No matter if Dropbox truly is insecure or not: having another option, especially something that doesn’t force you to use and pay for another service, would be grand. Something like WebDAV syncing, for example.
I don’t think anyone is against another option, but it’s fallacy that you have to pay for Dropbox. The free tier is large enough for many books and there are ways to increase that free tier.
There are plenty of other robust ‘plug and play’ sync services around that also have free tiers that are simple for the average user to implement..
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Box gives you 5GB free; Sync gives you 5GB free (I use it, but find I do have to sort out more conflicts); iCloud (if you’re on a Mac) gives 5GB free and 50GB is only 99p per month (I presume OneDrive is similar if you’re on Windows)…
Although I have the first three and the free tier of Dropbox, I use Sync as main online storage. Sync is hosted in Canada, and your data is end-to-end encrypted. Unlike Dropbox, which is blocked in China unless you’re willing to use VPNs and change them periodically, my Chinese collaborator can access it. When I first tried Box, they did not release access to China, so my use of it is minimal.
Mark
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I also use Sync. I have a 2TB subscription, and chose it because it’s not hosted in Trumpistan, end to end etc. (and because Aussies support the free North)
I also have a free box tier and was tempted to go for a paid one. box is used by a certain company (NDA and all that sh.t) as the only alternative to their in-house cloud so it must meet their demanding requirements.
To me, OneDrive is in the same pox-riddled neighborhood as Google Drive - only used for zipped backups.
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Well, then let’s talk more frankly: I want to get my data out of countries with unstable and autocratic regimes that apparently also have huge influence on the IT industry.
Mela
To reiterate one thing, the earlier portion of this discussion covers how Scrivener already works with almost all services, as that was the scope of the discussion at that point in time. It has since shifted into iOS limitations being discussed, and alternatives one can use to get around those. So if that isn’t applicable, then go back to the beginning.
Within that narrower scope of the discussion then, we probably could implement something like WebDAV (possibly even without too much work as a lot of the hard code would be the logic behind how the bespoke and embedded Dropbox client works, rather than the API calls themselves), but I honestly don’t think most people would appreciate that. For one thing, only a minor percentage of Scrivener users would have the first clue how to set up a server for that, and meanwhile we have zero interest in becoming a data storage company on the side. But almost as important: there is a lot of brand loyalty in this area, you could say, rather than ideological or technological concerns. All most people will see is that we still aren’t supporting Google, Microsoft or Apple branded services.
To speak more personally, I’m on the same page as you. As I noted above, though not too much into the reasons why, I use Tresorit, which has Swiss privacy on top of EU privacy, decent pricing, a very flexible system, solid Linux support (if you’re really trying to get away from those IT giants), and it works great with Scrivener. It also doubles as a true backup service (though it does not specialise in that), as it can store stuff decoupled from any automatic synchronisation; upload/download only basically.
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I understand your argument, but I slightly disagree. Nextcloud and Owncloud have become quite popular. Servers are offered by organizations, companies, universities and many webspace providers offer out-of-the-box packages. Many “personal backup storage” solutions use, in fact, Nextcloud under the hood. Nextcloud and Owncloud are accessible via WebDAV.
The real problem is, that people rarely realize that the budget backup space they’ve booked to off-site backup their personal documents, is, in fact, a WebDAV server.
I’m with Amber on this one. My grandma could write, but not have a clue setting up a NextCloud / Owncloud server. It’s a massive assumption that people know how to run a linux server, or even that they know what a server is.
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Thanks for proving my point.
People don’t realize when they already have it, since it is often just sold as “personal backup solution” without slapping the name “Nextcloud” on it.
No Linux knowledge or server setup needed.
Also bear in mind most hosted services are themselves just reselling AWS (Amazon) or Azura (Microsoft), GCP (Google) etc wrapped in a service and packaged up pretty. Do you really know where your data is when you’re using any cloud based system?
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If they don’t know what they’re using, how on earth are we supposed to help them troubleshoot any issues with it?
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They may well be ‘quite popular’ in some segments, (corporate, education etc who have dedicated staff to implement) but the vast majority of everyday users have never heard of them and doing a quick signup process with Nextcloud, it’s nothing like as simple as a signup with the likes of Sync etc. I suspect the average non-tech user would get to the first screen with all its tech talk and say ‘stuff this’ and wander back to one of the majors.
Why do you think so many hundreds of millions of people use Google Drive, one-drive and iCloud? Signup requires no thought - brainless and painless.
