EOL for couchdb and desktopcouch

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad]

Den 22. nov. 2011 15:09, skrev Shane Fagan:
> In fairness to the original idea of using couchdb it is a great idea 
> and showed a lot of promise and it was a fair amount of time ago that 
> the choice was made to use it and between that time they got it to a 
> state where it was doing more or less what they had envisioned. The 
> problem here is there is no other company using couchdb at this scale 
> and there is a point where its not quite feasible to keep it going. 
> This isn't canonical flip flopping between technologies on a whim its 
> the scales of feasibility tipping to the wrong side. 

That would be a very good reason to keep it in beta. It is usually a 
good idea to test things before you release them to the public. By 
announcing Ubuntu One as stable, reliable and available, they've fooled 
people into spending time and money on something that isn't real.

> I know what you mean here there are a few apps using it but if you 
> think about it wouldn't you cause inconvenience to a small minority 
> (and yes it is a bit of a minority using desktopcouch at the moment) 
> to improve the scalability and sustainability and pick or make 
> something that is a lot more suited to the task. That is the choice 
> that they had to make. Personally I had nothing to do with the 
> decision and im not even going to pretend that but its really 
> important to read the EOL email with care and see it from the business 
> point of view that they had to make a choice and do it before they ran 
> into serious issues. 

Would I tear down an infrastructure that I had convinced a lot of people 
to rely on before I had something to replace it with? Absolutely not. 
Not in my wildest dreams. They show a level of respect that would fit 
between the strings of the worlds smallest violin.

> Deprecating things is a natural process of development. Out with the 
> old and in with the more suited until something different comes along 
> that is better its a cycle. It might seem rash and I know the 
> disappointment but still its something natural that happens to systems 
> over time things have to change before you hit the wall and you run 
> into an issue when thousands of programs depend on a library that is 
> fundamentally flawed and you have to ship it rather than break too 
> many things. The truth is the sooner the better that they pushed out 
> couchdb. 

Are you saying that DesktopCouch is fundamentally flawed, or are you 
saying that Ubuntu One is fundamentally flawed? Because those are 
different things. You talk about natural deprecation of old 
technologies. But you are describing something entirely different than 
the actual situation. In your scenario, you're replacing a technology to 
provide a feature with something else. That's not the case here. They're 
removing the feature altogether, deleting databases. Some time in the 
future, we might see a replacement, though the claim seems completely 
unreasonable to me -- irrational, even. They claim that they can't make 
CouchDB in Ubuntu scale, so they need to replace it with something that 
will handle all platforms and all databases, which obviously includes 
CouchDB. Seems to me that they're saying it was too difficult to learn 
how to ride a bicycle with training wheels, so now they're joining the 
Tour de France.

I've lost confidence. I don't believe a word of it. And that's sad.

Jo-Erlend Schinstad