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Comment by antonius | Hacker News Reader

When looking to grow our board, we sought out a leader who could help us expand our global footprint.

Condoleezza sure left a global footprint in the Middle East alright. Hate do this Dropbox, but time for me to move on.

Edit: Suggestions for a Dropbox substitute?

I've been running ownCloud[0] on my server. It has Windows/Linux/Mac/Android/iOS clients and has been working very well for me as a drop in Dropbox replacement. In addition to the clients, you can use webDAV to access your files.

[0] http://www.owncloud.org

How do you run owncloud? What about security and updates and all that jazz?

I have a cheap hosting account into which I've extracted the ownCloud tarball[0]. For security updates, I've subscribed to the announcements ownCloud mailing list [1] so I get an email each time there's a new version (either bugfix or major). The mailing list is very low traffic (only messages about new versions). I either follow the instructions on the site [2] for major upgrades or otherwise use the built in updater [3][4] for the minor bugfix releases.

So far, it's been pretty painless.

[0] http://owncloud.org/install/

[1] http://mailman.owncloud.org/mailman/listinfo/announcements

[2] http://doc.owncloud.org/server/6.0/admin_manual/maintenance/...

[3] http://doc.owncloud.org/server/6.0/admin_manual/maintenance/...

[4] http://imgur.com/Z4U8ac5

Maybe an RPi hosted, with a USB external HD would be a good solution for owncloud.

If your pi is just running ownCloud and it's got access to a relatively fast connection, there shouldn't be any problem with doing that.

I'm thinking of getting a VPS to run my own server as the limitations of a hosted account are pretty important when it comes to running your own stuff (as opposed to 'just' hosting a blog or whatever).

I have done this. It's ok, but you have to tinker a bit to get big (GB+- is that even big anymore?) files to upload with the web interface. It might be worth your while to get something a bit more powerful (sheevaplug, etc.)

Hmm.. I use owncloud, and the ethics of the sysadmin completely match my own.

(although he is a bit of an idiot)

What's the current sentiment regarding the security and privacy of BTSync?

It's closed source and proprietary so it is no solution for me.

And DropBox isn't ?

As opposed to...Dropbox?!? (Recap: "Dropbox substitute?" "What about BTSync?" "Meh, isn't open")

Sorry, I took the comment on its own. I do not use Dropbox. I have not found a usable free sync solution so I am stuck with unison.

Ah, then I have misunderstood; I apologize.

To be fair aw3c2 never said they use Dropbox and while uptown's question was most certainly in respect to "Dropbox alternatives" their question is only asking about "the security and privacy of BTSync" to which aw3c2 responded.

BTsync is not the final solution, but it seems like an improvement over Dropbox. What's your open alternative?

Thanks. Reading this thread, it feels like I'm the only one who has already been boycotting dropbox.

Hopefully this news will lead to increased development for a product like SparkleShare. Lord knows we need it.

I snooped the traffic and it does not seem to send traffic to proxies if you configure it correctly to not do so.

I've moved from Dropbox to BTSync for 1Password sync and am comfortable with it. Of course, if an open source alternative comes up, I'm willing to consider it.

There's AeroFS, but I hate Java apps so that's a non-starter for me.

I could honestly care less about Dr. Rice being on the board of directors or not. Is she going to start a program to torture users of Dropbox? If that comes to pass, it may be a cause for concern. Other than that it appears that Dropbox is adding an accomplished and intelligent person to their board. Is who ever made this website, going to run around and try to get Dr. Rice fired from every job she gets? It really does appear that this is a personal vendetta of some sort.

However! I do welcome the thought of people looking for alternatives to Dropbox. I consider trusting your information with a propriety company based in the US, to be quite foolish these days. Personally I use Owncloud. It's open source. You can run it from your personal server. Owncloud has clients for Linux, Window, MAC, Android and IOS. You can also access your information through any web browser. To put the cherry on top, Owncloud has the capabilities to sync contacts, calendars and bookmarks across your all devices. It's a great piece of software and should suit those looking for an alternative.

http://owncloud.org/

We have been using https://copy.com without any issue.

