> "Storing your data somewhere else where it gets held hostage in a proprietary format is a lot of pain waiting to happen."
Which isn't really all that different a situation from having your data held hostage in a proprietary format on your own machine. And now we all sound like RMS.
Somewhere along the line, most people draw a line between security and convenience. Some will get burned by this line. Others will appreciate the risk, plan accordingly and come out ahead for having had a fallback and profited from the convenience in the meantime.
It's harder to say where a reasonable exchange has been met when it comes to media. But for things like, say, Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn or even SaaS offerings like Salesforce and such -- who's to say a user wouldn't have gotten acceptable value from it before its inevitable end (or a change of terms such that the user won't get any more value than if it was simple closing forever)?
So, for most, the "pain waiting to happen" isn't, by itself, a deal-breaker. It's simply a cost that ought to be considered, but no different from any number of essentially-unknowable surprises this world saves for those who dare to make long term plans.
Which isn't really all that different a situation from having your data held hostage in a proprietary format on your own machine. And now we all sound like RMS.
Somewhere along the line, most people draw a line between security and convenience. Some will get burned by this line. Others will appreciate the risk, plan accordingly and come out ahead for having had a fallback and profited from the convenience in the meantime.
It's harder to say where a reasonable exchange has been met when it comes to media. But for things like, say, Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn or even SaaS offerings like Salesforce and such -- who's to say a user wouldn't have gotten acceptable value from it before its inevitable end (or a change of terms such that the user won't get any more value than if it was simple closing forever)?
So, for most, the "pain waiting to happen" isn't, by itself, a deal-breaker. It's simply a cost that ought to be considered, but no different from any number of essentially-unknowable surprises this world saves for those who dare to make long term plans.