4 ms·
Disclaimer: i'm part of the cryptpad team. If you are interested in a similar alternative but which is adding the challenge of end to end encryption to the tab
by ldubost 7y ago
Disclaimer: i'm part of the cryptpad team.
If you are interested in a similar alternative but which is adding the challenge of end to end encryption to the table, check out cryptpad.fr
It is Open source and has now 3 years of developpement to bring realtime encrypted documents.
Tackling Google's non open source business model is an important task. There are already quite a few products that are going after that, including NextCloud, OnlyOffice, etc. Most of them target the enterprise where there is money.
To go after the end consumer the main problem is the "surveillance capitalism" issue which you cannot just tackle with the promise of not looking at things and just be open source. End to End encryption is needed, which is what we are working on at CryptPad (on hackernews Time to Encrypt the Cloud https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13692856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13692856). Other products are proposing zero knowledge email or drives.
End to end encryption is key, because it guarantees that the surveillance business model won't be activated down the line. It also protects the data from cloud hacking.
From there the biggest challenge is funding. Without revenue from reading the data like Google, or selling super expensive devices like Apple, or selling to the large Enterprise like Microsoft, how do you provide a good service to end consumer. Open source can help solve the hosting part by distributing it and by self hosting but it won't solve the R&D issue. To fund this level of R&D help is needed. At cryptpad we have subscriptions and Open Collective.
Ludovic from CryptPad.fr