What I'm feeling about this? This is a great feature, but I don't trust the brand.
I'm really anxious about Canonical releasing the Ubuntu One Server project as open source https://launchpad.net/ubuntuone-servers, soon as it happens I will dedicate to make it mainstream. Can you imagine the possibilities? decentralized synchronization, multiple storages protocols like S3 or FTP.
File synchronization is a hard thing to do, but I don't see common sense on making it centralized. Really have high hopes when Ubuntu One is released.
Can you imagine the possibilities? decentralized synchronization, multiple storages protocols like S3 or FTP.
At the risk of sounding like a shill, that's already possible with git-annex. It's decentralized, and it supports remote storage on S3, FTP, rsync, Webdav (e.g. Box.com), Tahoe-LAFS, Google Drive, Mega, SkyDrive and more.
I personally have a node on my laptop, one on my VPS, one on my RaspPi, one on my Nexus 7 and a bucket on S3, all happily syncing.
Normally, git-annex repositories consist of symlinks that are checked into git, and in turn point at the content of large files that is stored in .git/annex/objects/. Direct mode gets rid of the symlinks.
With direct mode, you're operating without large swathes of git-annex's carefully constructed safety net, which ensures that past versions of files are preserved and can be accessed. With direct mode, any file can be edited directly, or deleted at any time, and there's no guarantee that the old version is backed up somewhere else.
If you edit a file in Dropbox without it having had time to sync the previous version, what do you think it'll happen?
Git-annex with symlinks can add an extra layer of protection, in that you have to unlock the file before editing, so that it can ensure it has backed up. In direct mode, it just works like any other syncing systems - non-synced versions are lost.
That's without the Assistant, which further simplifies the latter steps by automatically taking care of committing and such. You just do unlock <file>, edit, then add <file>.
I'm really anxious about Canonical releasing the Ubuntu One Server project as open source https://launchpad.net/ubuntuone-servers, soon as it happens I will dedicate to make it mainstream. Can you imagine the possibilities? decentralized synchronization, multiple storages protocols like S3 or FTP.
File synchronization is a hard thing to do, but I don't see common sense on making it centralized. Really have high hopes when Ubuntu One is released.