to autodownload or not to autodownload

[Kevin Kofler]

Trond Danielsen <trond.danielsen <at> gmail.com> writes:
> 1. Online-desktop: The world of free software has "fought" proprietary
> software for many years, only to partner up with the WWW behemoth that
> Google is. The purpose of the online-desktop is to integrate online
> services like flickr and Google with the rest of the system. Despite
> their public APIs online services are proprietary software just like
> Microsoft Office. Should we ban any application that makes it easy to
> access such services?

I think we're running down a dangerous slippery slope with that online desktop. 
We're basically turning users from Free Software users to proprietary web 
service users who only use the Free Software to access those web services (also 
making us instantly substitutable by the next best completely 
proprietary "sexy" web client, iPhone anyone?). And those web services are even 
more proprietary than local proprietary software, because, for example, you 
can't even control when to upgrade to a new version (which is often worse) and 
because the potential for lock-in is even greater when all the data is stored 
on the remote host. There are also worrying security and privacy implications 
of trusting your data to remote servers.

The irony is that your message comes stuffed into a VCALENDAR file produced by 
Google Calendar. Look at the mailing list archives to see what a mess that is:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-February/msg00492.html
That's a perfect example of why you shouldn't use Google for everything. Please 
send plain-text mail next time!

        Kevin Kofler