6 ms·

SparkleShare: Open Source Dropbox clone coming soon

113 points by barnaby 16y ago

brlewis 16y ago
I'm curious what is in the Dropbox TOS that they dislike so much.
- dedward 16y ago
  I'd like to use this for corporate use - but if that means data will be stored offsite somewhere where I don't have control over it - that's a problem. If I could deploy a server at work, and use similar features but be sure about what's happening - that would be great.
  - binbasti 16y ago
    That's the whole idea of this project, isn't it?
- JadeNB 16y ago
  I don't know about them, but, as I mentioned at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1340242 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1340242, I find the following passage very bothersome: > You agree not to do any of the following while using the Site, Content, Files or Services: > o Post, publish or transmit any text, graphics, or material that: (i) is false or misleading; (ii) is defamatory; (iii) invades another's privacy; (iv) is obscene, pornographic, or offensive; (v) promotes bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against any individual or group; (vi) infringes another's rights, including any intellectual property rights; or (vii) violates, or encourages any conduct that would violate, any applicable law or regulation or would give rise to civil liability; It seems to me to require you to (a) ignore it or (b) think very, very carefully about what files it is OK to backup (is it OK to back up a work of fiction? Then what does it mean that you will not back up material that is ‘false or misleading’?). I wrote them about this, but never received a reply.
GrandMasterBirt 16y ago
OMFG! I've been hoping for THIS exact technology. I wanted to set up dropbox like environments on all my machines so I can share unlimited data across my LAN this way every single machine acts as a back-up for every other machine on my entire lan set up when it comes to data I very much care for (My Documents, All my photos, etc.) Its not much, 20GB total? If that much. I can even have some machines mirror that to external drives. The idea though is to have them all usable from anywhere and backed up via LAN. Yea so this sounds great. If we don't need a "server" or do but all machines are servers just one is considered the gatekeeper, this is perfect. Just install everywhere and go.
- carbocation 16y ago
  I agree - this would be a fantastic tool. And, frankly, although it might be a Dropbox clone, I'd probably use both. It's not a threat to Dropbox; it's a complement.
- codemechanic 16y ago
  It is already there. Try Tonido distributed backup.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- grails4life 16y ago
  In order to compete with dropbox youll have to be as easy to use. People dont use dropbox for the storage they use it because it makes collaboration easier - even collaborating with those not so computer savvy.
- pacemkr 16y ago
  I use CrashPlan to achieve a similar result. I highly recommend you try it. CrashPlan will backup to your network (free), your friends (free), your external drives (free), and optionally to their servers (paid) all in parallel. Anywhere you install their software you can share a backup volume/folder and it is automatically visible to your other crashplan installs as a backup destination. On top of that you can use your own encryption key, so the data is protected even in case of a subpoena to the backup servers.
geezgod 16y ago
hopefully the upload speed is faster than 40kb/s :-D
joubert 16y ago
Can package up and sell to enterprises.
furyg3 16y ago
I'm fairly excited about this, I hope it's "just works" appeal come's close to the DropBox experience. I run the IT shop for a non-profit, which has just started to expand globally. I've been brought in to help ease the pain. We've got nearly everything web-based, except for the damn "shared drive". We just can't afford to set up a permanent VPN connection to all of our new offices (and all of the road-warriors)... nor do I want to. I'm testing Alfresco now (http://www.alfresco.com/ http://www.alfresco.com/), which is basically an open-source SharePoint. It's web-based, with file versioning (and other bells and whistles) but best of all it emulates a SMB/CIFS share, so the transition is easy for the main office. Hopefully it works well and I can implement it. But as an avid dropbox user, even this huge leap feels so old-school. It'd be great if remote users could "subscribe" to some of the folders, so they could work with files more quickly and offline. It's the future. An open-source DropBox allows for corporate implementations ("my data stays on my servers" types), and also permits tie-ins to other open-source projects (like Alfresco). The service won't be as bullet-proof and smooth, but the mashups will be interesting. Edit: DropBox should really offer corporate solutions. We're poor, and I think we'd spend money if I could sync our shared folders out to their servers, and let all my users access it from their beautiful web interface. That alone (without the client features) would be worth it.
- codemechanic 16y ago
  Try http://www.tonido.com http://www.tonido.com. It offers a remote drive feature. Will satisfy all your requirements listed here.
  - furyg3 16y ago
    Hmm... interesting. Can you give user-specific logins to keep track of who's changed what?
    - codemechanic 16y ago
      You can create shares and assign guest accounts to them. The users will be able to load as a drive in their computers from LAN and over internet. I would suggest you to try the workspace application that comes with Tonido. Some NGOs are using it successfully to sync tasks, calendar, notes and files. The closest application that you can compare is microsoft groove.
jwr 16y ago
