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Show HN: Bloom – A free and open source 'Google'

kerkour.fr

71–80 of 240 posts

Re: Show HN: Bloom – A free and open source 'Google'

#71

Probably has nothing to do with anything, but I find it funny that a website trying not to be Google is using Google's Material Design. Ignoring that, this stuff all looks fantastic.

Google's design language is pretty unsurpassed, well documented and very user-friendly, thanks also to a ton of research that has been done in connection with Android, I guess.

So I see nothing wrong with him using that, in fact it would be a major factor for me personally in considering any Google service alternatives.

Keeping the switching barrier low is key for successful and widespread user adoption.

I actually think bad UI design is THE single greatest impediment for widespread adoption of free or open-source software imho. A lot has been written on that subject but I think the trope is "open-source developers cannot create good UIs". It is an old but well-accepted axiom, same as "Poland cannot into space", and it seems everyone adheres to it... ;-)

So using an established and "known good" design language is in fact ingenious.

Re: Show HN: Bloom – A free and open source 'Google'

#72
"Bloom Drive" is a paid service. 30GB free, then it starts to cost. "Secured by SSL", which probably means the data is not encrypted against access by them.

The Bloom Drive site is one of those sleazy "sign up and then maybe we'll tell you something about what we're selling" sites.[1] You can almost hear the sucking sound of the onboarding funnel.

[1] https://bloom.sh/drive

Re: Show HN: Bloom – A free and open source 'Google'

#73
So, the only way I would EVER use something like this is if I controlled it. The only way other people are going to adopt this is if it's easy to install in your own environment.

I think that offering this as a cloud service is short-sighted. Not only is running this in AWS going to be prohibitively expensive if you're doing it for "free", guaranteeing that you'll either need to add advertisements or start charging for service (making you no different than Google, as a service), but running it in the cloud eliminates most of the advantages of using Google Apps.

I think that the website should be more focused on installing the software to your own server, and that if you have a cloud portal at all it should be a demo environment, rather than a planned SaaS solution.

It's also sort of out-of-character for a .sh FOSS website not to include some sort of .sh installer for getting everything up and running on a fresh Linux VM.

Given that this stuff is supposed to be a replacement for Google's suite, and Google focuses on ease-of-use, it wouldn't hurt to create apt/yum repos for installing official binaries so that people can throw this onto a cloud server and get up and running in a few minutes, rather than digging through your source and trying to compile all that Rust code from scratch.

I'm going to work on getting this running in my VMware environment, and I am going to play around a little with the docker container, but it would be really nice to be able to install this in production easily, and have the ability to update it in-place easily, because that's the only way I am going to play with it as a serious tool.

The warning that none of my data being guaranteed is pretty much a dealbreaker for me to beta test this thing for any important task if I don't control it.

Re: Show HN: Bloom – A free and open source 'Google'

#74

"Get started for free" - warning enough.

While I agree in principle, like, it probably applies to most companies, this seems a little dismissive for something with such a clearly altruistic goal. At least look into the profit model and remark upon that instead of adding two words to a four word citation and posting that to the thread.

Re: Show HN: Bloom – A free and open source 'Google'

#75
post #72

"Bloom Drive" is a paid service. 30GB free, then it starts to cost. "Secured by SSL", which probably means the data is not encrypted against access by them. The Bloom Drive site is one of those sleazy "sign up and then maybe we'll tell you something about what we're selling" sites.[1] You can almost hear the sucking sound of the onboarding funnel. [1] https://bloom.sh/drive

Hi, Thank you for the the harsh feedback.

Bloom being open source, if you want a more private option than the hosted service bloom.sh you are totally free to host it yourself.

On the other hand, It's just a beta launch, we made it work (and free and open source), and thanks to your feedback, we will make it great :)

Re: Show HN: Bloom – A free and open source 'Google'

#76
post #2

Hi HN, creator here! Today is a good day, the achievement of months of works (but also the start of a great adventure ). I'm very excited to announce Bloom: A free and Open source ‘Google’. Our mission ? Empowering the world with open technologies. Why? How? What? https://kerkour.com/blog/bloom-a-free-and-open-source-google Website: https://bloom.sh Android App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bloom…

It's a laudable project but why are you accepting bitcoin if you're so concerned about the ecological crisis? It seems kind of contradictory, given how bitcoin transactions are so computationally expensive now that they reportedly consume about the same amount of energy as Denmark.

Maybe the raping of the earth done by the corrupt financial and banking system is an even greater evil.

Re: Show HN: Bloom – A free and open source 'Google'

#77

I like the audacity and hope you succeed. I have actually wished for someone to create an open-source self-hostable copycat of Gmail (the UI) for a long time. Having trialled a multitude of alternatives (both commercial and open-source) I haven't found anything that doesn't require a huge adjustment re: usability and many compromises feature-wise. Unfortunately, both in design and feature philosophy, Gmail is and has…

Merci pour les encouragements !

Mails are currently not a priority because it's really hard to make it right (IMAP, POP and all the things...), but if the community shows an interest, we may plan it :)

Re: Show HN: Bloom – A free and open source 'Google'

#78
post #73

So, the only way I would EVER use something like this is if I controlled it. The only way other people are going to adopt this is if it's easy to install in your own environment. I think that offering this as a cloud service is short-sighted. Not only is running this in AWS going to be prohibitively expensive if you're doing it for "free", guaranteeing that you'll either need to add advertisements or start charging f…

Hi, thank you for the harsh comment.

We made it works, and thanks to your feedback we will make it great!

Our vision is as following: In the future, Google and Microsoft will be replaced by a federation of Bloom instances. boom.sh being one of them.

98% of the users don't have the technical knowledge/the time/the will to build, host and secure their own instance, and that's how we (and other instance providers) will make money.

You are right, AWS hosting is short-sighted, but it's because I've some credits, and easier to setup.

Privacy being one of our cor value, end to end encryption is on the roadmap.

Re: Show HN: Bloom – A free and open source 'Google'

#80
I don't know if you want to go into it, but have you considered tackling the "search" problem by creating some kind of advanced bookmarking/local indexing browser extension?

I find that I use google for stuff that I've already discovered. I believe that Chrome has intentionally impeded its bookmarking tools to make users more reliant on search... I realize that Chrome lets you search for stuff you've bookmarked in the top bar, but the flow seems designed to point you toward the default search engine.

A good bookmarking/page caching tool with a streamlined, locally indexed quick-find tool would cut my reliance on Google by a lot.

Overall I'm pretty dissatisfied with existing browsers' bookmarking tools, but am hopeful that offline-first browsers like Beaker Browser will tackle this problem in a serious way.

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