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Between Google, Microsoft, and Apple, it's easy to find alternatives that offer free tiers with more storage than Dropbox. Alternatively, those of us around here should probably be switching to things like ownCloud or NextCloud*.

*Without stepping into the politics and history of what's gone on between the two, the short version is that NextCloud is a fork of ownCloud after ownCloud decided to switch to offering a free, open source version for personal use and a closed, paid version with more features for enterprise. Some of the ownCloud people didn't like that, so they forked it and started NextCloud. Both are regularly updated, and I have yet to actually use either so I can't recommend one, but I'm guessing I'll eventually set up NextCloud for myself.

ownCloud

Thank you.

Yes, this is something you can do with LibreOffice and some related tools.

(Your other option I guess would be Microsoft Office 365 Online, but I find - ironically perhaps - that their implementation of web and mobile "Office" to have poor compatibility with the desktop versions.)

Lots of people (like me) hate FaceBook because of the business model. But we must understand that FaceBook is a useful service. So any discussion about #DeleteFacebook needs to propose an alternative. The problem is that, in order to get around the "advertiser pays" model, people must be willing to accept some other model. Possibilities are a pay service, or a service where you host the data yourself and control it. The latter has been the way the web worked for decades. My friends and I all had "home pages" on our "web sites." There have been alternatives before, like Diaspora but none have gained critical mass. Oh wait look! Here's a list of them: Distributed social networking.

At the risk of making this a rant: Internet users today seem to have no concept that "web sites" are anything other than things that corporations buy. Some of those nice corporations let you put stuff on those sites, either for a fee or in exchange for intrusive monitoring. That's not how the web works. I've had my own web site for 20 years, and it costs me about $5/month. This idea that we should have our email addresses all at sites that record, monitor, and sell our emails is preposterous. Back in 1998, many of us predicted that everyone would have their own server in their home that ran their web site. And there would be standard protocols for exchanging social information, running something like OwnCloud. I don't know why that model changed. Is the FaceBook backlash enough to get us back onto that model?

If you want to get directions to a destination you have to turn on location services on your phone which then sends your location to a server to generate the maps/directions. You have the same problem if you're a runner or cyclist who wants to track their workouts. All of the data is stored and processed somewhere else.

Or you could use an offline maps app like OsmAnd~ and not need to use anything but GPS. (Even works on tablets.)

If you install a messenger/comms app on your phone it wants to read your contacts so you don't have to manually copy the entries over. Who knows what else that app does with the information?

In general, any comms app is a privacy risk because it uses network by design. The question is what does it have access to, not if it will transmit it. The best protection is looking at the code yourself and building it yourself, but few would do that due to the time and skill required to do so. That being said, I would use: Xabber.

If you use a hosted email service they have the ability to read your cleartext messages.

You clearly don't know how email works. ALL email is cleartext, regardless of storage location, unless you encrypt it yourself before sending it. Try using PGP. Is it a pain to set up? Depends on how well your favorite email client supports plugins. K-9 Mail supports encryption so my suggestion is to use it.

If you want your pictures automatically backed up to "the cloud" then the provider can access them.

In general using a "cloud" service really means "potential data mining" service. By definition, you're giving your data to someone else to hold. Unless you encrypt it first, it's going to be viewable to who / what ever you upload it to, and that's true regardless as to what the data is. (Password, Picture, SSN, A spreadsheet, an email, etc.)

That being said, if it's data sync between devices your primarily after, you could set up FreeNAS, or something like ownCloud locally. If it's the offsite storage you are after, compress the data, then encrypt it with something like APG before sending it (or something like AxCrypt for windows.). (More encryption tools for windows: http://lifehacker.com/five-bes...)

They would allow data to flow in from the Internet, but not back out.

They have that already. It's called "TV" and "Radio". The last component (that I didn't quote) already exists too and is called "sneakernet". (See also the recent increasing scrutiny and intrusion of digital devices by government agents if you want to see why that's becoming a less reliable transmission method.) Your idea would make the Internet completely useless as a communications medium for anyone except special interests who could afford being "allowed" to transmit to other devices. Make no mistake about saying that either, that's exactly what the *IAAs of the world want.

Granted the Internet is not secure, (It was never supposed to be. Insecure transmissions is at the heart of it's design and origin.) but there are methods to protect yourself if you choose to use them. They just require you (and others) to learn about them first. Rather than try to reinvent a propaganda machine, how about trying the tools available and teaching others about them instead? It would make everyone better off.