I think it is sad that the "Open Source" Community (in quotes, because there is really no such thing and the term is inprecise) didn't come up with Dropbox on its own earlier. There was rsync, there was unison, but none of them worked as transparently and flawlessly as Dropbox does. And now — we copy the successful entrepreneurs. I somehow don't feel it is right — I would have loved for it to be the other way around. Will we wait until somebody solves the other problems (E-mail, spam and E-mail attachments come to mind) and then copy their solution? Is that the best we can do?
- hyperbovine 16y ago
  librsync, libbzip, and a host of other LGPLd libraries are what make Dropbox go. There would be no Dropbox without the ""Open Source"" community. Dropbox--along with a lot of other companies (namely, Apple)--derive a lot of their success from going the last mile, that is wiring all these powerful OSS technologies together in a package that is intuitive and easy to use. Engineers typically are either uninterested in doing this, and that is why an open source Dropbox never came along.
- jwr 16y ago
  My criticism of the Open Source community has been downvoted into oblivion. I think this is rather sad. I'm not against open source, in fact I regularly contribute to many projects. But I also think one should not be blind to the outside world.
dakrone 16y ago
From the FAQ: Q: Why is it written in Mono/C#? A: Because I hate freedom. :)
strooltz 16y ago
This is cool. I think simple solutions will arise as well- companies can build platforms on top of the service and sell support packages- similar to what EY, heroku, and all the other EC2/S3 platforms already do or like red hat has been doing for years. There's a lot of cool potential for this...
mixmax 16y ago
This isn't a threat to dropbox becaue (as I read it) you have to set up your own server, or maybe hook up on a friends server. While this is certainly a great feature that a lot of people will value, the beauty of dropbox is that it just works. Without you having to install a server. I see the following obstacles with installing a server for sparkleshare: 1) You need a server. This might be obvious, but normal people don't have one. 2) You need to monitor your server. If the architecture is anything like dropbox it doesn't need to have 100% uptime since synchronizing will just be delayed a bit, but you still need to check in every now and then to make sure everything is OK. 3) Installing a server has never been easy. There is always some sort of problem with port forwarding, IP adresses, proxies, etc. unless you have a server somewhere in the cloud which most people don't. Normal people are barely aware of what a server is. See point 1. 4) Your backups are still your worry. What makes dropbox great is that I know that if they lose my data they have a serious business problem - they'll be held accountable. I'll write rants on my blog and everyone on HN will read it. They'll go through great lengths to prevent this. Besides their knowledge of backup procedures, RAID disks, redundancy and what have you is far far greater than mine. (At least I hope so :-)) If I host my files on my own server I'm the one that's accountable. I see this as a great service for companies that have some IT staff and aren't comfortable having all their company files hosted by another company, and hackers that prefer their own server. But it's not a threat to dropbox, which is getting popular among non-techies. My mom even has dropbox installed.
- mattmaroon 16y ago
  It depends what they define as a "server". If you have to set up a Linux box somewhere with decent upstream, then yeah, I'm not spending any time on that. And I'm the sort of person who could do it. However for what I use Dropbox for, I'd be perfectly fine if the "server" was just an old Windows box running out of my basement. If there's nothing more onerous than a port-forward it might be useful. But either way I doubt the guys at Dropbox have anything to worry about. To hurt them this doesn't have to appeal to the average Dropbox customer. It only has to appeal to the average paying Dropbox customer. There's a big difference there, but probably not big enough to matter.
- Splines 16y ago
antidaily 16y ago
Using "clone" loosely here.
md81544 16y ago
Why C-sharp / mono ?? This could almost be done (on Linux at least) with a copy of rsync, git (for the revision control) and a shell script.
- obsaysditto 16y ago
  I was exactly wondering about mono when I viewed the README. The toolsets needed are already there. Perhaps this was done to make it easier to port to other OS later?
- akmiller 16y ago
  C-sharp and mono will allow it to run on all 3 platforms (OSX, Linux, and Windows).
- sabat 16y ago
  This could almost be done (on Linux at least) with a copy of rsync, git (for the revision control) and a shell script. Er, well, yeah, but you'd be polling almost constantly if you're trying to emulate what Dropbox does. I don't know exactly how Dropbox knows when I add or change a file -- I assume it ties in to the kernel. Also, rsync wouldn't work over HTTP, which is a big disadvantage in some of the environments I've been working in lately. My big question, though: why isn't someone doing this for headless servers? Why do they always assume people just want this for desktops? At least you can hack a headless version of Dropbox on Linux.
- wcoenen 16y ago
  If you look at the source, you'll see it is already based on git. C# is just used to glue it all together and provide a GUI. There isn't much source code there though. It looks more like a proof of concept. I doubt anything is "coming soon" here.
l4u 16y ago
it's cool! i want to set this up in my local server
Shorel 16y ago
I was thinking about something similar, but using SVN as the server and making a Windows client first.
babyshake 16y ago
I would love to see something like this using App Engine and Google Storage.

