Re: ANN: DataBasin 0.4

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

Richard Stallman wrote:
> This program is free software, but Sales Force seems like SaaS.
> How about making a free local replacement for it, starting from RT?
>
>    
Indeed, the program is free, but Salesforce is SaaS. That's the main 
point of DataBasin, allow people using free operating systems and 
platforms the freedom to interact with Salesforce. A longer term goal is 
to allow direct integration with free applications.

I don't think that a "local" version makes much sense at all. However, 
the "free" world will eventually need to make up its mind on how to cope 
with Saas and "the cloud". That's where the current hype is going and 
even with all the hot air and smoke, there is some substance. I don't 
have idea what the answer or the answers will be. But it is something 
that must be taken in consideration.
GNUstep could expand its GSWeb and use it as a foundation, however there 
is much more behind it to build a platform.

On the short term, one can build open stuff using the platform service 
like Heroku or more limitedly the force.com platform itself. However it 
doesn't feel like the real solution of course. Neither is just slapping 
a free app on an amazon E2C instance. The cloud itself is pretty 
undefined yet... so much ado.

However, I hope it doesn't turn out how the "free" desktop alternatives: 
many versions, none really complete, stable or better than the 
proprietary ones, when the world is already moving beyond the 
traditional desktop.

Just some thoughts and rants of course.

Riccardo