Open Source Alternative To Dropbox?

garry_g writes "While 'the cloud' may be one of the major buzzwords of the Internet industry, anybody concerned with security and privacy will most likely not touch it with a 10-foot pole. While I am guilty of using Dropbox for occasional data storage or quick picture snaps with my Android phone, I do watch out not to store anything important on there (or incriminating), no matter what the "privacy policy" may be. I was wondering: what useful alternative is there to Dropbox on the FOSS market, which will allow access by both windows/linux boxes, but also mobile devices (specifically Android). I know there are front-end add ons for Windows (and Linux tools of course) e.g. for SVN, but most likely no implementations for mobile use as far as I can tell... And, of course, the backend should run on a Linux box ;)"

Sparkleshare

[Moderator]

Sparkleshare [sparkleshare.org] is still under development, and it seems to have the most traction of any user-friendly project. When released, it will be the open-source Dropbox replacement.

I agree though, it's very hard to get rid of the convenience of Dropbox. Not just for saving files, but for syncing your configuration across machines (save your .dotFiles in ~/Dropbox and then symlink to ~/). But when they refuse to support the BSD's (2 out of the 4 machines I regularly work on), and their Linux implementation starting requiring disabling SELinux [dropbox.com], they pretty much did it to themselves. Not to mention the whole thing where the Dropbox CTO admitted they could look at your files [bnet.com] if they wanted.

Ubuntu One

[arisvega]

Ubuntu One [wikipedia.org], but the server-side is proprietary. And it is rather buggy on other platforms.

Hosted Alternatives

[slifox]

There are some decent-looking hosted alternatives to dropbox which do client-side encryption. I've looked into this a bit, but I haven't tried any of these yet, so YMMV...

One particularly interesting one is TarSnap. The best part is the client is OSS, so you can verify that encryption is done properly (strong & client-side). You could even reverse the protocol and design your own server software, if you want.
http://www.tarsnap.com/ [tarsnap.com]

Another interesting one is SpiderOak. However their client is not OSS, so you have to trust that they're doing the encryption properly
https://spideroak.com/ [spideroak.com]

Here are some other potential hosts, but I'm not sure exactly how proper the encryption is:
http://www.boxcryptor.com/ [boxcryptor.com]
http://syncplicity.com/products/ [syncplicity.com]

rsync.net FTW.

[enselsharon]

I've had personal and business accounts at rsync.net going back over 5 years.

It's simple, it's straightforward, and it works out of the box with everything I use.

Oh, and there's this:

http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt [rsync.net]

It's not the cheapest offering, but my employers' account @ 2TB is around 28 cents/GB, per month.

ownCloud or Wuala

[DVega]

On the open-source front, the only option I know is ownCloud [owncloud.org]. It provides the software to build your 'Cloud' storage, but you must provide your own hardware.

On the other side, you can try Wuala [wuala.com]. It is not Open Source, but it encrypts all your files before uploading them. There are clients for almost every platform.

ifolder

[bsmokeman]

Novell open-sourced ifolder. there are clients for linux, windows, mac, and even iphone. Someone just needs to write a client for android.
We are implementing it on a large scale, with Active Directory integration, and 270 mobile laptop users. I understand novell is moving to neutron (their new file/folder sync technology). It should solve some of the issues we had, such as integrating with a windows server, however it will not be open-source. We just used the ifolder client, and a proxy user for everyone's folder to bypass that issue. We looked extensively for a solution, and settled on ifolder, however mobile phones weren't part of the requirement.

ssh + rsync = win!

[WWE-TicK]

I put a Linux box with an SSH server and rsync on my FIOS line. Then I use rsync for Android to sync file shares between the Linux box and my Android tablet. This has been working fine for me. It might even be more secure than Dropbox.

ownCloud

[reldruH]

Sounds like you're looking for ownCloud. It's still under heavy development but the file storage functions work very well and it's accessible on Mac, Windows & Linux via webdav and from everywhere else via a web interface. There are also a couple of mobile apps in the works and it runs on a standard LAMP stack. http://owncloud.org/index.php/Main_Page [owncloud.org] And a blog post about the current status: http://owncloudtest.blogspot.com/2011/06/owncloud-20-just-merged-with.html [blogspot.com]

Unison

[human spam filter]

If you have Linux PC that is accessible from the internet, then just use Unison (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/). I use it all the time to synchronize my PC at work, my PC at home, and my laptop. It is quite fast, my synchronized folder is currently ~7GB and it takes maybe 10s to check for changes (not sure how Unison manages to do this).

Pogo Plug?

[Nexus7]

I thought of this when I read the posting, because B*y.com sent me junk mail today about a sale on Pogo Plug Black. There's a Linux distribution for these - http://plugapps.com/index.php5/Main_Page [plugapps.com].

Your own cloud.

Re:Sparkleshare

[tehniobium]

The SELinux issue appears to be a temporary bug. The thread you linked says: a) next version will have it fixed and b) gives you a one-liner for how to fix it yourself.

Re:Sparkleshare

[Raenex]

There's Firefox, as already mentioned. And Linux. Ruby, and Rails. Apache. MySQL. PostgreSQL.

Firefox started out from old Netscape code, slashed and burned some features, and then copied ideas like tabs from other browsers. Still, at least it was an advancement past the ubiquitous IE6 of the time, so +1.

Linux was just a Unix clone. I can't think of any area where it stood out as driving innovation. If anything, it is often behind the curve and playing catchup.

Ruby/Rails: +1

Apache: +1

MySQL: Just a dumbed down version of a relational database.

PostgreSQL: Just a relational database, and usually behind the heavy-hitters in terms of features. Mainly notable for at least being competitive with the big, commercial databases.