It's an American company (Barracuda Inc.)

Any no bullshit European companies that can match the quality of Dropbox software?

I hate that I even have to make decisions like this, what the fuck kind of world are we living in.

You should look into Tresorit.

https://tresorit.com

There is tresorit ( https://tresorit.com/ ), but depending on what you want to do, they seem to be a little expensive.

Try hubic (https://hubic.com/en/), they are a French company.

Wuala Switzerland (run by Lacie inc.)

younited by F-Secure (Finnish)? http://www.younited.com/

There's political debate currently in Finland about giving police and intelligence the same kind of legal framework for access as the NSA has had in the US. But so far the proposals have been resisted. Mikko Hyppönen https://twitter.com/mikko and some others have been talking a lot publicly about making Finland a data haven with strong protections for privacy. Maybe they'll even succeed.

You'd think that by now there's be more than enough incentive to use services from non-US companies, and therefore to start such companies outside the US. Where are they?

For me dropbox worked very unreliably on Linux. Copy works much better.

From https://www.copy.com/about/tos/ :

We will respond to any notice of alleged copyright infringement if they comply with the law and are properly reported to us through our DMCA process (https://www.copy.com/about/dmca).

From https://www.copy.com/about/privacy :

It may be necessary − by law, legal process, litigation, and/or requests from public and governmental authorities within or outside your country of residence − for us to disclose your Personal Information, Non Personal Information, and Private Data Files. We may also disclose information about you if we determine that for purposes of national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance, disclosure is necessary or appropriate.

With the new price point, Google Drive is really attractive

I do use Google Drive some, but the overall usability of it is a bit painful. They have a lot of nice features for sharing folders/files with others, but the organization of it's web UI is just painful to use at times.

For some reason I actually like it. What do you find painful?

You know... you asking that question made me look at it and try to figure out why I don't like it. I think it actually my lack of organization with it. "My Drive" and "Shared with me" section has lots of docs/spreadsheets that I don't need anymore and they clutter the view, I just never thought to remove them to clean it up.

So really, it's my own lack of housekeeping that's bothering me. Time to clean up my Google Drive. Thanks.

Glad I could help! :)

Personally, I've had endless sync issues with Google drive. It doesn't seem to have any sort of 'retry' feature if it can't sync a file other than restarting the service.

If you have your own server, I'd recommend BTSync. Sync any folder on your computer easily, without having to move them into a specific folder. You could probably set something up to also sync everything to Google Drive with a script, for redundancy.

Could be a weird bug. I have a lot of files in my drive and don't have any issues so far. My drive is set up to sync on windows and mac. Also use it on my android and web.

Mega offers more storage for free, I don't know about ease of use.

I'd be worried about Mega being shut down by the government.

Or even worse, backdoored. Considering how strong the government went down on the old mega, I'm surprised they would allow Kim Dotcom to create another service, especially one that was designed with encryption in mind.

'Encryption in mind' is a bad way of putting it. Most of Mega's much spoken of encryption is done in your browser.

What about the sync client?

https://tools.google.com/dlpage/drive

Why are you using Google Drive? Eric Schmidt is a tech adviser to Barack Obama, the same person who selected a "war mongerer" in Joe Biden as his partner.

I've been using Spideroak https://spideroak.com/, they push security but only have 2G of free storage and their prices are steeper.

But they have a Linux client! Proprietary, but I can never get grive to work right so I use it (hesitantly). Most of my stuff is synced via owncloud, though.

http://owncloud.org

OneDrive is phenomenal. I've been using it for the past year or so and it's been a breeze.

No Linux support.

Not everyone needs that, though. It's still a valid suggestion.

