

Create your own local Dropbox with AeroFS - vectorbunny
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/09/create-your-own-local-dropbox-with-aerofs/

======
hemancuso
Honest question to the AeroFS team: is AeroFS ever going to ship, even into
public beta? The earliest referenced story on HN is 792 days old.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1538731>

If Ars is doing a review of your beta, you should certainly be able to
convince yourself there is a MVP in your hands. Why the perpetual private
beta? Wouldn't you rather find out if this is something lots of people want
and would be willing to pay for?

I would worry you finally ship the thing and realize that you need to tailor
it to a different audience. Or perhaps the folk are willing to pay are rather
happy with Dropbox and a centralized model.

~~~
yurisagalov
Hola, The Ars review (while super awesome) was actually completely unexpected
and unsolicited. I realize that we first posted about AeroFS almost two years
ago, but we haven't been idle, and we have been releasing invites regularly.
Users have also been able to invite other users to AeroFS from day one, and
many of them ahve been doing this.

We keep AeroFS in private beta mostly because we have an already overwhelming
amount of feedback to work with. We want to make sure that we make the users
who are with us today (and who have been with us for the past two years) as
happy as possible, before releasing it to the masses.

Cheers, Yuri

(ps. sorry for the late response, today was the last day of one of our interns
and we took him out for lunch)

~~~
codex
The problem with this private beta, as I see it, is that you've gotten a
sizeable portion of your potential early adopters interested in the product;
but now you just repeatedly frustrate them by keeping them out of the beta
without even so much as an email update. I've been on your list for years with
nothing but radio silence. You might have been better off staying in stealth
mode, because now, whenever I hear the term "AeroFS" I just feel irked and
disappointed. It's like you're trying to alienate your biggest fans.

~~~
yurisagalov
If "for years" isn't an exaggeration, then shoot me an email asap so I can see
why you haven't gotten an invite yet. We've been sending invites in the order
that they come in, and although the backlog is long, I certainly don't think
it's in the years :(

~~~
bigiain
I got my "Thanks for signing up!" email via Launchrock on 14 Sept 2011, and
haven't got a single email from you since... (email address as per my HN
profile, if you want to look it up)

~~~
richardkeller
Same date for me. It's really a pity that nothing has been released for so
long. Restricting open signups is fine, but the fact that people request
invites means that there is definite support for the product, and those people
are clearly willing to put up with a few bugs. These are exactly the kind of
people who add fantastic value to the product, since you're essentially
getting free product testing from people who are already passionate about the
product.

------
jsilence
Not holding my breath for AeroFS. Following Git Annex Assistant development
blog and waiting for the beta. Sounds awsome! <http://git-
annex.branchable.com/design/assistant/blog/>

~~~
jlgreco
Oh man, I am _so_ excited about git-annex assistant. As nice as dropbox is, it
still involves far to much file-shuffling for me to get full enjoyment out of
it. (Also, its new Android application is... unfortunate). git-annex assistant
really seems like it will become the killer feature of whatever device you put
it on though.

Do you know if you can still donate to his kickstarter campaign to get in on
the betas? I know he blew away his goal and time is up, but that guy works for
far too little.

~~~
jsilence
There is a Flattr button on the annex front page. Subscribed for a year...

------
namityadav
_This sign-in exists only so that your Aero FS-running computers can get the
2048-bit RSA encryption keys keys they need—your computers then authenticate
against each other using these keys, and can do so even if the AeroFS servers
are down._

Does this mean that if AeroFS goes down (gets sold, shut-down, whatever), the
clients running on my machines will continue to sync P2P?

~~~
yurisagalov
For the most part, yes, until your certificates expire :)

~~~
vyrotek
Good to know! I got my beta invite recently and I'm excited to play around
with it. Out of curiosity, what's the lifespan of the cert?

------
zapt02
No open source? Invite-only? Totally uninteresting.

~~~
mmagin
I gave them my email address for an invite months ago, and since then I've
seen lots and lots of talk about AeroFS, but still it's not available, so I
lost interest. If you have a web page and a blog and repeatedly get mentioned
on HN, but you don't release some kind of public beta for more than 6 months,
you're crazy.

~~~
ctrlaltesc
I did get an invite and installed, but I can't actually do anything with it.
There's no Android client, so it just sits on my laptop doing nothing.

I thought it would at least have some sort of local network sharing service
like DAAP, UPnP or anything at all.

~~~
yurisagalov
The Android client is under very active development. If you'd like, feel free
to upvote [http://support.aerofs.com/forums/67721-feature-
requests/sugg...](http://support.aerofs.com/forums/67721-feature-
requests/suggestions/1561175-create-an-android-application) and you'll get
notified as soon as it's ready!

------
rdl
I've been using AeroFS beta for a while, and so far, it is my favorite of the
file sharing systems. It isn't as good as big local disk for video editing or
anything, but great for keeping team files in sync across a bunch of machines.

------
newman314
I'm less concerned about source being available and would rather know if
AeroFS is ready to serve a replacement for Dropbox to store my 1Password
files.

On a side note: Release notes for AeroFS
[http://support.aerofs.com/knowledgebase/articles/93285-relea...](http://support.aerofs.com/knowledgebase/articles/93285-release-
notes)

------
fiendsan
Cool review from Ars as always, but Aerofs by staying this long closed, is
kinda slowly killin itself, There is pleanty of added competition now, even
from the big guys (dropbox, gdrive, skydrive,...), and now there is even for
the exact same functions that Aerofs does, like Cubby... and im using Cubby
for like 2 months... and it works pretty good, got the invite in 2 days, while
i've been waiting for my Aerofs invite since like the begining of the year,
for me its vaporware.

------
weazl
I've been waiting for an invite for well over a year, maybe two years, don't
really remember. Frankly I'm more than a little annoyed. Why even bother
having an invite feature if you never send out invites? It's just being
dishonest.

------
ph0rque
DropBox should just buy AeroFS.

------
minm
Tonido Sync (<http://www.tonido.com/app_sync_home.html>) provides the same
private, local sync like AeroFS. the Tonido solution is very mature and it
also has mobile apps for all the popular mobile OSes (iOS,Android, Blackberry
and Windows 7.5)

~~~
urza
last time I checked, the Tonido syncing app had 2GB limit to syncing feature
in free version

~~~
minm
When it become not acceptable to charge money for a software service. Tonido
is a mature offering and works. Customers are ready to pay money for its
worth. I would rather choose a software that will charge money for it rather
than a free one.