113 points by barnaby 16y ago

brlewis 16y ago

I'm curious what is in the Dropbox TOS that they dislike so much.

dedward 16y ago
I'd like to use this for corporate use - but if that means data will be stored offsite somewhere where I don't have control over it - that's a problem. If I could deploy a server at work, and use similar features but be sure about what's happening - that would be great.
- binbasti 16y ago
  That's the whole idea of this project, isn't it?
JadeNB 16y ago
I don't know about them, but, as I mentioned at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1340242 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1340242, I find the following passage very bothersome: > You agree not to do any of the following while using the Site, Content, Files or Services: > o Post, publish or transmit any text, graphics, or material that: (i) is false or misleading; (ii) is defamatory; (iii) invades another's privacy; (iv) is obscene, pornographic, or offensive; (v) promotes bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against any individual or group; (vi) infringes another's rights, including any intellectual property rights; or (vii) violates, or encourages any conduct that would violate, any applicable law or regulation or would give rise to civil liability; It seems to me to require you to (a) ignore it or (b) think very, very carefully about what files it is OK to backup (is it OK to back up a work of fiction? Then what does it mean that you will not back up material that is ‘false or misleading’?). I wrote them about this, but never received a reply.

GrandMasterBirt 16y ago

OMFG! I've been hoping for THIS exact technology. I wanted to set up dropbox like environments on all my machines so I can share unlimited data across my LAN this way every single machine acts as a back-up for every other machine on my entire lan set up when it comes to data I very much care for (My Documents, All my photos, etc.) Its not much, 20GB total? If that much. I can even have some machines mirror that to external drives. The idea though is to have them all usable from anywhere and backed up via LAN. Yea so this sounds great. If we don't need a "server" or do but all machines are servers just one is considered the gatekeeper, this is perfect. Just install everywhere and go.

carbocation 16y ago
I agree - this would be a fantastic tool. And, frankly, although it might be a Dropbox clone, I'd probably use both. It's not a threat to Dropbox; it's a complement.
codemechanic 16y ago
It is already there. Try Tonido distributed backup.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
grails4life 16y ago
In order to compete with dropbox youll have to be as easy to use. People dont use dropbox for the storage they use it because it makes collaboration easier - even collaborating with those not so computer savvy.
pacemkr 16y ago
I use CrashPlan to achieve a similar result. I highly recommend you try it. CrashPlan will backup to your network (free), your friends (free), your external drives (free), and optionally to their servers (paid) all in parallel. Anywhere you install their software you can share a backup volume/folder and it is automatically visible to your other crashplan installs as a backup destination. On top of that you can use your own encryption key, so the data is protected even in case of a subpoena to the backup servers.

geezgod 16y ago

hopefully the upload speed is faster than 40kb/s :-D

joubert 16y ago

Can package up and sell to enterprises.

furyg3 16y ago

I'm fairly excited about this, I hope it's "just works" appeal come's close to the DropBox experience. I run the IT shop for a non-profit, which has just started to expand globally. I've been brought in to help ease the pain. We've got nearly everything web-based, except for the damn "shared drive". We just can't afford to set up a permanent VPN connection to all of our new offices (and all of the road-warriors)... nor do I want to. I'm testing Alfresco now (http://www.alfresco.com/ http://www.alfresco.com/), which is basically an open-source SharePoint. It's web-based, with file versioning (and other bells and whistles) but best of all it emulates a SMB/CIFS share, so the transition is easy for the main office. Hopefully it works well and I can implement it. But as an avid dropbox user, even this huge leap feels so old-school. It'd be great if remote users could "subscribe" to some of the folders, so they could work with files more quickly and offline. It's the future. An open-source DropBox allows for corporate implementations ("my data stays on my servers" types), and also permits tie-ins to other open-source projects (like Alfresco). The service won't be as bullet-proof and smooth, but the mashups will be interesting. Edit: DropBox should really offer corporate solutions. We're poor, and I think we'd spend money if I could sync our shared folders out to their servers, and let all my users access it from their beautiful web interface. That alone (without the client features) would be worth it.

codemechanic 16y ago
Try http://www.tonido.com http://www.tonido.com. It offers a remote drive feature. Will satisfy all your requirements listed here.
- furyg3 16y ago
  Hmm... interesting. Can you give user-specific logins to keep track of who's changed what?
  - codemechanic 16y ago
    You can create shares and assign guest accounts to them. The users will be able to load as a drive in their computers from LAN and over internet. I would suggest you to try the workspace application that comes with Tonido. Some NGOs are using it successfully to sync tasks, calendar, notes and files. The closest application that you can compare is microsoft groove.

