Mandriva and Ubuntu both seem to think that companion services to complement their distributions are a good idea, and I agree. These services, which, so far, usually involve paid cloud storage and/or backup,  offer a potential revenue stream for companies that may not otherwise make much money.

At the same time, though, these services cannot become completely separated from the distribution. Instead, these services must remain primarily a feature of the distribution. Though making the software and services cross-platform is a great idea, there should still be some incentive to use the company’s own distribution over other operating systems.

Ensuring that companion services are always a feature of the distribution is esesential to pushing the distribution foward. Without this link, the two products become completely separated and neither benefits the other.

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