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Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

etebase.com

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Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#53
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, in Etebase the server also just sees "things", though it tries to make it easy on the client to only get what's changed and etc.

Just curious, how does that differ from a system like Firefox sync which is also using client side encryption?

I don't think Firefox sync makes it very easy for devs to build other encrypted applications. Even if they did however, there are a lot of challenges with encrypted applications that they just don't take care of. Not to mention that they are very we centric and don't have developer APIs in many languages.

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#54

How does Authorization work? Does every user has access to every collection/document?

Collections are private to each user, so users only have access to their own collections. They can however share them among eachother.

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#56
post #46

In these schemes, how does one typically offer technical support to users? Give them access to a suite of data tool?

This is a very good question, and one thing we had issues with over the years while developing EteSync. At EteSync, we ended up building client side debug utils that we can get users to launch in order to figure out what's going on and selectively report issues. You can, depending on your users' risk profile, also have it more automatic (we kept it semi-automatic).

Developer tooling is definitely lacking at the moment for building encrypted applications and it's something we plan on addressing.

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#57

This looks really good and well timed. What will you do if Firebase builds something similar?

Thank you! :)

That's a question that's looms over every new company and open-source project. I don't think Firebase will go down this route, it's a very different offering to what they already have, and any encrypted stuff will be incompatible with the rest of it. There's also Google's (rightfully earned) bad public image when it comes to privacy, which will limit adoption.

In addition, being open-source is very important for a solution revolving around data ownership and privacy, something that Google will just not do. Our plan is therefore to continue building the best open-source project we can and let the developers decide.

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#58
post #5

I make Beekeeper Studio ( https://beekeeperstudio.io ). This looks really interesting, especially as it is open source. Do you have many FOSS users self-deploying it?

I just installed and tried out Beekeeper. Thank you so much for making this!

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#59
Since the pitch keeps referring to Firebase, I thought I might as well mention this here: a while ago I built an encryption layer for the Firebase RTDB at https://github.com/Reviewable/firecrypt. It's not nearly as nice as Etsebase appears to be, but if you're already committed (cough locked in cough) to Firebase then it will get you a good chunk of the way there. (And yes, I still actively use and maintain it.)

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#60
post #2

Excited to finally post it on HN. It's something I've been working on for the last year, though in a sense, for much longer! Etebase is an open-source SDK and backend-as-a-service for building end-to-end encrypted applications. Think Firebase but end-to-end encrypted. More users care about the privacy and security of their data every day, and encrypted applications are becoming mainstream. However, talking with devel…

Flutter please lol

Anyways, great work!

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