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Open Source Alternative To Dropbox?
garry_g writes "While 'the cloud' may be one of the major buzzwords of the Internet industry, anybody concerned with security and privacy will most likely not touch it with a 10-foot pole. While I am guilty of using Dropbox for occasional data storage or quick picture snaps with my Android phone, I do watch out not to store anything important on there (or incriminating), no matter what the "privacy policy" may be. I was wondering: what useful alternative is there to Dropbox on the FOSS market, which will allow access by both windows/linux boxes, but also mobile devices (specifically Android). I know there are front-end add ons for Windows (and Linux tools of course) e.g. for SVN, but most likely no implementations for mobile use as far as I can tell... And, of course, the backend should run on a Linux box ;)"
Sparkleshare is still under development, and it seems to have the most traction of any user-friendly project. When released, it will be the open-source Dropbox replacement.
I agree though, it's very hard to get rid of the convenience of Dropbox. Not just for saving files, but for syncing your configuration across machines (save your .dotFiles in ~/Dropbox and then symlink to ~/). But when they refuse to support the BSD's (2 out of the 4 machines I regularly work on), and their Linux implementation starting requiring disabling SELinux, they pretty much did it to themselves. Not to mention the whole thing where the Dropbox CTO admitted they could look at your files if they wanted.
The World is Yours.
It has been a cloud type service that has been around for how long? Granted it's not private, but all you have to do is encrypt your files. And as for privacy, considering the things that people continuously post there, and don't get caught, speaks to the possibilities. Yeah I suppose, data retention has only in the last few years gotten good enough to make a difference. But there have got to be some things we could learn about making the cloud work better from it.
Ubuntu One, but the server-side is proprietary. And it is rather buggy on other platforms.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
There are some decent-looking hosted alternatives to dropbox which do client-side encryption. I've looked into this a bit, but I haven't tried any of these yet, so YMMV...
One particularly interesting one is TarSnap. The best part is the client is OSS, so you can verify that encryption is done properly (strong & client-side). You could even reverse the protocol and design your own server software, if you want.
http://www.tarsnap.com/
Another interesting one is SpiderOak. However their client is not OSS, so you have to trust that they're doing the encryption properly
https://spideroak.com/
Here are some other potential hosts, but I'm not sure exactly how proper the encryption is:
http://www.boxcryptor.com/
http://syncplicity.com/products/
This. Just create a truecrypt image on Dropbox and the privacy issues are solved. If there are other problems, like unsupported clients and whatnot like someone mentioned in a comment, then it might be wise to look elsewhere.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Dropbox is secure - just use PGP to encrypt everything you put up there, and decrypt it upon arrival at your host machine. I suppose that would require a jail-broken Android, but that's not all bad... I don't generally accept arguments that the cloud isn't secure. It is, if used correctly (see above). The cloud is like a public restroom - you treat it differently than the one in your house by being much more conscious about cleanliness and such (in the cloud, more conscious about security), but it's perfectly acceptable to use both.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
Why is SVN being compared to DropBox? There's no mobile app for SVN access because, typically, people don't do development on their phones...
Why would he need dropbox for pictures snapped from his android phone?
If he has Android, he has google.
If he has google he has Picasa.
If he has picasa his android will sync with it at will.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I've had personal and business accounts at rsync.net going back over 5 years.
It's simple, it's straightforward, and it works out of the box with everything I use.
Oh, and there's this:
http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt
It's not the cheapest offering, but my employers' account @ 2TB is around 28 cents/GB, per month.
On the open-source front, the only option I know is ownCloud. It provides the software to build your 'Cloud' storage, but you must provide your own hardware.
On the other side, you can try Wuala. It is not Open Source, but it encrypts all your files before uploading them. There are clients for almost every platform.
MOD THE CHILD UP!
Novell open-sourced ifolder. there are clients for linux, windows, mac, and even iphone. Someone just needs to write a client for android.
We are implementing it on a large scale, with Active Directory integration, and 270 mobile laptop users. I understand novell is moving to neutron (their new file/folder sync technology). It should solve some of the issues we had, such as integrating with a windows server, however it will not be open-source. We just used the ifolder client, and a proxy user for everyone's folder to bypass that issue. We looked extensively for a solution, and settled on ifolder, however mobile phones weren't part of the requirement.
I put a Linux box with an SSH server and rsync on my FIOS line. Then I use rsync for Android to sync file shares between the Linux box and my Android tablet. This has been working fine for me. It might even be more secure than Dropbox.
I believe that rsync is able to cover most of dropbox's features, if not all. By using rsync you aren't bound to any service provider or even internet access. You may not have the flashy web interface and flashy android/desktop client but it is somewhat trivial to implement a front-end to rsync that abstracts all implementation details. If you wish to have some sort of history log then you can always set your clients to implement some form of incremental backup of your repository.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
And which one are any good?