*Sidenote: I assume you are using a phone and not a PC. Most people are moving that way due to them not actually needing a workstation for

AFAIK, OwnCloud was forked by the original developers, after some policy disagreements with greedy investors. I was skeptical, but after listening to a FLOSS weekly pod-cast about nextcloud, I'm actually quite exited about the project. The version of OwnCloud shipped with Debian stable has been rock solid to me for years. For hosted OwnCloud, there are many alternatives: https://owncloud.org/providers.... The same goes for nextcloud: https://nextcloud.com/provider.... Thunderbird works well with standard IMAP servers.

Look, I've never used LTO so I could be talking out my ass, but I must disagree with this:

"For the purposes of photos or video a 2:1 ration would be a safe assumption to use."

Compressed video uses some of of the most advanced domain-specific file compression routines available, without going to the fractal-based stuff that NASA uses. There is no way that LTO's compression (or any other general compression routine) is going to put a dent in a H.265 compressed video file.

JPEG may show a 15-20% improvement, since the new JPEG encoding that DropBox developed showed a 22% improvement so there is some wriggle room in JPEG.

However, from what I've read I am very confident that LTO compression does wonders for general office files: databases, spreadsheets, accounts, documents, server logs, and so on.

BTW, I found the posts about LTO to be very interesting and I think I may invest in a second hand tape drive and start using it. One way to get more mileage out of the unit will be to prepare backups for family and friends. Currently I maintain two file servers at remote locations (home and office) and allow friends and family to backup to them via DropBox. If I had an LTO drive I could simply take snapshots of the DropBox backup folder and send the tapes off site. The security of the backups are low-risk, since the data is already encrypted by the DropBox client before it even leaves the user's PC. I'm not really happy with DropBox but for now it fills a need. Maybe in the future I will switch to something more powerful like OwnCloud.

What's the end-user alternative?

What we really need is to make a concerted effort towards replacing all these centralized web services with distributed equivalents:

• Google Search -> YaCy
• Gmail, Google Drive, etc. -> OwnCloud
• Google Maps -> OpenStreetMap
• Hangouts -> XMPP
• Youtube -> ???
• Facebook -> Diaspora
• Etc...

Is this what you need?
https://owncloud.org/
https://doc.owncloud.org/serve...

Get up and running in a few clicks.
https://www.turnkeylinux.org/o...

Is this what you need?
https://owncloud.org/
https://doc.owncloud.org/serve...

Get up and running in a few clicks.
https://www.turnkeylinux.org/o...

We're working with CERN, AARNet and others to bring ownCloud to a higher level of scalability. right now, petabyte level filesystems are no problem but going beyond that is hard. ownCloud 9.0 introduces changes to break through that barrier. See https://opensource.com/busines... for more info. Of course, if you're merely talking about a few hundred terrabyte of data, ownCloud won't have any issues with it if it's set up properly. I suggest you check out the deployment recommendations: https://doc.owncloud.org/serve... There is ONE performance issue left: very many (thousands) of very small (under 100 KB) files syncing with the client. With very large files and fat network pipes, you probably also should increase the chunck size in the client to improve network performance.

Well, considering how ownCloud probably does more than seafile to secure seafile... https://seacloud.cc/group/3/wi... yeah, that's reported by our security guy. The other reports got silently fixed - there's not much of a proper, transparent security process there. But if you believe it's more secure than ownCloud, good luck with earning money on ownCloud's lack of security: https://owncloud.org/security - check the hackerone program.

Ironic, since the news mentions code signings and you're pointing us to Softpedia.

News: https://owncloud.org/nine/

Download: https://owncloud.org/install

Ironic, since the news mentions code signings and you're pointing us to Softpedia.

News: https://owncloud.org/nine/

Download: https://owncloud.org/install

It's more like a press release or straight from some other website. It's a bit sloppy, because it's not linking to the original website announcement, but OwnCloud is a legitimate open-source project that's been around for years and fairly widely used.

I posted this back when Wuala shut down. Seems relevant again just a few months later.

I've been using Sync.com for the past year. They've been sort of in beta but releasing features. 5GB free.

SpiderOak is decent but they recently dropped their free plan, so not sure what's going on there.

