Ask Slashdot: Building a Personal FOSS Cloud?

An anonymous reader writes "Cloud-based personal data management is pretty cool... if you don't mind entrusting the entirety of your personal data to a gigantic corporation. Apart from the risks of their doing unseemly things with your data, also the security of your data is entirely in their unreliable hands. So, is it possible to build my own personal data repository, where for example, I can store my contacts and calendars to sync to multiple devices? This could be hosted on any third party hosting service assuming also that all of my data was encrypted at the data level. So even if the host wanted to look at my data, all they'd see is 1s and 0s. What are the options for the tinfoil hat wearing FOSS folks that want to participate in the cloud age?"

Comments

Thanks for sharing

[Anonymous Coward]

So even if the host wanted to look at my data, all they'd see is 1s and 0s.

That was the dumbest thing I read all day.

Re:Thanks for sharing

[masternerdguy]

Yeah, that's like saying that if I open a book all I'll see are characters.

For Christ's Sake, Just Get A Big USB Drive

[Anonymous Coward]

You can write "The Cloud" on it with a Sharpie if you absolutely must.

We're working on it

[wurp]

https://github.com/wurp/Friendly-Backup

It works now, with some bugs. The first targeted usecase is distributed backup.

However, it can store arbitrary read-only content-addressed data as well as signed labels that point point to a particular piece of CBA data to emulate mutable data.

I have a whole slew of plans beyond backup for it, but backup seemed like the thing everyone needs and would most like to have for free on a federated data store.

I don't get it.

[Nyder]

OMFG, the cloud. I got to have or do the cloud. Magic Ponies in the cloud!!!!

Seriously, wtf do you really need the cloud for? Is it going to magically sync all your different data together so you can access it all the time?

No, seriously, do you think it's going to sync all your data so you can use it and access it anywhere?

No, it's not. Sure, you can access you data anywhere, but duder, we've been doing that for a couple of decades now, way to join the late train.
Unfortunately, the various corporations don't want to agree to standards, so having docs/apps/whatever working with everything isn't in the "rape as much money as we can" business plan. so nothing is going to change.

Now let's look at the Megaupload thingy. That was cloud storage, file lockers. It's not around now, is it? That is what happens to clouds, the winds blow them away. The wind? Oh ya, in this case, that's the good old USA Government, working for their Pimps, the Music/Movie Industry. You think that can't happen to any "cloud" servers? Think again. OMG, Terrorist used that server, Child porn was on that server, boom! You're data, which has nothing to do with those 2 things, is gone also. Hope you make a backup. Oh, wait, the cloud was magically supposed to back it up for you?

Cloud has been around for awhile, but we called it what it was, the internet.

 

Re:I don't get it.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Oh give the guy a break. This is exactly the situation the "the cloud" buzzword was created for: people who are scared of the phrase "file server". There is absolutely nothing new about "the cloud" in any way but it's a nice fluffy word that people are comfortable with and it's acceptable to not have any idea what it actually is. I'd change the hostname of my home server to thecloud just for wiseassery's sake if it wouldn't hose my Trek shipname naming scheme.

Re:Found it when googling for dropbox alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

The actual ownCloud application that you setup on your server doesn't have a reference to googleapis. I just checked on my installation.

For those wondering, the project website links to the jQuery library hosted on Google's server so they don't have to host it themselves.

Re:cloud vs server

[AuMatar]

Servers are web 1.0. Cloud is web 3.0. Much buzzier and hipper.