Re:Helm: Personal Email Server
by tenebrisalietum on Wednesday October 17, 2018 @10:43AM
(#18239555)
Same thing with file transfer. You'd think it'd be a solved, easy thing by now--a gigantic datacenter/cellphone network is not the optimum solution to allow two people or two businesses to transfer a file between them.
I agree with you absolutely here. Yes, literally Helm does this: encrypted automatic backups.
You say Helm literally does this. But what the grandparent was asking for wasn't just backups. They suggest (as I see it) an open standard for backups, ubiquitously implemented so it's easy to switch your provider and easy to set up new devices.
Does Helm use one of those? I suspect not, because I don't know of any such ubiquitously implemented open standard for automatic encrypted backups.
So: is Helm going to put in the effort to define such an open standard and push for it to become ubiquitous?
Even if Helm implements automatic encrypted backups, it's still contributing to a fragmented world siloed into incompatible apps and platforms. Making your siloed service better than others won't fix that problem.
>I don't know of any such ubiquitously implemented open standard for automatic encrypted backups
Here is a question for the parent poster and anyone else. Do you think it would be worthwhile to gather some people and try to design such open protocol? Without having an implementation first? Or would that be just a waste of everyone's time?
Like, backups. Everyone knows how this can be done. Have automated scheduled backups. Encrypt them. Send to offsite storage. This should be handled through a generic backup protocol so you can choose your provider and be sure the app doesn't siphon your personal data.
Users should not need to manually fuck around to set this up for every computer and every app they use. This should be absolutely standard. Preferably built at OS level. I know Ubuntu had something of this sort, but IIRC it wasn't based on an open standard where you could choose your own storage provider. Windows? Hah.
Instead, developers strip users of all control over their data claiming it's for their own good, and push everything to a myriad proprietary cloud solution through random protocols with dubious security implications.