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France and Germany, in joint collaboration, have developed a Google Docs alternative - and its awesome! (Netherlands are currently onboarded) (mastodon.social)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why distributed? Having your data tied to a blockchain seems unnecessarily complicated, and it essentially puts your data at risk if the bulk of the community moves to the next hot thing.

We really need to decouple storage from the apps themselves. Whether you use distributed storage, local storage, or something commercially backed like S3 should be a choice separate from the app you use to view and edit your data.

I self-host Collabora (online version of LibreOffice; OnlyOffice is another option), and my data lives on my NAS, but it could just as easily live on S3 or some distributed data store.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I self-host Collabora (online version of LibreOffice; OnlyOffice is another option), and my data lives on my NAS, but it could just as easily live on S3 or some distributed data store.

    Oh this is interesting. Any pitfalls you could talk about before I go popping this up myself?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    It's pretty easy if you use NextCloud with the AIO image, but if you're doing anything fancier than that, strap in because there aren't many decent tutorials.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Even nextcloud-not-AIO offers a way to install the server of office suites through the settings of the admin account all in the web GUI. I've chosen onlyoffice but it could have been nextcloud docs or collabora (and soon maybe, this thing)

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    (Not op) Its distrubuted so you don't lose your content if something happens to one location.

    Just browsing the landing page, it looks like the blockchain part offers proof of ownership and strict access controls without having to use a centralized service, which is needed in some form if it's distrubuted.

    I imagine but haven't seen that it might handle payments for having things be distrubuted as well, which would have meant having to include credit cards otherwise which would complicate things like micro payments to any given person hosting your content.

    Edit: also this is the kind of thing that should use an S3 compatible API so you don't get locked in as you said. It'd let you move the data between providers effortlessly.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Its distrubuted so you don’t lose your content if something happens to one location.

    Right, but you'll lose your content if enough people lose interest in the network. That's absolutely a thing in the crypto world where things move fast. Relying on the network effect to secure your data sounds... sketchy.

    which is needed in some form if it’s distrubuted

    Sure, and the easiest way to do that is w/ public key cryptography, sign your encrypted stuff and you can always prove ownership. A blockchain gives you that, but it's hardly necessary to have consensus around that.

    include credit cards

    It probably uses some cryptocurrency. Lots of cryptocurrencies work well for micropayments (e.g. LiteCoin, Monero, or even Bitcoin w/ the lightning network).

    I just don't see the need for a blockchain here. Bittorrent has been doing content-based addressing for ages, and it doesn't need a blockchain, you just ask for the data at a given hash and you get it. Or you can use IPFS. If everything is properly encrypted, you're good to go!

    What the blockchain does offer is a way to pay for storage. So the more you pay, the more likely your data is to still be there after some time as people leave the network and nodes drop and whatnot. All in all though, it seems really risky to put anything important on it, and you might as well just pay for a storage provider from a legal entity that you can sue if things go poorly (and maybe two, so you're not screwed if goes bankrupt or whatever).

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