[+] [-] keithpeter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Piskvorrr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frade33|12 years ago|reply
>Our strategic priority for Ubuntu is making the best converged operating system for phones, tablets, desktops and more
If Ubuntu One wasn't of their strategic priorities, then certainly they didn't have their priorities right.
[+] [-] derekp7|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IgorPartola|12 years ago|reply
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.