I signed up for shells.com today because they are advertised on the kde neon site and I wanted to have a little test box to try out kde neon on.
Everything is fine in the beginning, I try to change to kde neon testing, but I get “image not found” error. Strike one.
I try to change my server location because it was in Germany and I’m us-west. I change location to LA and then it says “server not available in region”. Then it errors. Button says “contact us”. I click it. Page fails to load. I click discord link. Discord link is invalid. I click twitter. No posts. I click reddit, and it’s some dude who is like “there is no shells.com support, join my irc channel and I’ll try to help you”.
Now I can’t even see my shell because of an error screen.
I suggest KDE neon takes shells.com link off their website. It’s not a good company and I feel slightly angry it was the KDE project that recommended them to me.
Delving into the web site’s Legal Notice – “Conditions d’utilisation” – it seems that, it’s published, owned, and operated by E Shells, Inc. …
Searching for the company “E Shells, Inc.” reveals that:
The Headquarters is located in Greater Los Angeles Area, West Coast, Western US.
The Founder is Alex Lee – the company was founded in 2020.
The company is also known as “SHELLSCLOUD” …
Shells is a cloud desktop experience anywhere, anytime, with any device.
Looking into the web site’s Privacy Policy – “Politique de confidentialité” – the following is stated –
Your California Rights
Pursuant to California Civil Code Section 1798.83, we will not disclose or share your Personal Information with third parties for the purposes of third-party marketing to you without your prior consent.
Other than as disclosed in this Policy, the Platforms do not track users over time and across third-party websites to provide targeted advertising. Therefore, the Platforms do not operate any differently when it receives Do Not Track (“DNT”) signals from your internet web browser.
For Platforms’ Users Outside of the United States
We do not warrant or represent this Policy or the Platforms’ use of your Personal Information complies with the laws of any other jurisdiction. Furthermore, to provide you with our services, we may store, process, and transmit information in the United States and other locations around the world, including countries that may not have the same privacy and security laws as yours. Regardless of the country in which such information is stored, we will process your Personal Information in accordance with this Policy.
So yes, KDE e.V. needs money and therefore, there are companies who pay to advertise their products on the KDE e.V. web sites.
To assume that, “Open Source” can exist without any funding is somewhat naive – the electricity bill for the servers has to be paid and, if it ain’t paid, the electricity company has absolutely no 2nd thoughts about turning the power off …
The servers have to be either bought or, donated or, leased …
The Internet connection has to be paid for – ISPs are exactly like power companies – if the bill isn’t paid, the service will be terminated …
not sure what you expected from a .com address, but generally they are run for profit… so if they are offering you something for free, then YOU are the product.
if you don’t care for their services you are free to ignore them and find an alternative, like any other 3rd party contribution to the KDE universe.
maybe describe a little more about the problem you are trying to solve and you can get some suggestions here.
Good points of course.. but, to add two cents to it, one just hopes “Open Source” doesn’t become too beholden to those entities with deep pockets and long term agendas..
It already has, with regards to permissive licenses. 0-3 clause BSD licensing is very popular with big corps, same with the MIT license. The only one they won’t touch is GPL, which thankfully KDE is almost entirely under save for the user libraries which is LGPL.
Looking at “Open Source” in general and, Richard Stallman, GNU Public License and the Free Software Foundation in particular and also, “commercial Linux” – Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical – as well as and also:
Which ever way you look at it, these entities all have commercial turnover – money flows …
Stallman, Shuttleworth and, their employees, all need to be paid if they’re going to be able to afford their living costs.
Therefore, advertisers are a welcome source of revenue, regardless of their business methods –
“Open Source” as such, simply cannot exist on thin-air – money is needed for the day-to-day expenses “Open Source” is faced with.