Re: ANN: DataBasin 0.4

[Ivan Vučica]

On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 13:02, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

We define SaaS as doing your own computing in someone else's server.

That is always bad, because you lose control of your computer that way.
We must develop local replacements to do the computing people want to do.

I'm using Gmail because I don't have the finances to run my own hosting and backup infrastructure, and I want to be able to access my data on any machine I log on to. I'm pretty sure that people that use Salesforce and other conceptually similar platforms also want to cut costs.

Having own server is definitely always great. It's however not cost effective for me, especially since I am a student. But if Google makes a bad move, I can still pull out, since most people are directed to contact me via an email address on my personal domain. At the moment, I'm not switching away, despite Gmail software being locked down and despite potential privacy issues.

From what I can understand from the DataBasin's GAP page (especially the screenshots), without having an actual knowledge of what Salesforce offers:

  http://gap.nongnu.org/databasin/index.html

one of DataBasin's primary uses is to extract ("liberate") the data. It also appears to me that a free software alternative to Salesforce is, for example, SugarCRM. There are other free CRMs.

Using DataBasin with a local equivalent of Salesforce also seems to make little sense, since the data is already easily accessible via the database backend's admin tools (for example, PostgreSQL's or MySQL's admin tools). 

Perhaps I am missing something. :)

-- 

Ivan Vučica - ivan@vucica.net