* if the maintainer is no longer able to take the project further, the code is still there an can be used as is, maybe with a few bugfixes. (ala, thunderbird). The code does not disappear overnight. r.
* All the associated data is still yours and available. So no information is lost.
* If it is very critical, you can develop it yourself further
I am not an user of Inbox, but I can understand the outrage. When a service is offered for free by such a mammoth of a company, it gives a false sense of security and permanence. It crushes most competition and development of open source alternatives. Then one fine day, the rug is pulled from under your feet and there is no recourse.
The most ironic aspect is you no longer have access to your pinned emails, bundles and such. Yet, somewhere in google's distributed data storage, it will continue to reside for a long long time. The information asymmetry is outrageous.
> ...It crushes most competition and development of open source alternatives....
This is the aspect, above all the others, that bothers me. Apple is guilty of this too. As soon as a project or tool is released free or as part of the OS or whatever, it drives any competing version out of business. Does it matter if the implementation is shitty? No, because it will still be "good enough" for enough users to make that competition unviable. Does it matter if the implementation stops being developed and eventually gets pulled? No, because the competition has already been driven out.
If somehow the big company that pulls this (Google, Apple, etc) were to seriously commit to maintaining the project, hm, ok, fine I guess. But of course they've repeatedly shown that they won't do that.
The 'bundles' and pinned emails are not lost - they are all just 'labels' under the hood, and they can be found back in gmail as well (except for a couple, I think travel doesn't carry over)
You bring up a good point, it seems as though the answer is to invest more into open source mail clients that can offer more since there truly is value in an improved mail UI.
* if the maintainer is no longer able to take the project further, the code is still there an can be used as is, maybe with a few bugfixes. (ala, thunderbird). The code does not disappear overnight. r.
* All the associated data is still yours and available. So no information is lost.
* If it is very critical, you can develop it yourself further
I am not an user of Inbox, but I can understand the outrage. When a service is offered for free by such a mammoth of a company, it gives a false sense of security and permanence. It crushes most competition and development of open source alternatives. Then one fine day, the rug is pulled from under your feet and there is no recourse.
The most ironic aspect is you no longer have access to your pinned emails, bundles and such. Yet, somewhere in google's distributed data storage, it will continue to reside for a long long time. The information asymmetry is outrageous.