MEGA was great but Kim.com said last week in Wired that the company is run by criminals

Tresorit is good but expensive. Maybe that's why they've been around so long.
Bitcasa pulled a Wuala last year and closed down their consumer cloud storage after a lawsuit. That's pretty much it.
There's OwnCloud which is do it yourself. And BitTorrent Sync which is kind of do it yourself but they've been adjusting pricing so it's bait and switch as well.

Honestly, a lot depends on whether or not you want FLOSS or non-FLOSS, paid on non-paid etc. Not to mention how much actual work you want to put into your system.

I have two, both of which are nominally "free". The first is OneNote that I use for work. It syncs across all my devices and works really well for someone who uses a Windows tablet as I can both write notes with my stylus and draw diagrams. This functionality alone makes it a stand-out awesome system for me as typically in the kinds of meetings I do (with customers) it's usually frowned upon to sit there with a screen in front of you and a keyboard, but if you have a pad flat on the table and can be seen to be writing notes, drawing diagrams etc. it makes a customer feel that I am much more engaged in the conversation. Believe me, I've seen it when my peers are tapping away at their keyboards the customers tend to look to me for input or information because they feel my colleague is not engaged. Some of my colleagues use pen and paper, but I find my method works best for me... I don't run out of ink or paper... though occasionally I do find my battery in my stylus dead. Oh... and even if I lost my tablet I'd still have my notes.

For my personal stuff I used to use Evernote because it was cross-platform. I didn't need handwriting... occasionally need pictures in a note etc. I even paid for premium for a while and I do still have many of my personal notes in it... though I use the free service now.

What I'm migrating to for personal notes is OwnNote which is an app for OwnCloud. This is a FLOSS environment that is free... but to set it up you do need a server that's on the Internet or at least accessible on your local intranet. The down side is a lack of fat client apps... offline sync and the like. It means that you need to be online to write notes. Now, there's an app for Android and one for iOS, but not for Windows or Linux (that I'm aware of, anyway). This means offline usage is pretty much out. Having said that, the API is open enough and I have enough coding skills that I might throw together a fat client at some point, or I might just wait until someone else does it and contribute. It hasn't been a big problem as yet simply because I am typically online wherever I need to take notes for personal consumption.

I host mine on a server at home and I deal with the front-end connectivity by having an OpenVPN network with a Linode fronting it using NGINX. This is overly complex, yes... I also host my own mail server and web site (still!) so this makes my life easier... but you could just as easily front it on a consumer-grade home connection using DynDNS or some other similar service. Of course, the nice thing about this setup is that it also gives me DropBox/OneDrive functionality that's private and owned by me. It's nice to have ALL my documents stored in a "cloud" because I can selectively sync across all my devices, and then I have a script that backs the whole thing up twice a week to S3/Glacier. Yeah, that's also an additional cost but it's cheaper and more convenient to me than a lot of the alternatives. And yes, my S3/Glacier backups are all encrypted :)

There's OwnCloud which is do it yourself.

Or there is hosted ownCloud provider like https://owndrive.com

I've been using Sync.com for the past year. They've been sort of in beta but releasing features. 5GB free.

SpiderOak is decent but they recently dropped their free plan, so not sure what's going on there.

MEGA was great but Kim.com said last week in Wired that the company is run by criminals

Tresorit is good but expensive. Maybe that's why they've been around so long.
Bitcasa pulled a Wuala last year and closed down their consumer cloud storage after a lawsuit. That's pretty much it. There's OwnCloud which is do it yourself. And BitTorrent Sync which is kind of do it yourself but they've been adjusting pricing so it's bait and switch as well.

Take a look at the features list at https://owncloud.org/features/. It seems to have what you want. I played with it a couple of years ago and it was easy to set up then. Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to try it in production.

But if you sync to the cloud, that is, transmit your incriminating video from you registered phone through a cell provider who has your credit card information to a storage provider who also has your credit card information, the cops can show up at your door, follow your car, and get "in your face" until they find something to hang you with.

http://www.freenas.org/downloa...
https://owncloud.org/install/
https://play.google.com/store/...
http://portforward.com/english...
http://www.startssl.com/

Or:
https://www.getsync.com/featur...
https://play.google.com/store/...

Either way, secured, real-time, SSL'd upload to your own server. No cloud vendors, and no credit cards.

