

Open-source Dropbox alternative powered by Git - ibrahimcesar
https://github.com/bazaarlabs/gitdocs

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mmahemoff
Some mention of hosting this on GitHub and BitBucket here. I can't imagine
Git-As-A-Service providers would be thrilled with this kind of application, it
will completely hammer their services compared to the occasional commits and
pulls that occur with a code base.

It will probably update their conditions if they don't already preclude it. Or
maybe they will embrace it with a premium pricing plan. I certainly wouldn't
count on hosting this against BitBucket's free plan.

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hemancuso
Ever try committing a 100meg file into git? 100% CPU for 10s of seconds. Game
over.

Git is a great idea for this, but in practice it performs terribly.

~~~
paulhauggis
I have this same problem with mercurial. Is there a better alternative for
source control of large files?

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hemancuso
I hear perforce is the go to solution for people who really need this. Or
dedicated media asset management solutions.

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forrestthewoods
Perforce is expensive ($740 per user) but I can't imagine using anything else.
Just about every major game studio uses it to the best of my knowledge.

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miles_matthias
Just curious - why are there so many Dropbox alternative posting lately? Is
re-doing an already elegant solution really a top priority for people? I
haven't looked at this post at all (so I'm not trying to make any judgement on
it), I'm just curious as to why so many people are interested in making
Dropbox alternatives lately.

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Karunamon
I'd assume the short version is that Dropbox:

1) Isn't free

2) Is accessible to $stateAuthority if they come knocking

3) Makes your data access reliant on a third party who may or may not be up in
an emergency or:

4) Could disappear at any time and take your data with them

So basically, the same problems that affect every cloud solution provider
ever.

~~~
slowpoke
I'd be interested in which `free` you are talking about. Beer or speech (or
both)?

Because for me, the prime reason I refuse to use Dropbox[1] is that it's
unfree software as per the speech definition. I am _not_ running software on
my computer that needs internet access and transmits files when I can not
verify what this program does, in addition to my personal policy of reducing
my usage of unfree software to an absolute, unavoidable minimum.

[1] I'm studying CS and it's really annoying how ubiquitous Dropbox has become
among the student crowds. I stopped counting after about the first three dozen
attempts of people trying to get me to use Dropbox.

~~~
Karunamon
Mostly as in beer. You have to cough up cash to get a respectable quota.

Personally, I think you're being rather paranoid on the whole free software
(as in speech) thing, but hey, whatever works for you :)

~~~
RKearney
18.2GB for free isn't enough?

I guess not when companies like box.net are giving out 50GB for free. =/

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nesquena
Just want to add a quick comment about our goals for gitdocs. Obviously this
was never intended to be a 'dropbox-killer', in fact at Miso we actually use
both. Dropbox for videos, large binary files, business and legal files.

Instead we use gitdocs for storing our "docs": Task lists, wiki, planning,
collaborative design, note taking, code snippets et al. And the gitdocs web
front-end (<http://imgur.com/eaTTY>) is optimized for that since it renders
wiki pages (formatted markdown/textile), has full code syntax highlighting,
file search, revision history and a rich text editor.

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nillort
Dropbox wins on UX, which is where FOSS fails almost every time. A quick way
to know whether such projects will fail: if they mention anything about the
technologies used. Making it obvious to use and "just work" is what is needed.

Too bad that is actually the hard part.

~~~
iFire
Look at Sparkleshare's website and see what you think?

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icebraining
The problem is setting up the Git server. Even if you use Github - and then
you have to pay if you don't want your files open to the public - creating the
repo, adding the keys, understanding what they have to put in the Address
field, etc is still extremely difficult with the knowledge (and patience) of
the average person.

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teichman
For synchronization of your personal files, check out Unison.

<http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/>

~~~
flarg
Seconded - I've used Unison to sync across PCs and between different OSs for
many many years; it just works

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pors
Not really an alternative till it supports clients for all sorts of platforms
and mobile devices IMHO

~~~
vegardx
So, Windows support then? And most mobile devices will be able to access the
files through the browser, no need for a client to do that, like with Dropbox.

I love the idea and the hackyness over it all. Love it!

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jakubw
It's neat because it can be used on top of git without any additional effort
but it'd be more interesting to see something that leverages git's server-side
post-push hook to notify the other clients about changes. gitdocs, depending
on the polling interval, either has an increased probability of causing merge
conflicts or does a crazy amount of git pulls.

~~~
joshbuddy
Actually, it uses file system events so the pushes occur instantly. However,
the pulls are done with polling.

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spullara
The real problem with this is that Git is awful at versioning binary / large
files.

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twunt
The readme suggests to use bitbucket.org which I didn't realise had
_unlimited_ storage, even on the free plan for up to 5 users?

So if the CPU issue can be resolved for committing large files, could it be
used as a backup for your warez etc?

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callahad
Related: <http://sparkleshare.org/>

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peterhajas
I think Lipsync - <https://github.com/philcryer/lipsync> \- might be better,
Git isn't great for lots of large binary files.

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listening
A comparable alternative is never going to free for everyone. Someone has to
pay the Amazon fees for S3 use. Isn't it true that the few Dropbox users who
do pay for it support all the ones who do not?

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nubela
Hah, I've done something similar to this, except it uses SVN. Cross platform
too! But you know what sucked? Performance. SVN is slooowwwww when it came to
binary files.

You can check it out here.

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rcthompson
This was posted here a few weeks ago, but at the time it was Mac-only. Now it
works on Mac, Linux, and Windows. I assume this is the reason for the re-post.

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dahlia
It reminds me again that Dropbox is hard to beat.

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umrashrf
I had a same idea right after dropbox but I lost the thought about the clients
for all popular OS.

