Windows set for Ubuntu cloud storage?

published 25 January 2010

Windows users could be set to get Ubuntu cloud storage on their PCs.

A posting on the Python Community Conference website is asking for developers to sign up to project "Sprint" to help work out details of how to make the service compatible with Windows, during the event in February.

The open source Ubuntu One service gives Ubuntu operating system users 2GB of free online storage upon installation with the option of upping this capacity to 50GB for a monthly fee of $10.

Eliot Murphy, who runs the engineering team for Ubuntu One, confirmed to IT PRO it would be working on the prospect of Windows compatibility but a release date is dependent on the success of the developer meeting.

"The sprint at PyCon is an opportunity for us to test the waters and explore how much work is involved in porting the code to Windows," said Murphy.

"If it turns out to be easy, well then yes we'd likely try and find a way to provide a Windows client. However, it's just too early to say, a lot depends on how many developers get involved in making the code run on Windows."

He concluded: "I'm very excited about the possibility of other platforms, but don't want to set any false expectations: we currently have no dates or concrete plans for shipping Ubuntu One clients on platforms other than Ubuntu, but since the client code is open source the community is free to do so and I hope it happens."

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.