I don't trust my data with any cloud storage company, because none of them can be trusted.

Most of my data gets backed up to encrypted disks that can be stored off-site.

Data that I need to access remotely, like my phone's calendar and contacts, live on my home server. It runs only the software that it needs, sits behind a firewall, and is updated with security patches regularly. It has a much smaller attack surface than any cloud storage company's data center, and is a much less interesting/valuable target for attackers.

Of course, running a personal server has long been the domain of people who have lots of computer admin knowledge, but that is starting to change. Projects like ownCloud, arkOS, and FreedomBox are working toward making it easy. Low-power server hardware is getting dirt cheap. It might not be long before anyone capable of using a smartphone or game console can set up their own file / calendar / contacts / mail / whatever server for under $100 (including storage).

Why do people insist in posting personal details in a place like Facebook?

Here is one valid use-case for Facebook... Our kid is growing and the small army of great- and grand- parents — as well as uncles and aunts — want to see as many pictures as there can be.

I host our collection on my own computer (FiOS rulez), but it is somewhat tedious to keep the collection up to date. Facebook, on the other hand, makes it much easier to get from snapping a picture to its world-wide availability.

Now, I am unlikely to give-in and open an FB-account — I'd rather figure out, how to automate such uploads myself (ownCloud sounds promising). But I do not (any longer) blame other people, who choose the easy way out. Why would they include optional personal details — I don't know either. Maybe, because they don't realize, it is optional?

Are there any mature open source projects that are trying to make personal cloud storage?

I suspect it depends on what "mature" means to you, but owncloud has been around for a little while now, and seems to be updated reasonably regularly. LDAP integration is beta, so it might not be suited to a corporate environment but, for home use, it has been fine for a while (2? 3? years now.)

There is a plug-in for it, which allows you to encrypt the files at rest within the server, but this did not work so well for me, as it never seemed to finish — I don't think I have a big archive, as it is only about 5GB, but they are mostly small documents (and so a lot of them), rather than images or video. Sync only via https can be forced as an option, which is great, and it works fine with self-generated certificates, after the usual "warning — do you want to trust this" dialogue on setup.

Since it uses a flat file structure on the server, no reason you could not rsync that to your chosen off-site storage as a cron job if you wanted, else there is a backup module which might do that for you anyway.

Not quite the same as BitTorrent Sync, but I have used owncloud for a while, as I prefer data to be on my infrastructure where possible. It was easy to set up, although was too slow on a Raspberry Pi to be useable, and I have not had much luck using the default sqlite. Now on a Debian VM with MySQL, and it's running just fine.

I would not make it publicly accessible, though, as it's just not worth the risk to me, so it only syncs when I am travelling after I have connected to the VPN. However, if you didn't have a static IP, a dynamic DNS service should do the job just fine of making it easily addressable externally.

Supposedly it has gotten a lot better in recent versions:
http://owncloud.org/blog/owncl...

Owncloud or Seafile.

Both run on your own hardware and use SSL for transport encryption. I think Owncloud supports server-side encryption (data sits encrypted on disk) but can't remember of Seafile does too.

I don't know how long ago you used OwnCloud, but it may be worth another look. OwnCloud has come onto the scene relatively recently and there have been major quality improvements as the version number increased. What may have been lacking a given feature or feeling kludgy in 4.x, could be replaced by a smooth implementation when 5.x rolls around. The latest OwnCloud 7.x highlights many of its most recent improvements here, for instance - https://owncloud.org/seven/ , some of which seem like they may be beneficial to you use cases. Likewise, improvements to the client apps seem to come almost as swiftly.

It may also be worthwhile to consider using other means to connect aside from the official clients - there are many applications that have integrated support for OwnCloud, and if the clients aren't working out to your liking, enabling say.. WebDAV/CardDAV/CalDAV etc.. and then connecting to these services with whatever best suits your users, can also be a worthwhile endeavor.

For enterprise production use, it doesn't seem like you should be reliant on community forums and documentation, as they have what appears to be subscription enterprise variants and support services, similar to many other high-end FOSS projects.

Now admittedly I've never worked with OwnCloud in a business environment as you describe and it may not be for your needs, but these are just a few things to consider as the software matures.

That said, perhaps DropBox could sell a self-hosted version of their software and bring over their ease-of-use.

That's already been done.

