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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

#121

Post by ccamrobertson »

philips wrote: post #38

I received my Helm v2 last week and it has worked great for Android photo backup and email subscriptions like substack. I have not been bold enough yet to move my primary email domain over yet. Apple mail and Fairmail on Android give a nice non-web email experience. I like the product concept, the execution seems solid, and I like the auto update flow compared to manual update of most NAS products. I really want this…

Glad to see a v2. Like some other folks here I eye rolled when I saw some of the claims on the v1, but I think between this thread and revised marketing copy I understand and appreciate their approach.

My biggest concern now isn't about some backdoor or the ability to scan email in flight, but rather the lack of any commitment around continuity in the event they are acquired or cease to exist. I would like to use them for email, but am wary of the headache of having to roll a matching EC2 setup at a moments notice and migrating to a new IP.

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

#122

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#123

Post by int_19h »

kortilla wrote: post #93
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…

Then why isn’t it okay for companies to just hide behind a “nominal legal fee” of $100k to release the source?

"You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)"

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

#124

Post by torstenvl »

dmurray wrote: post #113
mixedCase wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, becaus…

Your question doesn't make sense to me. You keep going off on tangents about possible interpretations. Can you go StackOverflow for me here and provide the minimal complete form of your actual question?

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

#125

Post by int_19h »

kortilla wrote: post #94
sneak wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the TLS is terminated on the device and all it's using AWS for is a static ip and inbound port for email, that seems pretty harmless.

Seems like a stupid design decision at that point to have a dedicated instance per user. For a pass-through they could multiplex tens of thousands of customers easily onto a single instance.

Would they still keep their own separate static IPs then?

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

#126

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #82
gsreenivas wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there - co-founder/CEO of Helm here. We don't make the subscription optional at this time because the overwhelming majority of people on the Internet do not have a static IP address with a corresponding PTR record, which is required if you want to have deliverable email. There are other ways to handle domain registration, DNS and backups on your own, but we believe the subscription is a pretty great value for the…

Is the subscription mandatory. What about the minority of users who do have a static IP address. Should all users be given an option to arrange their own static IP address as well as to subscribe to a pre-packaged deal. They might be able to get a better price than $99/yr, or better terms. Whats to lose by having options. These are honest questions because I have often thought about a similar project where a static I…

Another way to think about this is that the service is a static IP for $99/yr and the rest is "free", i.e., optional. Perhaps the majority of users will be attracted by the "free" stuff, but a minority might see a static IPv4 as having many potentially useful advantages for personal computing.^1

This is how I view the internet. I pay for access, and this gives me access to, among other things, the web, and various "free services" offered on the web by so-called "tech" companies.^2 There is no obligation that I have to use them. I can choose what I think is useful and ignore the rest.

1. Previously we have seen the static IPv4 address marketed by ISPs in the US as a "business account". Personal use is not contemplated.

2. But the IP addresses we get from ISPs suck for things like running a smtpd. We need solutions to this problem besides "tech" company middlemen.

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

#127

Post by int_19h »

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?

Facebook et al have been working hard at convincing "normal" people that cloud is a dirty word. They have been more successful than one might think, judging by some of the questions I get from non-techie friends.

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

#128

Post by smoldesu »

twobitshifter wrote: post #112
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.

Or famous freeware synthesizer by Matt Tytel.

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

#129

Post by 22c »

int_19h wrote: post #125
kortilla wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a stupid design decision at that point to have a dedicated instance per user. For a pass-through they could multiplex tens of thousands of customers easily onto a single instance.

Would they still keep their own separate static IPs then?

You can assign multiple interfaces to an EC2 instance and each of those can have a static IP. I think there is a hard cap on the amount of interfaces you can assign to a single machine, so you'd still have to scale out horizontally at some point.

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

#130

Post by solarkraft »

gsreenivas wrote: post #111
solarkraft wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The subscription not being optional ("We don't make the subscription optional at this time", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28351035), with unspecified consequences of not having one.

One thing I definitely gather from that comment is that E-Mails wouldn't work, which appears to be the main selling point of the device.

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