[Discuss] drop box software

[peterd at acranox.org (Peter Doherty)]

On Aug 30, 2011, at 12:13 , Derek Martin wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 10:37:15AM -0400, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
>>> From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org [mailto:discuss-
>>> bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Adler
>>> 
>>> Does anyone know of an open source drop box like software I can setup on
>>> my web site?
>> 
>> Nothing that's as good as dropbox.  But there is buzz around sparkleshare.
>> Not very mature yet.
> 
> I too have always been sort of interested in this idea of a central
> repository for all My Stuff such that I could easily and conveniently
> get it via whatever computing device I happen to be using.  I am
> extremely reticent to house any of my personal data on someone else's
> computers...  Though I have to admit, it's now basically impossible to
> avoid in modern society, without not participating in society... and
> I've already made concessions like using Android devices.
> 
> Still, I'm not willing to store the bulk of my personal data on
> someone else's resources.  So for someone like me, applications like
> dropbox are non-solutions.  Does sparkleshare require the use of some
> resource I don't control?
> 
>> I liked ifolder (from a user perspective, not an admin perspective).  But
>> since the implosion of novell, I've decided to forget about it, kiss it
>> goodbye.
> 
> Why?  It's fully GPLv2.  Even if Novell completely goes belly up, or
> decides to take it proprietary, the OSS community can continue to
> support this or a fork of it.



I've been using Sparkleshare for a few months now.  It's not nearly as well polished as dropbox, but for basic stuff, it works okay.
It doesn't need any resources you don't control.  It does use an IRC server to communicate the hash of the latest commit, but you can pick your own server.
Also it's git on the backend, so it stores everything twice, once in the local repo, and once in the working copy.  (origin, master?  my git vocab isn't that great)
So if you drop 20GB of binaries into Sparkleshare you use 40GB of local disk.  This is annoying.
hbons is working on some other backends.  I think it's got some potential, but it's a ways out.

I've also used SpiderOak.  Dropbox has far and away the most polished UI of any "cloud storage" program I've used.

-peter