Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?

Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos? by choward on Sunday May 30, 2021 @11:54PM (#27339899)

I can't tell if this is self hosted or not. All I see is a centralized option. If not self hostable, a user still can't guarantee that this doesn't just end up being as bad as google photos. There are plenty of companies like this that provide an alternative to the mainstream then sell out. Really, the only person you can trust is yourself at the end of the day.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos? by vishnumohandas on Monday May 31, 2021 @02:19AM (#27340800)

Hey, ente is currently not directed at an audience that has the knowledge and energy to set up and maintain a reliable storage infrastructure.

We had started off as a self-hosted project, but ran into difficulties monetizing that model. We wanted to pay our rents, and continue working on this, and an E2EE SaaS was a way forward.

We are not averse to supporting a self-hosted version in the future. But that commitment requires engineering and support bandwidth, which we don’t have right now.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos? by movedx on Monday May 31, 2021 @05:42AM (#27342205)

You've made the right choice not to opensource and or support self-hosting options from day one.

In my opinion open source software benefits greatly from first being closed sourced and commercially backed with an OSS release coming in the future after stability has been established.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos? by sp332 on Monday May 31, 2021 @12:24AM (#27340106)

Down in the reddit comments it says it is not self-hosted because of limited "engineering bandwidth".

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos? by vishnumohandas on Monday May 31, 2021 @03:39AM (#27341318)

Hey, maintaining and providing support for a server that is de-coupled from underlying external integrations (storage, payment, secrets, email, ...) is what requires bandwidth.

Also, self-hosted consumer products are hard to sustain profitably. Avenues for monetization are low.

Given that our long term target audience is people like my parents, we did not see enough value in investing in a self-hosted variant, and wanted to reduce the number of distractions.

This is not to say that we are against the idea of a self-hosted variant, just that it is not a priority for us right now.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos? by gtirloni on Monday May 31, 2021 @07:39AM (#27342980)

The self-hosted audience is also very small. I think you made the right choice.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos? by TimPC on Monday May 31, 2021 @07:56AM (#27343119)

For photos I’d agree as most customers are end users. Don’t underestimate this for other products though. Self hosting is a huge feature for selling into large corporations with data security policies.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos? by anaganisk on Monday May 31, 2021 @11:31AM (#27345042)

Why would corporations want to use google photos alternative tho? They're probably are using Gsuite or Office 365 already, both of which have photo storage options. If they're okay with their emails there, I dont think photos is an issue. So yes they made the right choice, by ignore the self hosting crowd, which is a very small crowd.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos? by egeozcan on Monday May 31, 2021 @01:22AM (#27340452)

It looks like they only open sourced the clients, not the backend.

Also the phrase "ente has an open architecture and source code that has been peer reviewed" that can be found on their website follows a dark pattern: hey, look we are open but not really.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos? by vishnumohandas on Monday May 31, 2021 @03:11AM (#27341154)

Hey, I'm sorry that it came across that way. Thanks for pointing it out, I now see the lack of clarity. I've updated the copy to better reflect the situation.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos? by egeozcan on Monday May 31, 2021 @04:15AM (#27341535)

Great, thanks for the fast reaction!

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos? by _fs on Monday May 31, 2021 @12:44AM (#27340227)

AKA we want to lock you in to our PAAS

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos? by Aeolun on Monday May 31, 2021 @12:33AM (#27340167)

That seems counterintuitive.

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Re:Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos? by vanous on Monday May 31, 2021 @12:48AM (#27340260)

As long as the server is closed source, this remains in the 'nice but do not touch' territory.

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