yunohost is a decent FOSS self-hosting debian-based OS, they even offer a free DDNS service/domain, a nice web gui to install apps/services and one can always ssh in and config manually
This is what I use and it’s excellent.
Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
171–180 of 226 posts
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
The required subscription also means it's useless if they go out of business.
Yes. But it’s also useless if they go out of business period. I know, I know, opensource it in the event of bankruptcy and continue receiving security updates and what not. But when as that ever actually panned out? Tbh, I don’t know why subscriptions get such a bad rap on HN. recurring revenue (ie subscription) is actually one of the best tool we have for ensuring the products/services we depend on don’t go under.
No, the whole premise with “personal server” is and should be that company going out of busines would have no efect on server and data on it. It should continue working exactly like it did when you bought it. This means that mandatory subscription is a dealbreaker. Optional subscription on the other hand would be just like additional service for which you could pay if you incapable of doing something yourself or through third party.
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#173Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you manage the spam reputation of the IP addresses you use for mail delivery when some of your customers may be sending spam?
We have relationships with key ESPs and email security providers to help with managing reputation/deliverability issues. There are much cheaper ways to send spam effectively than using a Helm so we haven't seen real issues around this.
The problem is not that spammers will buy your boxes and subscriptions and ISP connections in order to spam.
The problem is that spammers will get into your customers' boxes and use them to spam.
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There is an ongoing cost for email to work (static IP, DNS, tunneling for traffic) - this is why there is a subscription. It's not very complicated or malicious. If a customer doesn't want a subscription, they can still use the Helm on their local network and get access to all their data. Running without a subscription is not something we currently support because of a lot of variables that can prevent email from wor…
> Running without a subscription is not something we currently support because of a lot of variables that can prevent email from working consistently
No problem. I see the technical difficulties with that and that you don’t want to support it. But is it possible?
If you want peoples’ (definitely mine) trust I’d suggest clearly decoupling the subscription from the device and communicating that it’s only for the E-Mail routing.
Otherwise it feels like renting a device with some extra initial cost, which is like 20% as good as actually owning something (If I’m already renting just take away the setup cost and make it 12$/mo).
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. But it’s also useless if they go out of business period. I know, I know, opensource it in the event of bankruptcy and continue receiving security updates and what not. But when as that ever actually panned out? Tbh, I don’t know why subscriptions get such a bad rap on HN. recurring revenue (ie subscription) is actually one of the best tool we have for ensuring the products/services we depend on don’t go under.
> Tbh, I don’t know why subscriptions get such a bad rap on HN Because a lot of the times things don't need a subscription, but it's just a way for the company to squeeze more money out of you. Some things you can't buy of course, like a streaming service, and I do pay for them. However, I will never 'rent' an online movie which I can only watch once or some such bullshit where the limitation is 0% technical and 100%…
hehe. In india, a couple months ago they did an experiment of launching a big ticket movie online for the first time. Here is how they put it, after you pay
.
open this page https://www.zee5.com/zee-plex-movies-on-rent
and click on how it works. then "How to buy and watch ZEEPLEX movies?".
they say "buy and watch" but then say "pay per view service", then there are stupid watch time requirements and all that.
piracy is 1 click, just press play. then these idiots go and equate piracy as a heinous crime
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#177Summing up:
- the hardware looks okay
- the mandatory subscription provides value, but if the company folds, all the services go away and there's no instructions on how to set them up yourself -- at which point you might as well have bought an RPi with a preconfig'd distro.
- The selling point is "escape Big Tech" but the services are provisioned via AWS.
- The CEO is arguing with people here telling them that they are wrong about what they want.
- The owner doesn't have root access and Helm does. They promise that they can't look at your stuff, but of course they can.
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#178I used to run my own mail server for decades.
I gave up when it became nearly impossible for my domain not to end up on some list or some reputation.
The big cloud email providers make it a lot of work to run your own.
A friend of mine tried setting up a mail server a couple of months ago at Digital Ocean on a VPS and a couple of others and his mail bounced back all over the place.
I ended up with an account at one of the big ones, and then using fetch mail to store all email locally. Only the very latest reside on the cloud server for a max of 10 minutes.
All outgoing mail is through my account the cloud provider.
Does Helm here provide a façade for the mail server that handles all the security setup and reputation management?
Or does each user with Helm have to try to get their email working on their own? (A huge pain)
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#179Summing up: - the hardware looks okay - the mandatory subscription provides value, but if the company folds, all the services go away and there's no instructions on how to set them up yourself -- at which point you might as well have bought an RPi with a preconfig'd distro. - The selling point is "escape Big Tech" but the services are provisioned via AWS. - The CEO is arguing with people here telling them that they a…
In the other words: get locked down with our small tech. But seriously, they own the root account means you have a backdoor to your data vault, are their customers ok with that?
Re: Helm is a personal server that lives where you do
#180Earlier 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 intent of the "under the terms of this License" clause here is to require the conveyed "Corresponding Source" to be GPLv3 licensed as well.
On a lay reading, this could also be interpreted as "in the manner specified by this license". Whether that's how the courts would understand it is a question for a lawyer. It may hinge on what, specifically, was originally licensed under the GPL: the source code or the binary artifacts.