Pre-cursor note (just in case): This isn't an official Ubuntu One post. For those, go to the Ubuntu One blog. I just work for them, and I have my own opinions.
Today I submitted and landed the branch that will kill the web UI for Ubuntu One notes. Users can still use Tomboy to sync, but you won't be able to access them from the web. I know a vocal minority is upset about this. To those, it's unfortunate. I'm sorry. However, I think the decision was a great one.
The work was done in two branches. The first removed the links on the website and python views and entries in urls.py (it's no secret that our web app uses Django). The second one removes everything else: css, javascript, javascript dependencies, and the rest of the python files. Here's the diffstat of that second branch: 103735 lines (+3/-103093) 92 files modified
Think about that: more than 100k lines of code removed there. Sure, we didn't write some of that, but we sure as hell needed to maintain it (it's our attitude that we own the stack). Think about all the hidden bugs in there. Speaking as someone who knew that code intimately (it was one of my first tasks to re-factor it when I first came to Ubuntu One), there's also a lot of technical debt there1.
If code is liability, that's a lot of liability.
We didn't see that much usage of the Web UI for Notes. One of the reasons I was re-factoring it a year ago was so that we could make it less fragile. It broke a lot. Automated tests probably would have caught that, but the fact that users didn't notice when it broke is indicative of a feature that isn't being used. Even after it was refactored, there were browser bugs that would occasionally surface, but no one seemed to notice.
If features are an asset, Notes on the web were an asset that few people valued.
I'm not a business guy, but it makes total sense for us to reduce the liability with little real cost. Our team is small (but quick and amazing), so the less time we spend maintaining unused features, the more time we can spend making things that are awesome (and we are doing amazing things; stay tuned).
The last thing that I want to address is this question that keeps getting asked in some form or another: Why not make it open source and have the community maintain it? Here's how I respond to that: You don't get bored of a piece of software and punt it to open source. You also can't think "Oh, the community will pick this up." They won't. You can't just assume there will be a "community" for it. If you can't hold someone responsible for its maintenance, you can't expect it to be maintained.
1 Technical debt is a fact of life on any development team, and specifically one a team that moves as quickly and kicks as much ass as the Ubuntu One team. We try to mitigate it where we can, but it's a balancing act.