Re: Question to candidates: on-line services

[Andre Klapper <ak-47 gmx net>]

On Fri, 2011-05-27 at 00:27 +0200, Gil Forcada wrote:
> Everyday more and more services are offered on the cloud and there's
> also initiatives powered by Free Software (tomboy on-line...).
> 
> One of the main problems for Free Software projects providing cloud
> services is the hardware/administration/connection expenses which are
> mostly a no-go for a Free Software project without any backing from a
> big corporation.
> 
> As a member of a the future board will you look for ways to promote and
> look for resources to offer these free software cloud services? Maybe
> part of a funding campaign (be a Friend of GNOME and have a Tomboy
> on-line account for free).

I don't have a strong opinion on GNOME's take on this (hence also my
late answer). :)

GNOME could recommend using free (as in speech) services but must not
exclude users from using popular closed services either.
A (naive?) idea could be to highlight those services being free in
online service account creation dialogs that exist in GNOME.

With regard to hosting services ourselves we might miss developers (as
fredp pointed out), and input from the infrastructure team is required
on potential hardware limitations that we might run into by providing
more services ourselves.

While a service provided by GNOME should be free (as in both speech and
beer) it could still create some revenue by either advertising Friends
of GNOME and values of freedom, or also by providing additional paid
services (but that's rather up to its developers and maintainers IMO).

andre
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