The Kindness of strangers can defeat Proprietary Cloud Computing. Free Software

[ Thanks to steve
hill for this link. ]

“That is not immediately obvious. Like all good traps
it suckers you in before the wire noose tightens around your neck.
You don’t have any wire cutters in your rucksack but you do have
the GPL and free software to effect an escape. Can it save us from
vendor lock in and proprietary software?

“What’s wrong with proprietary clouds

“The hobbled nature of proprietary software is too well known to
need detailed reprising here: cost, interoperability, restrictions
on use, licences etc. Yet, when presented with the shiny baubles of
cloud computing users can take a rush of blood to the head like
lovers in the first flush of romance. They see a useful product,
they want it and they are in too much of a hurry to read the small
print. Well, we’ve all done it but that’s no excuse. Usually, you
read the small print after the website hosting you valuable data
has folded, hiked up the costs or you discover it has allowed data
mining and search engines indexing the site.”

Complete Story