
SparkleShare: Open Source Dropbox clone coming soon - barnaby
http://www.sparkleshare.org/
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mixmax
This isn't a threat to dropbox becaue (as I read it) you have to set up your
own server, or maybe hook up on a friends server. While this is certainly a
great feature that a lot of people will value, the beauty of dropbox is that
it just works. Without you having to install a server.

I see the following obstacles with installing a server for sparkleshare:

1) You need a server. This might be obvious, but normal people don't have one.

2) You need to monitor your server. If the architecture is anything like
dropbox it doesn't need to have 100% uptime since synchronizing will just be
delayed a bit, but you still need to check in every now and then to make sure
everything is OK.

3) Installing a server has never been easy. There is always some sort of
problem with port forwarding, IP adresses, proxies, etc. unless you have a
server somewhere in the cloud which most people don't. Normal people are
barely aware of what a server _is_. See point 1.

4) Your backups are still your worry. What makes dropbox great is that I know
that if they lose my data they have a serious business problem - they'll be
held accountable. I'll write rants on my blog and everyone on HN will read it.
They'll go through great lengths to prevent this. Besides their knowledge of
backup procedures, RAID disks, redundancy and what have you is far far greater
than mine. (At least I hope so :-)) If I host my files on my own server I'm
the one that's accountable.

I see this as a great service for companies that have some IT staff and aren't
comfortable having all their company files hosted by another company, and
hackers that prefer their own server. But it's not a threat to dropbox, which
is getting popular among non-techies. My mom even has dropbox installed.

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neilc
If Sparkleshare develops some momentum, you could easily see third-parties
compete to offer Sparkleshare storage as a service, in a similar manner to how
Dropbox works today.

~~~
brianobush
Exactly, right now dropbox is 9.95/month for 2Gig and frankly overpriced. I
would love to have that right now at 1.99/month. Maybe unreasonable... but I
like competition.

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neilc
Well, $9.95/month for 50GB, but I agree that some competition would be
welcome.

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mistermann
$9.95/month for 50GB seems a bit steep to me.

Uninformed question...I assume dropbox syncs machines via their server (ie:
all data is synched up to their server first, then back down?) Or does it do
peer to peer? (and if so, $9.95/50GB seems _really_ expensive.) While less
reliable, this would save them tons of bandwidth, and while it wouldn't work
for some people, for me it would be perfect as I always have at least one
machine that is on the net that would suffice for my master.

~~~
mgw
They do both.

They sync directly to other machines over LAN and also send the files to their
servers. Bandwidth is saved through other means. The files are split up into
chunks for which they compare hashes. If a chunk has already been uploaded to
their servers by ANY Dropbox user it won't get reuploaded again. This is
especially effective for media sharing, because lots of people will download
the same torrents and put them in their Dropbox folders to watch somewhere
else.

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dakrone
From the FAQ:

Q: Why is it written in Mono/C#? A: Because I hate freedom.

:)

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md81544
Why C-sharp / mono ?? This could almost be done (on Linux at least) with a
copy of rsync, git (for the revision control) and a shell script.

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akmiller
C-sharp and mono will allow it to run on all 3 platforms (OSX, Linux, and
Windows).

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jwr
I think it is sad that the "Open Source" Community (in quotes, because there
is really no such thing and the term is inprecise) didn't come up with Dropbox
on its own earlier.

There was rsync, there was unison, but none of them worked as transparently
and flawlessly as Dropbox does. And now — we copy the successful
entrepreneurs.

I somehow don't feel it is right — I would have loved for it to be the other
way around.

Will we wait until somebody solves the other problems (E-mail, spam and E-mail
attachments come to mind) and then copy their solution? Is that the best we
can do?

~~~
hyperbovine
librsync, libbzip, and a host of other LGPLd libraries are what make Dropbox
go. There would be no Dropbox without the ""Open Source"" community. Dropbox--
along with a lot of other companies (namely, Apple)--derive a lot of their
success from going the last mile, that is wiring all these powerful OSS
technologies together in a package that is intuitive and easy to use.
Engineers typically are either uninterested in doing this, and that is why an
open source Dropbox never came along.

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furyg3
I'm fairly excited about this, I hope it's "just works" appeal come's close to
the DropBox experience.

I run the IT shop for a non-profit, which has just started to expand globally.
I've been brought in to help ease the pain. We've got nearly everything web-
based, except for the damn "shared drive". We just can't afford to set up a
permanent VPN connection to all of our new offices (and all of the road-
warriors)... nor do I want to.

I'm testing Alfresco now (<http://www.alfresco.com/>), which is basically an
open-source SharePoint. It's web-based, with file versioning (and other bells
and whistles) but best of all it emulates a SMB/CIFS share, so the transition
is easy for the main office. Hopefully it works well and I can implement it.

But as an avid dropbox user, even this huge leap feels so old-school. It'd be
great if remote users could "subscribe" to some of the folders, so they could
work with files more quickly and offline. It's the future.

An open-source DropBox allows for corporate implementations ("my data stays on
my servers" types), and also permits tie-ins to other open-source projects
(like Alfresco). The service won't be as bullet-proof and smooth, but the
mashups will be interesting.

Edit: DropBox should really offer corporate solutions. We're poor, and I think
we'd spend money if I could sync our shared folders out to their servers, and
let all my users access it from their beautiful web interface. That alone
(without the client features) would be worth it.

~~~
codemechanic
Try <http://www.tonido.com>. It offers a remote drive feature. Will satisfy
all your requirements listed here.

~~~
furyg3
Hmm... interesting. Can you give user-specific logins to keep track of who's
changed what?

~~~
codemechanic
You can create shares and assign guest accounts to them. The users will be
able to load as a drive in their computers from LAN and over internet.

I would suggest you to try the workspace application that comes with Tonido.
Some NGOs are using it successfully to sync tasks, calendar, notes and files.
The closest application that you can compare is microsoft groove.

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brlewis
I'm curious what is in the Dropbox TOS that they dislike so much.

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dedward
I'd like to use this for corporate use - but if that means data will be stored
offsite somewhere where I don't have control over it - that's a problem. If I
could deploy a server at work, and use similar features but be sure about
what's happening - that would be great.

~~~
binbasti
That's the whole idea of this project, isn't it?

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strooltz
This is cool. I think simple solutions will arise as well- companies can build
platforms on top of the service and sell support packages- similar to what EY,
heroku, and all the other EC2/S3 platforms already do or like red hat has been
doing for years. There's a lot of cool potential for this...

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Shorel
I was thinking about something similar, but using SVN as the server and making
a Windows client first.

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babyshake
I would love to see something like this using App Engine and Google Storage.

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joubert
Can package up and sell to enterprises.

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antidaily
Using "clone" loosely here.

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l4u
it's cool! i want to set this up in my local server

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GrandMasterBirt
OMFG! I've been hoping for THIS exact technology. I wanted to set up dropbox
like environments on all my machines so I can share unlimited data across my
LAN this way every single machine acts as a back-up for every other machine on
my entire lan set up when it comes to data I very much care for (My Documents,
All my photos, etc.) Its not much, 20GB total? If that much. I can even have
some machines mirror that to external drives. The idea though is to have them
all usable from anywhere and backed up via LAN. Yea so this sounds great.

If we don't need a "server" or do but all machines are servers just one is
considered the gatekeeper, this is perfect. Just install everywhere and go.

~~~
codemechanic
It is already there. Try Tonido distributed backup.

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geezgod
hopefully the upload speed is faster than 40kb/s :-D

