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Comment by HerraBRE | Hacker News Reader

This can also be done with entirely Free Software (for those that care about such things) by combining things like OwnCloud (http://owncloud.org/) and MediaGoblin (http://www.mediagoblin.org/), and maybe PageKite (https://pagekite.net/) if port forwarding is not an option.

I think OwnCloud has a mobile interface and syncing features as well now.

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Also git-powered http://sparkleshare.org/

I am very excited and waiting for http://git-annex.branchable.com/

That's git-annex, which has been available for a long time; the new thing is git-annex assistant, which is a Dropbox-like addon for g-a. That said, wait no more! The Assistant has been available since the 24th: http://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/

PageKite looks interesting. Although when I read the list under "without PageKite, you would have to:" it seems easier than PageKite. Crazy I know. :) (The catch I think is getting that static reachable IP. Most people do not have that. But I think there are workarounds.)

Question: Why the base64 encoding instead of a simple gzipped tar file? Also why instruct people to feed untrusted stuff from the internet directly into bash via curl? That is definitely not safe as a matter of policy.

But I like the idea of PacketKite. Nicely done.

Also curious about Dalpay. Are they a good alternative to PayPal?

The main point of PageKite is converting a networking/sysadmin problem, into a software problem. This has fundamental implications for scaling it out (software copying scales infinitely, sysadmins don't).

I ended up with the weird merged python file (see: http://pagekite.net/wiki/Floss/PyBreeder/) because I wanted the continued perceived simplicity of a single .py, but I ended up wanting to refactor my code into submodules. So I made PyBreeder to reverse the refactoring, basically. It is a little silly and will probably go away over time. Regarding the bash installer, I don't see much of a difference between trusting my installer or trusting pagekite itself. Both came from the network. The bash installer is at least easier to review than "install.exe" or the shell scripts embedded in an RPM or .deb. My goal was to get people up and running in literally two commands, this was the only cross-distro/cross-OS way to accomplish that.

Dalpay are OK, but they have their warts. I'd rather deal with a small local company than a monster like PayPal, and being in Iceland my options for actually receiving funds from PayPal and the likes were actually rather limited.

It looks like you need to pay for the Owncloud mobile apps. Little confused about the free software claim. I am nothing against paying for a good software.

Interesting, I didn't know the apps were closed. (edit: seems they're not, source code is here: https://gitorious.org/owncloud/android-main)

My point was not price though, but freedom. If people are looking to move out of the cloud and take things home, I suspect this is at least in part driven by an urge to take control of their data and become more independent.

Controlling the tools is, by many, considered to be an important part of that.

Thanks for the Info.

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