I recently migrated over to Google Apps Gmail from my own personally managed, rock solid Postfix server. I am comfortable with Gmail because, although I don't

I recently migrated over to Google Apps Gmail from my own personally managed, rock solid Postfix server. I am comfortable with Gmail because, although I don't own the code, I still own my data. See also: http://www.dataliberation.org/ http://www.dataliberation.org/ --- Nothing is truly free as in beer. Free software doesn't cost me my money. Free software costs me my time. Gmail is cheaper in this regard. I look at Gmail much the same way I look at my hosting provider: I don't own their infrastructure, data center or connectivity, but those are all sufficiently fungible that I can migrate away at any time. --- The "new free" is all about owning and freeing your data. Owning your identity. As long as I own my domains, as long as I don't lock my data into a closed system with proprietary formats, I feel free. Now, registrars and domains are what really make me nervous...