jwr 16y ago

I think it is sad that the "Open Source" Community (in quotes, because there is really no such thing and the term is inprecise) didn't come up with Dropbox on its own earlier. There was rsync, there was unison, but none of them worked as transparently and flawlessly as Dropbox does. And now — we copy the successful entrepreneurs. I somehow don't feel it is right — I would have loved for it to be the other way around. Will we wait until somebody solves the other problems (E-mail, spam and E-mail attachments come to mind) and then copy their solution? Is that the best we can do?

hyperbovine 16y ago
librsync, libbzip, and a host of other LGPLd libraries are what make Dropbox go. There would be no Dropbox without the ""Open Source"" community. Dropbox--along with a lot of other companies (namely, Apple)--derive a lot of their success from going the last mile, that is wiring all these powerful OSS technologies together in a package that is intuitive and easy to use. Engineers typically are either uninterested in doing this, and that is why an open source Dropbox never came along.
jwr 16y ago
My criticism of the Open Source community has been downvoted into oblivion. I think this is rather sad. I'm not against open source, in fact I regularly contribute to many projects. But I also think one should not be blind to the outside world.

dakrone 16y ago

From the FAQ: Q: Why is it written in Mono/C#? A: Because I hate freedom. :)

strooltz 16y ago

This is cool. I think simple solutions will arise as well- companies can build platforms on top of the service and sell support packages- similar to what EY, heroku, and all the other EC2/S3 platforms already do or like red hat has been doing for years. There's a lot of cool potential for this...

mixmax 16y ago

This isn't a threat to dropbox becaue (as I read it) you have to set up your own server, or maybe hook up on a friends server. While this is certainly a great feature that a lot of people will value, the beauty of dropbox is that it just works. Without you having to install a server. I see the following obstacles with installing a server for sparkleshare: 1) You need a server. This might be obvious, but normal people don't have one. 2) You need to monitor your server. If the architecture is anything like dropbox it doesn't need to have 100% uptime since synchronizing will just be delayed a bit, but you still need to check in every now and then to make sure everything is OK. 3) Installing a server has never been easy. There is always some sort of problem with port forwarding, IP adresses, proxies, etc. unless you have a server somewhere in the cloud which most people don't. Normal people are barely aware of what a server is. See point 1. 4) Your backups are still your worry. What makes dropbox great is that I know that if they lose my data they have a serious business problem - they'll be held accountable. I'll write rants on my blog and everyone on HN will read it. They'll go through great lengths to prevent this. Besides their knowledge of backup procedures, RAID disks, redundancy and what have you is far far greater than mine. (At least I hope so :-)) If I host my files on my own server I'm the one that's accountable. I see this as a great service for companies that have some IT staff and aren't comfortable having all their company files hosted by another company, and hackers that prefer their own server. But it's not a threat to dropbox, which is getting popular among non-techies. My mom even has dropbox installed.

mattmaroon 16y ago
It depends what they define as a "server". If you have to set up a Linux box somewhere with decent upstream, then yeah, I'm not spending any time on that. And I'm the sort of person who could do it. However for what I use Dropbox for, I'd be perfectly fine if the "server" was just an old Windows box running out of my basement. If there's nothing more onerous than a port-forward it might be useful. But either way I doubt the guys at Dropbox have anything to worry about. To hurt them this doesn't have to appeal to the average Dropbox customer. It only has to appeal to the average paying Dropbox customer. There's a big difference there, but probably not big enough to matter.
Splines 16y ago

antidaily 16y ago

Using "clone" loosely here.

md81544 16y ago

Why C-sharp / mono ?? This could almost be done (on Linux at least) with a copy of rsync, git (for the revision control) and a shell script.

obsaysditto 16y ago
I was exactly wondering about mono when I viewed the README. The toolsets needed are already there. Perhaps this was done to make it easier to port to other OS later?
akmiller 16y ago
C-sharp and mono will allow it to run on all 3 platforms (OSX, Linux, and Windows).
sabat 16y ago
This could almost be done (on Linux at least) with a copy of rsync, git (for the revision control) and a shell script. Er, well, yeah, but you'd be polling almost constantly if you're trying to emulate what Dropbox does. I don't know exactly how Dropbox knows when I add or change a file -- I assume it ties in to the kernel. Also, rsync wouldn't work over HTTP, which is a big disadvantage in some of the environments I've been working in lately. My big question, though: why isn't someone doing this for headless servers? Why do they always assume people just want this for desktops? At least you can hack a headless version of Dropbox on Linux.
wcoenen 16y ago
If you look at the source, you'll see it is already based on git. C# is just used to glue it all together and provide a GUI. There isn't much source code there though. It looks more like a proof of concept. I doubt anything is "coming soon" here.

l4u 16y ago

it's cool! i want to set this up in my local server

Shorel 16y ago

I was thinking about something similar, but using SVN as the server and making a Windows client first.

babyshake 16y ago

I would love to see something like this using App Engine and Google Storage.