Edit: Add to that, once set up, the cost of going beyond the free tier on a couple of servers I checked was substantially more than with Sync.
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click here to test your environment
I mean, yeah, I understand the decision to support a ‘painless and brainless’ storage service first.
But I understand not supporting an open protocol at all, only to a degree.
With the current political climate, more people might move away from the big players, making not only space for services like “Hetzner Storage Box” (also based on Nextcloud), but more non-tech people are turning to home NAS solutions, who have become quite good and affordable, too.
WebDAV is widely supported and personally I think support will rather increase in the future instead of the opposite.
“They may well be ‘quite popular’ in some segments, (corporate, education etc who have dedicated staff to implement) but the vast majority of everyday users have never heard of them and doing a quick signup process with Nextcloud, it’s nothing like as simple as a signup with the likes of Sync etc”
In our state it is half a million students and faculty, have access to 50 GB storage space per person on a statewide academic storage service based on Nextcloud — out of the box, from the moment of being a student or being employed. No sign-up. Only a sign-in.
That’s why I’m teaching my very non-tech fellow students how to use it as a Sync server for Zotero: Zotero-bwSyncShare.pdf · main · Mela Eckenfels / Zotero-Anleitungen · GitLab
This is, of course, far from dropbox’s 700 million users, but it is only one state and there are
not only similar services in other states in place, but, as far as I know, also in Switzerland and France.
The nice thing with free software and open protocols is, that everybody can create services based on it and making people less depending on internet giants in the process. While not everybody will, some do.
In this light I find it wrong and sad not to support open protocols at all.
But YMMV.
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You’ve just proven my point. ‘corporate, education etc’, and you, a more knowledgeable person ‘teaching your very non-tech fellow students’.
It is far from being widely used and for the average individual, remains a more complicated and messy option, with pricing beyond that of the more widely available commercial offerings.
As I said, part of the popularity of the widely available options is the ‘brainless and painless’ approach to signup.
While in a perfect world supporting open protocols is laudable, I suspect it may be in the too hard basket. If widely used and supported Linux at 4% market share is too hard (and expensive) for many developers to develop for and support, what chance for even smaller, fragmented syncing services? While I can easily set up a syncing account with the likes of Nextcloud, I would expect to be on my own when it came to any syncing issues with commercially available apps such as Scrivener.
As for home NAS, it’s something I recommend, but requires a not insignificant financial commitment the average user seems unwilling to make, and more than a little faffing around to set up, a time and effort investment they similarly are unwilling to make. Google, etc, etc will effortlessly handle their ‘backups’ for a painless small monthly fee. (until something goes wrong, then the wailing begins)
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Honestly, a non-technical person concerned about the current political climate should be thinking about how to reduce their dependence on the internet, not how to roll their own alternative to the big guys.
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That’s great. And if you’re genuinely concerned about being hounded for your political views, it’s a terrible choice. A subpoena to the state university system will unearth your data every bit as fast as one to Google. (Maybe faster, because Google probably has fancier lawyers and more incentive to fight for their users.)
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That’s all fine until the person encounters an issue and they know nobody using said service to ask for support. “You use what now?”
(jeez… sorry for all the edits! I think editing broke my brain this evening)
NAS in themselves also do not mitigate other risks (a hardware failure, or eaten by a software update, or god forbid it gets stolen, or you have a house fire. Where are your files then?)
If you’re super paranoid about cloud services and don’t trust their claims to encrypt files (most do: iCloud, for example), you can pre-encrypt your data before letting it sync (this is relatively trivial and way less expensive / technical load, compared to maintaining an NAS, IMO).
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I never suggested a NAS mitigates other risks and I wasn’t the poster that was paranoid about cloud services (apart from not liking Google and Microsoft’s privacy policies).
If you’ve read my posts here and other threads, you’ll know I use a NAS, Time Machine on another (portable) drive and a secure cloud service (Sync) plus I also have zipped backups of my projects on iCloud (being ex-Apple I’m familiar and comfortable with iCloud’s security) and One Drive depending on the platform. Any user above knuckle dragger level can easily use the Time Machine/cloud/cloud scenario part of my process. (or whatever easy Win backup system equates to Time Machine).
Reality, my Synology NAS was as close to plug and play as you get with a Mac and it wasn’t too difficult to get the Win system to also talk to it, but it did cost more than many people might want or afford to pay.
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