Comment by explodingcamera

5 years ago

This is looks super cool, however not something I'd be interested in using myself if I can't selfhost it (at least it looks like thats not possible from the website).

18 comments

explodingcamera

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YPPH  5 years ago

Self-hosting a zero knowledge service is probably unnecessary.

If you're hosting the service, there's no need for data to be encrypted client-side. Unless, of course, you were intending on running the service on a public cloud which you didn't control, but that's something I don't think many privacy conscious folk would do.

There's plenty of open source, self-hosted alternatives to Google Photos.

  • sam0x17  5 years ago

    Yeah, having attempted to operate a service very similar to this (only more focused on general encrypted cloud storage) I will say there are no good economics in usage-based billing. You're much better off selling a license to use the software and give users the ability to use common cloud storage providers (minimally the s3-compatible ones but also things like Google Drive) as the backing for this. Even safer from a legal perspective would be not having accounts at all and allowing users to purchase a 1-year license based on license keys that are cryptographically validated but not stored anywhere. Then it's impossible to do anything user specific whether you are compelled to or not.

  • cdata  5 years ago

    To me it is a canary signal that I have the option to self-host.

    Most likely, QoS would be better from ente's hosting and I would be inclined to take advantage of that. An open source server can be audited and offer an off-ramp should their service no longer suit me.

    Then again, the economics of enabling self-hosted infrastructure are probably less exciting compared to locking users in to marked-up, white-labeled infrastructure.

lol1lol  5 years ago

self hosting is not worth the time and effort.

  • andrewmunsell  5 years ago

    That is not categorically true.

    On the business side, there's plenty of companies that have offered and succeeded with self-hosted software. On the client side, there's many individuals like myself willing to dedicate time, money, and effort to self-host services. I spent quite a bit of time setting up my NAS with self-hosted services, not only because the number of photos and media I store would be prohibitively expensive to host elsewhere (I do photography and videography as a hobby, 120 fps 10 bit footage adds up), but because I enjoy the hobby.