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Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

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Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#71

Post by tasn »

jmnicolas wrote: post #70

After reading the docs I have a couple more questions: - there's the notion of a local cache but is it synced / de-duped automatically or is it something I still have to do? Let's say I have a ToDo mobile app. While online I enter the task "buy milk". Sometimes later I'm in airplane mode and I modify the task as "buy condensed milk". Do your library updates the changes automagically once online? - how realistic is it…

Local cache: no, you need to do it yourself once the app goes online. We plan on having things like that soon as part of support for automatic conflict resolution and etc.

Running your own server: trivial, not even a couple of hours. Check out the repo for instructions, or just use the docker images (created by the community).

As for Skynet. We are already too late.

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#72

Post by jmnicolas »

tasn wrote: post #71
jmnicolas wrote: post #70

After reading the docs I have a couple more questions: - there's the notion of a local cache but is it synced / de-duped automatically or is it something I still have to do? Let's say I have a ToDo mobile app. While online I enter the task "buy milk". Sometimes later I'm in airplane mode and I modify the task as "buy condensed milk". Do your library updates the changes automagically once online? - how realistic is it…

Local cache: no, you need to do it yourself once the app goes online. We plan on having things like that soon as part of support for automatic conflict resolution and etc. Running your own server: trivial, not even a couple of hours. Check out the repo for instructions, or just use the docker images (created by the community). As for Skynet. We are already too late.

Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#73

Post by speby »

This looks really good and I can tell a lot of work went into this. Bravo.

Although this does not yet have the same sort of real-time push syncing (or subscriptions) the way Firestore (or Firebase) both have, it looks like it has the right foundation to support that.

Also impressed that this has such wide client SDK support already. Again, I can tell a lot of work went into it. I'll be trying this out and following the project! Excited to see where it goes next.

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#75

Post by tasn »

thelazydogsback wrote: post #74

How does this compare to https://supabase.io/ ?

I think it's very different to supabase.io. They are focusing on being a Firebase alternative, we are focusing on making it easy to build encrypted applications. Not the same target audience and not the same offering.

With that being said, Supabase is very cool, and I'm a big fan! If you don't care about end-to-end encryption, you should definitely use Supabase!

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#76

Post by tasn »

speby wrote: post #73

This looks really good and I can tell a lot of work went into this. Bravo. Although this does not yet have the same sort of real-time push syncing (or subscriptions) the way Firestore (or Firebase) both have, it looks like it has the right foundation to support that. Also impressed that this has such wide client SDK support already. Again, I can tell a lot of work went into it. I'll be trying this out and following t…

Thanks a lot! Yeah, A LOT of work went into this. :)

As for the wide client SDK support: I think it's essential for adoption so made it a priority. Great to see it being appreciated!

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#77

Post by alex_portabella »

gwking wrote: post #49
alexh1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see in another comment that users have a key pair generated for them. What you can do is fetch other users public keys and encrypt data to them, or better yet, generate a symmetric key for a project and encrypt that to trusted users. It's how we did it for Portabella ( https://portabella.io ) anyway but that's not based on Etebase/Etesync, just another e2ee tool

A quick bit of feedback regarding your website: I was interested in reading the front page but ended up leaving because the “perfect for...” type and delete effect was causing the remainder of the page to jump up and down by one line every few seconds. It just happens to wrap in the wrong place on my phone.

Fixed, sorry about that one.

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#78

Post by tasn »

g_p wrote: post #44
tasn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks a lot! Things have indeed changed, and I feel like the public is really starting to understand the dangers with having their data exposed. I've been running EteSync for years now, and it's still growing. I'd love to have a chat with you to learn from your experience if you are willing! My email is tom at etebase, please drop me a line (or let me know how to best reach you). Thanks again!

This might be very good timing for your product - the European Data Protection Board has just out their first guidance after the Schrems II case. It seems to firmly point towards cloud services where the provider can access the data in plaintext as being "unable to have the risks mitigated" from the perspective of international transfers. Perhaps a straightforward E2EE toolbox could help companies implement their pro…

Thank you so much for this feedback! I missed the guidance you mentioned!

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#79

Post by z5h »

tasn wrote: post #56
z5h wrote: post #46

In these schemes, how does one typically offer technical support to users? Give them access to a suite of data tool?

This is a very good question, and one thing we had issues with over the years while developing EteSync. At EteSync, we ended up building client side debug utils that we can get users to launch in order to figure out what's going on and selectively report issues. You can, depending on your users' risk profile, also have it more automatic (we kept it semi-automatic). Developer tooling is definitely lacking at the momen…

Good to know you've experienced the need for this and are planning to address it. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#80

Post by boaticus »

piotrkaminski wrote: post #59

Since the pitch keeps referring to Firebase, I thought I might as well mention this here: a while ago I built an encryption layer for the Firebase RTDB at https://github.com/Reviewable/firecrypt . It's not nearly as nice as Etsebase appears to be, but if you're already committed ( cough locked in cough ) to Firebase then it will get you a good chunk of the way there. (And yes, I still actively use and maintain it.)

VERY interesting! Reading the README first paragraph, I see you mention this doesn't make sense for apps where anon users can see data. But what about when anon users can sign up for an account, THEN have access to sensitive data?
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