Adopting OneDrive would then prevent you from ever adopting Linux in the future without migrating all data to a different service. You may be confident you don't use Linux now, but are you confident you'll never need Linux support? How confident are you with adopting a tool that's not OS agnostic?

Yeah, that is a downside, but for me it's OK, since I only use Linux on my web servers.

I'd like something a little more privacy-friendly, not that plays "team games" with NSA.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...

Unless you like privacy. Partially nude photos in your private folder on OneDrive can get your whole Microsoft account banned. [1]

[1] http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-m...

What I like the most is the integration of OneDrive with Microsoft Office 2013. But Microsoft successfully "force" me to use OneDrive because I bought Surface RT, which the best Windows 8 application for syncing file so far is OneDrive.

Nowadays, I rarely use Dropbox anymore if it is not for group projects. I don't know why but OneDrive seems unpopular among my friends.

Mediafire also offers 1 TB for $5 (first month is $2.5 or something).

https://www.mediafire.com/upgrade/

If you want something with strong security and privacy, there's https://spideroak.com/

It's 50% off if you pay yearly, plus 2 months free on top. $25 for the year, not bad. Not exactly comparable, but still.

I have been using hubiC in Windows and Linux without issues.

They give 25 GB, and respect your privacy (they are based on France).

I tried them but they did not offer any kind of access to previous versions of files which was a show stopper for me.

I started using hubiC because I need a replacement for Ubuntu One.

So far there's no perfect file cloud service, unless you want to also manage your own server.

MEGA! it's end-to-end encrypted and 50GB free! they already have desktop client for windows and will also release for Linux and OSX shortly.

Yeah lets store everything on a service that has already evaporated once before!

Unlike other services, which are eternal?

If you're relying on a single service with all copies of the data, you're doing it wrong. Always have backups.

Heroku alternatives too?

http://www.salesforce.com/company/leadership/board-of-direct...

http://seafile.com/en/home/

Similar to ownCloud, has client support for all the major platforms.

For the record, it's written by a Chinese company - not that this should matter, but it's often rejected because all those Chinese are cyber criminals, y'know?

I've been happy with https://aerofs.com/ so far.

JottaCloud. Based in Norway, so no US involvement.

Are you using it? If so, how's it going?

Its funny I was kind of looking for alternatives for our business, we use it as a poor mans shared NAS across two offices, but with the new Business features (personal and business folders in particular) finally reached a usability threshold for us.

Ugh...

I've switched to BTsync until a compelling open option appears (hopefully soon).

git-annex assistant + hosting at rsync.net? http://www.rsync.net/products/git-annex-pricing.html

You might like Wuala: http://wuala.com/en/pricing/

I like wuala but they are very expensive and have not adjusted their prices at all

> When looking to grow our board, we sought out a leader who could help us expand our global footprint.

Hey actually the word footprint can also be understood as garbage.

> the impact on the environment of human activity in terms of pollution, damage to ecosystems, and the depletion of natural resources.

Then if you read it this way, the sentence sounds actually very appropriate!

Wuala or SpiderOak.

I'd say Wuala, as SpiderOak's mobile application wasn't great last time I checked. It only had read capability.

Note that there are potential privacy concerns with Wuala and similar services, as they use de-duplication techniques, meaning if somebody makes a file public, and you have the same copy in storage, they can see these files in your account.

It's not a serious privacy violation, as it only identifies what are otherwise public files anyway - but if you want complete privacy, including being able to hide what you are uploading, not just the content - then you're better with something self-hosted perhaps.

They stopped using de-duplication some time ago.

The company I used to work for has one (and can help you build a DropBox for your company).

http://titansgroup.com.br/cloud.php

It's currently aimed at telcos (América Móvil used it in Latin America) but IIRC they rolled out their own product, at least for internal use.

Bitcasa: 1TB/$10 - https://www.bitcasa.com/pricing

Are they faster?

https://www.cubby.com/

https://www.sync.com/

http://www.box.com

Ah, the further politicization of everything in America continues unabated.

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