The challenge DropBox faces with a self-hosted iteration of its software is that it stops being 'simple'. Existing Dropbox clients would have to be completely rewritten to go from asking "username and password, please" to "username, password, server address, and port, please". Even if we hand-wave away that problem by assuming that users can either correctly type a server name and port number, or that Dropbox will still have 'accounts' but essentially become a DynDNS clone and simply handle network traversal and matching users to their data repositories, we then have to deal with the Dropbox Server software. There may be a market for Dropbox to sell drives like these, but I don't see Western Digital wanting to partner with Dropbox to provide redundant functionality to their existing apps, and I don't see consumers paying more for a Dropbox branded drive if they're already in the "self-contained NAS" market - a handful might, but now Dropbox, for all intents and purposes, finds itself with all the challenges of being an external hard drive vendor...with the added bonus of directly competing with the vendors from whom they're sourcing their parts.

The obvious alternative to this would be for them to sell their software and let it run on a LAMP/WAMP stack, on whatever hardware is on hand, and market it to the enthusiast/enterprise market, like UnRAID or Nexenta. That might be a short term win, especially if they do some fancy stuff with LDAP/Active Directory integration. Conversely, I see it potentially being a support nightmare based on how it deals with storage. Will it install on an Ubuntu desktop containing a hodgepodge of hard disks? Would it be more like FreeNAS where it makes its own software RAID, but requires hardware to be dedicated (or its own VM)? Even at that, how do they bill for the software? One-time use seems like it wouldn't be a good long-term plan, but I don't see too many users being okay with Dropbox charging them an annual fee to use their own hard drives. CALs could be a useful method (arguably the most workable one), but they'd have a hard time managing their consumer-friendly image on one hand with Oracle-style licensing on the other.

Levie is right; 'free' isn't a business model. Dropbox's 2GB number is only sustainable because they're betting that a certain number of those users will go for a paid tier. Either every Dropbox customer will pay, or they start advertising, or they data mine. To my knowledge, those are the three business models that have sustained themselves on the internet. 'Everyone Pays' may be a viable model if Dropbox can do things like sell gift cards for their service (for users unable/unwilling to fork over their Mastercard) and come up with the right formula of how much customers are really willing to pay for storage+ubiquity+simplicity. Although Levie must certainly be feeling the pinch from Microsoft's 1TB of OneDrive for $60/year, the one client we attempted to migrate to that service went back to dropbox VERY quickly because the desktop client was utter crap; I'm left to believe that Dropbox's simplicity still has an edge just yet. Conversely, I don't think that $50/month for 500GB is worthwhile, either - That's only slightly less than it'd cost to buy a 500GB hard disk outright from Newegg every month.

Dropbox is still a well-recognized brand that I'm certain many consumers are still willing to pay a premium for, and Microsoft and Google are competing not only with more storage for less money, but with integration as well - editing a spreadsheet in Sheets or Excel and seamless saving of attachments is not the kind of thing that Dropbox can effectively compete with.

I, similarly, have a FreeNAS box set up in my house. I like the plugin architecture that makes setting up the jails easliy. One of the plugins is for owncloud. I love it. It works exactly like dropbox. It's cross-platform, it's open source, and does all transmissions over HTTPS. The android client (available on F-DROID) allows auto-uploading of pictures, too. Highly recommended.

Seriously , why do so many people thinking transfering files is some new problem still looking for a solution? I can understand it for Windows users but Linux users really should know better.

Because FTP only supplies the transport layer - it's not going to automatically sync the 1000 files you dropped in the FTP directory and won't do the many-to-many replication that people use to share files among multiple desktops. Even rsync gets a little cumbersome for that without a central server that they all have access to, and if you're going to set up a server, you may as well set up something like OwnCloud.

One drawback of ownCloud is that you'll probably have to either pay to lease an account from these guys or pay to upgrade your Internet connection to business class in order to satisfy TOS or CGNAT restrictions imposed by the ISP serving your area against running an externally accessible server at home.

Another thing about the list of providers confuses me: Why does saxonsitsolutions.com.au have the Great Britain flag next to it when .com.au means Australia? And why does it have the Great Britain flag on OwnDrive, which is based in Norway? Hmmm....

One drawback of ownCloud is that you'll probably have to either pay to lease an account from these guys or pay to upgrade your Internet connection to business class in order to satisfy TOS or CGNAT restrictions imposed by the ISP serving your area against running an externally accessible server at home.

