I've been playing and deploying instances of
https://www.owncloud.org
http://www.bittorrent.com/sync
Eggert, Lars <mailto:lars(_at_)netapp(_dot_)com>
7 November 2013 13:01
Hi,
since a "secure DropBox alternative" was brought up: the pieces for
building such do exist, but some exist outside the IETF. For example,
SNIA's CDMI (http://www.snia.org/cdmi) could be useful, and on the
IETF side we have of course WebDAV.
In many cases, the reason that such alternatives don't exist probably
isn't because there aren't any open protocols available to build them
with, it's that the proprietary services have polished clients that
are simple to set up, available for many clients, and that they have a
robust and well-managed backend. There's not much the IETF can do
about these factors.
In the specific case of DropBox clones, several vendors of storage
systems (incl. my employer) are making or will shortly be making
mobile clients available that use said storage systems as a backend
instead of the public cloud. So at least for that particular
application, there are alternatives available.
Lars