Dropbox_replacement_with_owncloud_unison_and_bup, version 1

Dropbox_replacement_with_owncloud_unison_and_bup.md

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+Dropbox replacement with owncloud unison and bup
+================================================
+
+***This is a draft***
+
+When Dropbox was first released I thought this was a great idea and was
+particularly interested in the following features :
+
+-   continuous backup (every file modifications will trigger an upload
+    to the server)
+-   rsync-like transfers (sends only the difference between 2 versions
+    to limit bandwidth usage)
+-   versioning (all files are versioned and so you can return to a
+    previous revision of a file)
+-   allow files sharing with friends/public
+
+Unfortunately Dropbox is not open source and does not allow you to run
+the server part on your own machines. Which means that you need to put
+your trust in the company running Dropbox which is based in the US and
+so subject to the patriot act. Of course you could technically encrypt
+your files before sending them to Dropbox but that would make the GUI
+and the file versioning unusable.
+
+Basically I wanted a solution that allows me to :
+
+-   continuously transfer my files to **my own server** over a secure
+    link
+-   have some sort of file versioning to roll back to previous revision
+    of a file  
+    The nice GUI and the file sharing ability could wait.
+
+I ended up using some custom scripts with Unison without being
+completely satisfied of the result as Unison is not a SCM (Source Code
+Management) tool. The versioning works by simply making a copy of the
+file, which becomes very IO intensive when modifying big files often
+(like a big mbox file for example).
+