What's going on with Ubuntu One? (Status reports in the interface)

[Scott Ritchie]

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne/Status seems to indicate a litany of
issues affecting the service, with most features either nonfunctional or
outright disabled.

A few users that I've introduced to Ubuntu have been complaining to me
privately (and some not so privately).  It's not clear to me where such
discussion is supposed to take place - wiki pages are not a forum,
scattered launchpad bug reports aren't accessible to common users, and
there doesn't seem to be a clear statement about what the main issue is
or when it's expected to be fixed (too much demand / too few servers?)

Particularly infuriating to some is that this is a paid service, and
there's no indication that it might not work or is partially disabled
until after purchasing.  That has made some people VERY angry.


The best place for communicating with users is, of course, their
desktop.  Perhaps it would be best if System->Preferences->Ubuntu One
had some sort of dynamic content area for messages from Canonical -
stuff like explanations for outages, current offerings or discounts, and
so on.  This at least would reduce the anger when things go wrong as it
would feel like a more active communication from Canonical.

Then again, perhaps I've simply missed the larger discussion elsewhere
(or perhaps I'm merely duplicating ideas that have been discussed
privately).

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie