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Poll: Interest in Sailfish optimised Cloud Services?

asked 2017-11-08 04:18:40 +0200

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updated 2017-11-10 13:34:15 +0200

BonoNL gravatar image

Fellow Jolla Users,

I am the Chief Systems Engineer for GreenAnt, a privacy focused web services company located in Australia. We are keen users of Linux based solutions and Sailfish OS and have been tweaking and adapting our web services to work well with Sailfish over the last 18 months.
I know many of you are very technically skilled and may have your own cloud services running but I wanted to gauge interest within the community for a Sailfish optimised storage, sync and messaging solution .

What we'd propose supplying would be a complete package of privacy friendly services:

  • Latest Nextcloud service (currently v12.0.3) on high speed servers ( https://nest.greenant.net )

    • 2 Factor Authentication support with SailfishOS (SailOTP)
    • CalDAV sync (native)
    • CardDAV sync (native)
    • Task support (via DAVDroid/OpenTasks)
    • File Sync (compatible with Sailfish and Android clients)
    • Collaborative office docment support with OnlyOffice
    • Markdown Note support (via native and Android clients)
    • bookmark, photo and video sync support
    • federation, SFTP, FTP, WebDAV support
  • IMAP/SMTP with instant message delivery, server-side filtering (sieve)

    • webclient (https://webmail.greenant.net) and IDLE support
    • Jabber/XMPP messaging with full P2P OMEMO encryption support (via Conversations app)
  • GPS tracks and phone location support (under full user control)

  • Video chat via WebRTC

The price we're aiming at is $15 AUD per month including 20GB of storage (with extra storage at $0.50 per GB per month). We would like to donate 10% of this fee to Jolla to encourage further development. We're also committed to providing user documentation and support for our users ( see https://docs.greenant.net/static/GreenAnt_Nest/Phone_Support/index.html ). All GreenAnt services adhere to the highest privacy and security standards. You can read our privacy policy here: https://www.greenant.net/your-privacy/

To get this Sailfish specific bundle off the ground, we need to have around 100 users. The SailfishOS oriented service is working well for us in internal testing currently but I'd expect there's some optimisations that we'll find with a larger user base and we want to make sure the product has sufficient revenue to support Sailfish users properly.

If you're interested in this service, please upvote the YES comment below, also please feel free to add comments if you'd be interested in other services.

p.s. GreenAnt Networks has no affiliation or commercial relationship with Jolla, this offer and the offer to provide a monthly donation to them is made completely independently


Edit 08/11/17

Thanks for the feedback and positive responses. We have had a lot of interest in alternative data locations to enhance security. After crunching some figures, it does look possible to offer serving from Helsinki, Finland, at an affordable price. Data transit is quite a bit more expensive there, so the price would be a little higher (currently with the conversion rate €10 = approx $15 AUD):

The predicted prices would be as follows:

  • Australia: $15 AUD per month including 20GB of storage (with extra storage at $0.50 per GB per month)
  • Finland: €15 EURO per month including 20GB of storage (with extra storage at €0.50 per GB per month)

If there's strong interest in other locations, we can also consider other countries (cost and user base permitting). It would also be possible to migrate user accounts from one location to another.

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30

answered 2017-11-08 04:19:30 +0200

zepher gravatar image

YES - I am interested in an integrated SailfishOS storage/sync/messaging service

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YES I'm interested, the location part should be good, but I think you already know. Also the integration needs to be very easy, so it should be integrated with the OS or there should be a app.

Integration with the os is +1.

BonoNL ( 2017-11-08 21:04:00 +0200 )edit
7

answered 2017-11-08 04:20:01 +0200

zepher gravatar image

updated 2017-11-08 04:20:42 +0200

No - I am not interested in such a service

It would be helpful if you comment the reason why so we can possibly address this.

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10

Australia = part of "five eyes"

allnet-flats ( 2017-11-08 09:05:44 +0200 )edit

That is an important consideration. Do you have any suggestions of where you'd feel more comfortable with the data being located? If there's sufficient interest we could house the data in Germany/Italy/Holand at one of our other data centres.

zepher ( 2017-11-08 09:09:57 +0200 )edit
1

sounds like a charming service,...but how secures Australian law data in general and how is the situation for compensation for damages referenced to professional used data?

BlaeX ( 2017-11-08 09:46:33 +0200 )edit
1

Australia / Germany / Italy / Holland are all members of 5/9/14 eyes. Probably Iceland or Hong-Kong can be better?

nlsn ( 2017-11-08 10:23:28 +0200 )edit
2

I find it great that you want to offer services for sailfish users to provide them more privacy when using the cloud services. However, since a lot of SF users are probably located in Europe or Russia, I personally see two main issues here. The big one, as already mentioned is the affiliation of your secret services with their american counterparts, which really is a no go for me as privacy focused user. Adding to that, I currently don't know any details about australian privacy laws, but imagine you rely on the Privacy Shield agreement (which is shit) for handling data from EU citizens. It would take a bigger summary on australian law in that respect (to which your privacy policies are bound) to convince me to trust you with my data.

Naming a better location / country to host such a service is not that easy (nearly every country in Europe has its own "partnership" with the U.S. services, even if not that close like the "Five Eyes") and pretty much depends per user. Basically I would say the best is to host services as close to the user as possible, for EU users at least somewhere inside the EU (maybe in the northern countries as they seem to have rather strong privacy laws).

ghling ( 2017-11-08 10:50:56 +0200 )edit
5

answered 2017-11-08 12:40:44 +0200

White gravatar image

I think that there is no 100% guarantee, that someone will not access your data, but anyway keeping data in such cloud service is much safer than Google drive, Apple iCloud or Microsoft OneDrive. For small companies it is OK to keep data in such clouds, but once again first you should make native app, that can be tested by community from all sides. Stability and reliability - it is basis.

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Thanks for your comment. As you say, there's no 100% security on any cloud service, but we try very hard to make all services as secure as possible. This is by supporting encryption wherever possible and maintaining/patching systems carefully. Most importantly, we respect users' privacy by not sharing their data with third parties or using their data in any way apart from serving it to them.

With SailfishOS, where possible existing native applications will be used (eg: Calendar, Mail) and some Android apps for increased functionality (Nextcloud sync and Conversations for encrypted XMPP). Essentially what we do with the service is to configure and test high-speed, server-side products to work well with existing client apps. We'd also be happy to provide support for app development but are focusing on the server-side aspect.

The services are provided by a combination of open-source products (and a lot of integration):

  • NextCloud for file sync and CalDAV/CardDAV (branded as GreenAnt Nest)
  • Postfix (SMTP), Dovecot (IMAP)
  • Prosody (XMPP).

In all instances, server-side products are based on open-source products. Our storage backend runs with the ZFS file system and Ceph on redundant SSD arrays with frequent snapshots. We've done a lot of testing already and are pleased to say that the services work really well with SailfishOS. Happy to provide further details if you're interested.

zepher ( 2017-11-08 13:05:17 +0200 )edit
2

answered 2017-11-11 09:59:51 +0200

potski gravatar image

Great! It is always nice to hear about new services been offered.

There is a cloud storage app in Jolla store called SailElfCloud. It uses strong encryption and servers are located in Finland.

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Closing 2018-06-15

rfa ( 2018-03-16 09:14:53 +0200 )edit

Yes, and free ones are dead already. I am starting to think I need to have my own server for email, storage and Sailfish store.

potski ( 2018-03-16 11:54:03 +0200 )edit
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Asked: 2017-11-08 04:18:40 +0200

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Last updated: Nov 11 '17