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Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

thehelm.com

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Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#21

Post by [deleted] »

sneak wrote: post #19
old-gregg wrote: post #12

I care about owning my own data very much. This makes me conservative when it comes to these solutions, despite otherwise being an early adopter of everything tech. For that reason I always recommend Synology NAS machines. They have been around forever, they work for years on autopilot and feel very similar to a microwave in terms of operational overhead. One-time purchase. No subscriptions. But most importantly, the…

The device in TFA seems to primarily serve as a mailserver. AIUI that's not really what a NAS does.

[deleted]

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#22

Post by eps »

old-gregg wrote: post #12

I care about owning my own data very much. This makes me conservative when it comes to these solutions, despite otherwise being an early adopter of everything tech. For that reason I always recommend Synology NAS machines. They have been around forever, they work for years on autopilot and feel very similar to a microwave in terms of operational overhead. One-time purchase. No subscriptions. But most importantly, the…

Synology boxes phone home, to Chinese IP space no less.

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#24

Post by azinman2 »

miked85 wrote: post #17
old-gregg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that millions of people who order sunny side up egg breakfast aren't capable of making one for themselves? :)

In many cases, yes. But that is a poor comparison.

Disagree. We pay for convenience all the time. I just did in buying a synology NAS even though I could have pieces together my own solution (and have in the past). Having a working, maintained, stable, full featured email server that interops with the world isn’t something you can do quickly on your own even if you have the skills.

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#25

Post by old-gregg »

azinman2 wrote: post #20
old-gregg wrote: post #12

I care about owning my own data very much. This makes me conservative when it comes to these solutions, despite otherwise being an early adopter of everything tech. For that reason I always recommend Synology NAS machines. They have been around forever, they work for years on autopilot and feel very similar to a microwave in terms of operational overhead. One-time purchase. No subscriptions. But most importantly, the…

How do you access your NAS remotely? Does it end up creating some kind of backdoor into your network with cloud support? That makes me nervous…

In a very boring and traditional way: you buy a domain name, configure dynamic DNS, and then use port forwarding in your home firewall. No 3rd party proxies.

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#26

Post by eps »

digitalsushi wrote: post #9

If I could reliably transfer my gmail legacy freebie grandfather thing account without it taking 7 to 11 days of API rate limited transfer at 100% luck, I would get my email out of there. Alas.

If it's a one-time thing, then even it taking weeks is quite acceptable.

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#28

Post by miked85 »

azinman2 wrote: post #24
miked85 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases, yes. But that is a poor comparison.

Disagree. We pay for convenience all the time. I just did in buying a synology NAS even though I could have pieces together my own solution (and have in the past). Having a working, maintained, stable, full featured email server that interops with the world isn’t something you can do quickly on your own even if you have the skills.

Of course, I agree with that. But this is, at least in my opinion, a very niche product. People who even understand what the product is would probably not be willing to pay a subscription for something they could setup on their own. Of course I could be completely wrong :)

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#29

Post by 1MachineElf »

According to their blog post How Helm Works - Part 1: Networking [0], on the AWS side of things, for each Helm unit, they are provisioning an EC2 instance, an Elastic IP, and a Route 53 config. I suppose the 128GB backup is also part of this. From my perspective, $99/yr is not a bad deal for all this to be automatically managed.

[0] https://blog.thehelm.com/post/how-helm-works-part-1-networki...

Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do

#30

Post by codetrotter »

remram wrote: post #14
satyanash wrote: post #3

Dockerized Nextcloud + Postfix + Dovecot + Strongswan + OpenLDAP + SpamAssassin running on an ARM machine. Sounds mostly alright, although it seems you cannot buy it without the $99/yearly subscription, which makes me wary. Sure, a static IP and domain registration is good, but it ought to be an optional addon.

It seems that Nextcloud, Postfix, and Strongswan are copyleft. > You may obtain the complete corresponding source code from us for a period of three years after our last shipment of this product by sending a money order or check for $5 to: Without being illegal this is rather hostile. But then again they are selling subscriptions to open-source software so I expected something shady.

See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

It’s perfectly ok to charge for GPL software.

Providing the source on a physical medium for a price is reasonable because no one should be forced to run a digital distribution setup and infrastructure just because they build software that derives from GPL pieces.

Their customers have a right to receive a copy of the source. But the company is not obliged to host an online accessible version of it.

Charging a small amount for a copy of the source is fine.

And I will go so far as to say that making demands about access to the source code in a manner beyond what the GPL requires, is actually hurting the adoption of GPL software, not helping it. Why should a company base their work on GPL licensed software if they are going to meet pushback even when they are complying with the letter of the GPL? They might just build something different all together, and with no open source at all. And where does that leave us? Definitely in a worse place.

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