@pbacot said:
It occurs to me that one outcome is that the developers may make "updates" that are unpopular and no one can do anything about it. Users can't hold back using a better version because the only version they'll have access to is the updated one.
"updates that are unpopular" - now what sort of a company would do a thing like that!?
Also makes me think of possible 'legacy' and 'migration' issues.
For example, our company once purchased the assets of a failing business - a range of products that we felt we could modernise and make commercially viable. Most of the CAD files, BOM databases etc. were in ancient formats that our in-house software did not support.
But, fortunately, the installation disks for the original software were among the assets we purchased - the starting point for re-formatting the data for an automated migration. If the 'cloud' model becomes the standard for software distribution, such things will no longer be possible - or maybe only provided by "legacy software hosts" who would charge a small fortune for their specialist services.
Given the recent revelations about the NSA's 'data snooping' capabilities, one also has to wonder about the safety of the data being transferred.
The assurances of the big software companies that they wouldn't collaborate with such snooping are surely disengenuous given their previous track record - e.g. after the way Google rolled over backwards to enable Chinese internet censorship, why should we believe that they wouldn't co-operate equally enthusiastically with any other 'friendly' security agency?
And the US laws governing the human right of US citizens do not even apply to the data of foreign citizens who happen to be accessing US servers (no doubt likewise for other jurisdictions).
The 'human rights' aspects of this is only one part. There have been many times in history where security agencies have indulged in industrial espionage to appropriate technology - and once everybody's 'work' is floating in the cloud, the door is opened for the exploitation of all kinds of research and development for purposes for which they were not intended.