Another thing about the list of providers confuses me: Why does saxonsitsolutions.com.au have the Great Britain flag next to it when .com.au means Australia? And why does it have the Great Britain flag on OwnDrive, which is based in Norway? Hmmm....

Clients for every platform. Server distributions for every platform. Mobile clients too. Runs on HTTPS.

1. 1. Download the community edition from any of the repositories found on https://owncloud.org/
2. 2. Install using wizard - if you pick SQLite as the database, there is nothing to install for the database - configure to force SSL connections
3. 3. Setup your router to forward 443 to the box you've set up
4. 4. Setup a dyndns or similar IP address (or your own domain name) to said IP address.
5. 5. Install client (desktop or mobile) and start accessing using https://yourserver-or-ip-addre... as the URL

I've set up something similar for my family - love it. I've also set up something simliar for our enterprise. No complaints about the regular feature set. Just some of the enterprise level things could do with a little more work.

Amazon with OwnCloud

What other solution is there? Now that most Fortune 500 companies have outsourced their IT services, what the heck is the point of worrying about other entities having access to this information?

Well you could pick a cloud provider that does not know your encryption key at all. That way you get the the advantages of collaboration without the public exposure.
Or you could set up OwnCloud.

Admittedly these to not offer all the advantages of Plus and Drive.

Sounds like what OwnCloud does, but I don't know all the details of how it works.

Unless you don't give a damn about the confidentiality of your data.

If you don't fancy setting up your own server at home, try http://owncloud.org/
Advantage is clients available for many platforms, including Android.

If that's too hard, and/or you want 24/7/365, pick a hosting solution in the country of your choice.
Difficult to know which one to pick, tho'.

That's why I run an OwnCloud server. Then I only have myself to blame.

https://owncloud.org/

Keep the masters in a private cloud and sync to it from your PCs. Git and other multi-user SVN is an idea, too. Also, SharePoint is excellent (but lots of overhead).

With the close of google reader I switched to OwnCloud News running on my own hardware.

Pro: Not reliant on others, Con: I only have myself to blame if I go offline =)

As cool as using bittorrent protocol would be, at least owncloud's developers do release the source code, and there are sync clients too. It may not be distributed (it requires a regular server setup), but I'll take that over not having the code.

Indeed. Blessed be OwnCloud.

That I can host my own server for.

http://owncloud.org/

I have an instance of OwnCloud setup at home. I use it mostly for syncing contact and calendar data. I'm even subscribed to my girlfriends calendar and vice versa. The WebDav part I only really use as a quick way to get files from one device to another, and by device I mean smartphone, tablets as well as proper computers.

When Google announced the closure of Reader, OwnCloud started work on a news reader app too. I've been running it since the beta and I'm very happy.

If you have an old machine that can run Linux Mint (or other distributions), set up OwnCloud on your own machine, and enable encryption. It's open source, including the sync clients.

Maybe that Owncloud thing will work well to handle the storage and access. Anyone knows if its search function is any good?

I was in a similar siatuation a while ago and chose to host everything on my own. Sure it means a bit of work (and I have to admit I'm not quite done yet) but if you enjoy sysadmin stuff it's not too time-consuming and you might be able to learn something, i.e. I chose to use FreeBSD which I'd never used before. Plus things like owncloud should make calendar and contacts synchronization quite simple without relying on third parties to keep their services running.

Of course the major downside is that you will have to do backups and hard drive replacements on your own. With a reasonable RAID configuration and using one of the many cloud storage providers for (of course highly encrypted) backups that shouldn't be too bad though.

Or you could do something in between, i.e. rent a "server" from somebody like amazon or gandi if you don't want to worry about hardware.

To me, the small amount of work and money that is required to run my own infrastructure is certainly worth it not to have to trust a third party with my data, plus running your own things gives you great options for random hacks and fun little projects.

Agreed! http://owncloud.org/

You could possibly run http://owncloud.org/ yourself on an Amazon server and have as much storage as you want. There are clients for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android.

It took me 30 minutes to set one up. While I may sound like an advert, I am just really excited as I have been waiting for something like this for years.

I think European companies that need to keep data inside Europe for regulatory reasons can then run this for their employees inside their firewalls / VPNs.