Perkeep is really straightforward to operate though. One can just install the dmg, mount the root and put files there. Also there's a web interface. For me the most interesting feature is though how easy it is to setup a new node and to sync to/from it. Like rsync but no need to worry about the parameters. Also as the name suggests, it's far more difficult to loose important data than with Dropbox (and similar products like iCloud) which can quickly happen through wrong usage.

no wonder looking at the funding, is it?

You don't need funding for focusing on ease of operation, it's a mindset. Either you're user-centered, or you're not.

>Either you're user-centered, or you're not.

It really depends on the audience for the product, targeting regular users does require more thought on the UX, etc which almost invariably means more funding.

I don't think the website targets the wrong audience - just the copywriter was so involved in the project they forgot to make what they're offering clear.

When someone says "permanently keep your stuff, for life" do they mean some sort of pay-once eternal backup, like permanent.org? Something censorship-resistant, like Freenet? Something peer-to-peer and distributed-ledger based like Filecoin? Backing up data locked up in cloud services? Converting obscure file formats into ones with more longevity? Bypassing defunct DRM? Activism against civil forfeiture?

Just from the front page it looks like a software stack for running your own archive server?

Why do you think cmd line tools are popular ? Because they are easier to do than a GUI, not because all geeks think the terminal is the only xp that matters.

That seems... offtopic? You can have command line tools that are easy to use, with documentation focused on user-friendliness, and you can have command line tools where figuring out what they even do in the first place takes a lot of effort. And the same is true for GUIs, for what it's worth.

That takes time. Or funding. I have often thought "it would be great if I could suck all my emails and Facebook posts into a local search index." It sounds like this is that. If I wrote it I would have exactly enough time to make sure that all my emails and Facebook posts are in a local index and then I would have no more time for a personal project. Making a nice UI on top of it would easily increase the amount of time fivefold.

Agreed. It's really about benefits vs features. Features are what. Benefits are why; why you should care. Addressing why is essential.

About $30k - https://opencollective.com/perkeep/expenses - which is more than most OSS projects would ever see in their lifetime, so it's not such a good excuse for lacking documentation and UX.

$30K over 13 years, and 98% of that funding was the lead developer and his wife (plus 10% from another developer) giving their own money to another developer.

It looks more like "wealthy Googlers helping out a friend with a short term gig" than "financing a professional product".

Perhaps you could donate your time as a UX specialist to help these folks who are more versed in backend systems and libraries.

I'm more of a backend person myself, and perkeep disappoints on that side too. See my other comment about how much time it took to ingest just one .iso. I don't think this system would handle a 5 TB video file as the authors claim, that's some false advertisement!

I considered it for my use case (archiving and deduping dozens of terabytes / millions of files on several personal NAS boxes), really wanted to use it - as I find some of its ideas pretty cool, but in the end decided it would be simpler to just write something from scratch instead. It took less time to write it than it would have taken perkeep to ingest my data.