
DVCS-Autosync: A personal Dropbox replacement based on Git - jnoller
http://mayrhofer.eu.org/dvcs-autosync
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hemancuso
Ever tried committing a 100meg file to a Git repository? It'll peg your CPU to
100% for 45 seconds. I like the idea, but Git isn't a great general blob-store
for this kind of project.

~~~
nantes
This may well be true, but I also don't generally store 100MB files in my
(free ~3GB) Dropbox account. So, while it might not work for all needs, it
seems to actually meet my Dropbox usage pretty well.

~~~
bravura
I use Dropbox to store my media (photos, videos, and music). I love it. Each
time I have a new laptop, I know that all my media will be intact, and I don't
need to invest any time to migrate it.

Media storage is, I believe, a common Dropbox use case. And Dropbox's
transparent uploads, which seem to automatically detect and throttle when I am
using bandwidth, are a great feature that I haven't seen in any open-source
competitor.

~~~
nantes
I think one of the reasons I have never considered using Dropbox for media
storage is that, given three teenage daughters, I don't think I could afford a
big enough Dropbox account to store all of the media we consume and generate.

Also, one of my favorite applications of Dropbox is having all of our
important documents in one central location (whether this is a wise move or
not... ). This makes accessing documents on the fly from my iPhone a breeze.
Having media files in there as well, would, I think destroy my antique iPhone
3G!

You are right on the money about the background uploading though.

~~~
pronoiac
_Having media files in there as well, would, I think destroy my antique iPhone
3G!_

The iPhone app doesn't sync everything - it will download (and separately,
cache) only the files you request.

~~~
nantes
Good to know, thanks!

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flipbrad
Also competing with a relatively new feature - integrated with recent releases
of Ubuntu (the linux OS) - called Ubuntu One (<https://one.ubuntu.com/>)

a cursory search for patents in this area turned up all sorts. it's a horrific
mess of overlapping remote file sync patents out there. Try this, for example:
[http://www.google.co.uk/patents/about?id=UTJ7AAAAEBAJ&dq...](http://www.google.co.uk/patents/about?id=UTJ7AAAAEBAJ&dq=remote+file+synchronization)
or this: <http://www.google.co.uk/patents?id=dlXPAAAAEBAJ>

There are pages and pages of published patents/patent apps in this domain.

Will such infringement (stealing! piracy! theft!) be tolerated?

~~~
calpaterson
Considering that software patents do not apply in the authors jurisdiction (or
in many jurisdictions), they seem unlikely to cause him a problem.

~~~
flipbrad
false:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_Euro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_European_Patent_Convention)

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s_tec
SparkleShare does essentially the same thing. The GNOME guys developed it so
their designers could collaborate in a more open-source friendly way. It's
developed in Mono, and has Windows and Mac ports coming. Unlike DVCS-Autosync,
it doesn't need a Jabber channel on the side.

<http://www.sparkleshare.org/>

~~~
andrewaylett
Where DVCS-Autosync uses XMPP, the current version of SparkleShare uses a
public IRC channel: [https://github.com/hbons/SparkleShare/wiki/Private-
notificat...](https://github.com/hbons/SparkleShare/wiki/Private-notification-
server)

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pronoiac
A conversation about this from two weeks ago:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2468422>

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antics
Ugh. Developing around git is a nightmare. libgit.a is not reentrant. It just
calls die() whenever it's done or something goes wrong.

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simonhamp
Nice idea, but looking at that site for a minute then skipping back to HN made
my eyes go funny... :D

