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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

#111

Post by gsreenivas »

solarkraft wrote: post #110
gsreenivas wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A red flag for what? I would like to understand this better.

Company integrity/actually wanting to empower users. This unreasonably forces dependency on the company and bricks the device once support inevitably ends. That's usually a pretty good indication for a user-hostile company.

I'm not sure where you got that the device would be bricked. Can you point me to where you saw this?

All data is accessible on local ports on the LAN, with or without the subscription service.

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

#112

Post by twobitshifter »

Saris wrote: post #2

$99 a year for 128GB of backup space is really high, but I suppose it's partially paying for the OS updates or something like that? I also wonder about name confusion with Helm the Kubernetes management system.. That said it looks like a nice setup, the hardware price is pretty reasonable for a completed product, and the website is trying to keep things simple.

For name confusion, I thought of helm the famous emacs package.

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

#113

Post by dmurray »

mixedCase wrote: post #92
dmurray wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the customers have the right to republish the source? Under the GPL (I checked GPLv3) I don't think they do, but this section (my emphasis) is unclear to me: > You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License , in one of these ways... Is "under the terms of this License" a c…

> Do the customers have the right to republish the source? The GPL definitely allows you this. What you are given is code that is as GPL as the one they originally got, which covers free distribution. This is the main mechanism that serves the purpose of the GPL.

Can you explain how that's expressed in the GPL? Is it the section I asked about, so the GPL's "convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License" is your "[source] code that is as GPL as the [object code] they originally got"?

Alternatively, maybe it's section 4

> You may convey verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium

Which is a bit strange, because it's granting you a licence on something (the source code) you haven't necessarily actually got yet, so normally this grant of license would live with the IP it actually applies to. But I understand why it's necessary for the GPL to work in a more complicated way than that, because its purpose is to be viral and to bind the recipient to granting the same license when he distributes modified versions.

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

#114

Post by detaro »

dmurray wrote: post #68
codetrotter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 onli…

Do the customers have the right to republish the source? Under the GPL (I checked GPLv3) I don't think they do, but this section (my emphasis) is unclear to me: > You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License , in one of these ways... Is "under the terms of this License" a c…

The second.

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

#115

Post by hendersoon »

The price for both hardware ($199) and subscription ($99/year) seems pretty reasonable. I could set something similar up myself, but then I would need to _maintain_ it, and doing email properly so Google doesn't mark everything as spam is non-trivial.

I don't like the idea of essentially opening up a bunch of ports to the internet. If you connect to their AWS endpoint on a bunch of ports (25, 80, 443, etc) that connection is transparently redirected to the device in your LAN over a point-to-point VPN. You can lock it down by putting the device on a VLAN and firewalling it off, of course.

Ultimately you're making a bet on Helm properly maintaining its software, security updates, etc, and more importantly being around longterm to do so. That's where I just stick with Google. Gmail (and GSuite or whatever they brand it as these days) isn't a service I'm at all concerned about Google kicking to the curb.

If you're serious about disconnecting from the cloud, though, this is a neat product and service. I hope it succeeds; if it's around a couple more years I'll switch.

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

#116

Post by philderbeast »

lots of marketing, not much substance here for me.

the manditory subscription with no option to avoid it is a 100% non-starter for me.

I would much prefer a documented method for seting up my own cloud cutout with a variety of providers then be stuck with whatever they choose and no way to change it to something of my own chosing, particularly with the cost of the subscription.

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

#119

Post by Talanes »

gsreenivas wrote: post #107
noncoml wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, thanks for your reply. JFYI It's not what you think that will make or break your business; it's what your potential customers think, that matters.

If people are lumping in all tech companies in with big tech, we should all be concerned about that.

People who are consciously trying to de-couple from big tech are the same people who are conscious about lock-in effects.

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

#120

Post by Talanes »

ttul wrote: post #13
flixic wrote: post #10

It seems they are targeting "normal" people (to whom word "dockerized" sounds like a misspelling of something happening in a port). Mixing "normal" people and self-hosted email is a recipe for very bad experience.

I suppose this is their gamble: can they make something that is so easy to use, even a normal person will be happy with it. That being said, how many “normal” people are really so concerned about email security that they don’t trust one of the big clouds?

They exist, if you don't consider Protonmail one of the "big clouds." That's where my non-technically inclined, but paranoid father gets his e-mail.

Though my father also uses a prepaid flip phone that he doesn't carry out as his only phone line, so maybe not quite normal either.

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