SparkleShare: Open Source Dropbox clone coming soon

This isn't a threat to dropbox becaue (as I read it) you have to set up your own server, or maybe hook up on a friends server. While this is certainly a great feature that a lot of people will value, the beauty of dropbox is that it just works. Without you having to install a server.

I see the following obstacles with installing a server for sparkleshare:

1) You need a server. This might be obvious, but normal people don't have one.

2) You need to monitor your server. If the architecture is anything like dropbox it doesn't need to have 100% uptime since synchronizing will just be delayed a bit, but you still need to check in every now and then to make sure everything is OK.

3) Installing a server has never been easy. There is always some sort of problem with port forwarding, IP adresses, proxies, etc. unless you have a server somewhere in the cloud which most people don't. Normal people are barely aware of what a server is. See point 1.

4) Your backups are still your worry. What makes dropbox great is that I know that if they lose my data they have a serious business problem - they'll be held accountable. I'll write rants on my blog and everyone on HN will read it. They'll go through great lengths to prevent this. Besides their knowledge of backup procedures, RAID disks, redundancy and what have you is far far greater than mine. (At least I hope so :-)) If I host my files on my own server I'm the one that's accountable.

I see this as a great service for companies that have some IT staff and aren't comfortable having all their company files hosted by another company, and hackers that prefer their own server. But it's not a threat to dropbox, which is getting popular among non-techies. My mom even has dropbox installed.

Why C-sharp / mono ?? This could almost be done (on Linux at least) with a copy of rsync, git (for the revision control) and a shell script.

I was exactly wondering about mono when I viewed the README. The toolsets needed are already there.

Perhaps this was done to make it easier to port to other OS later?

You could.

But you'd only introduce more variables for the enduser. All of a sudden you'd have to decide which third-party service to sign up for, and many of them might just be a guy in a basement running the service to pay for college tuition. You'd have to check up on this before you know for sure.

The complete setup procedure for dropbox is as follows:

1) Navigate to dropbox.com

2) click download

3) doubleclick the file when you're done downloading

This is very hard to compete with in terms of ease of use. No strange choices to make, no weird preferences to fill out, no problems. It just works.

I'm curious what is in the Dropbox TOS that they dislike so much.