That's what bothers me about the "let me google that for you" crowd. Google is a search engine. It is no expert system, and it certainly makes no recommendation based on certain qualities of a product.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sounds like you're looking for ownCloud. It's still under heavy development but the file storage functions work very well and it's accessible on Mac, Windows & Linux via webdav and from everywhere else via a web interface. There are also a couple of mobile apps in the works and it runs on a standard LAMP stack. http://owncloud.org/index.php/Main_Page And a blog post about the current status: http://owncloudtest.blogspot.com/2011/06/owncloud-20-just-merged-with.html
I've always pictured the color of OS zealotry as a sort of bright flamingo pinkish hue
Rent a system at rackspace or a similar place; run linux on it?
How do you keep the people that have physical access to your machine from messing with your files?
A video camera and an attached shotgun.
Perhaps I'm trolling, perhaps I'm not.
If you have Linux PC that is accessible from the internet, then just use Unison (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/). I use it all the time to synchronize my PC at work, my PC at home, and my laptop. It is quite fast, my synchronized folder is currently ~7GB and it takes maybe 10s to check for changes (not sure how Unison manages to do this).
I thought of this when I read the posting, because B*y.com sent me junk mail today about a sale on Pogo Plug Black. There's a Linux distribution for these - http://plugapps.com/index.php5/Main_Page.
Your own cloud.
For share with others, a perfect replacement for FTPs i use nephthys. Its based in webdav with a very simple web interface to allow users to share files. It auto expires shared files, so you do dont waste space with forgotten shares.
the git needs a few tweaks to work in a recent debian ( i will send a patch do the developer in a few days/weeks)... the .deb packages didnt worked for me
yet this is a very simple solution and works very in windows, macox and linux
it is almost unknown, but it saved me from thousand of user calls asking for help with ftp problems (clients, access, quotas and transfer)
Higuita
There is no TrueCrypt client for Android. There IS a GPG client, so make it Android + GPG. More work than Truecrypt though, since you have to encrypt and decrypt each file. https://code.google.com/p/android-privacy-guard/
Not a sentence!
I really hope it's not called "keepass".
"... all that's left is to update your server periodically..."
Look, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Either someone else hosts the service, does the maintenance, and as such has physical access, or you use your own server, in which you have to do maintenance.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Ubuntu One, but the server-side is proprietary. And it is rather buggy on other platforms.
So, like a lot of open source software, it's a solution...but not really.
1. Get a cheap VPS.
2. SSH -> sshfs for linux or expandrive for windows.
3. Have a folder named public in the folder you sshfs. Have that be the root of your webserver directory.
Like a lot of open source software, it's like a lot of other open source software that attempts to do pretty much the same thing, but in a different way and with different bugs and missing features. The solution, of course, to this mess of half-finished, buggy, and abandoned OSS with horrid UIs is easy. Start another project to do the same thing, only this time, we'll do it right. It'll be feature-complete quickly and free of serious bugs because all those other developers working on similar software will immediately see how superior we are and join us.
Because it's suggestive in what seems to be an unintentionally hilarious way. "Keeppass" would make more sense for what it does, but personally I like the current, suggestive spelling.
It's like those Payless shoe stores. When I'm forced (usually by a girlfriend) to go into one of those miserable places, I like to spread the misery by being mercilessly annoying and complaining that the shoes are not free and that if that's not what they meant, they should have used two words.
Being a Grammar Nazi doesn't mean you can't have fun.
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
Dropbox isn't just a "cloud" app; it spans both cloud and local platforms. Every PC you setup with Dropbox is a local backup copy. Even better, you can selectively partition your repository onto different machines. And, Dropbox keeps a rolling history of every file, going back a month.
Dropbox makes your data thoroughly pervasive and robust, with a minimal amount effort. The risk of data loss is much, much greater than the risk of being hacked. How many times have you lost a hard drive? Or accidentally deleted an important file? Or had your computer stolen? These things happen all the time, and they are very debilitating.
We ought to be practical and focus on the real risks we're likely to face. Much as we would like to think we're important enough to be a LulzSec target, the reality is we're all pretty boring, data-wise.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Host an email account on your own server IMAP access, and store files by sending them to yourself. Depending on your client, you can arrange the emails in files/folders/tags.
If you are comfortable with using gmail (probably no, but hey, information is free) you can use GMailfs and mount a http://sr71.net/projects/gmailfs/ . I haven't used it myself, I don't know if it's any good.
I couldn't find a working "general mailfs" system, which kindof surprises me.
I've done some tests with WebDAV and it seems to be on the right way to let you store documents on your server (I hate the word cloud) and access it everywhere, you can use Linux, Windows, Android and iPhone/iPad. But you need a dedicated server (or VPS). Bye
http://www.michel.eti.br