This is just an idea. I like presenting these kinds of ideas publicly so that the whole community can see them, discuss them, and tell me if my idea is dumb or not.
I heard back from the lead developer of FreeFileSync. He seems to have no interest in UNO or supporting Centos 7 long term.
Pnoch, would you have any interest in forking FreeFileSync as UnoFileSync? I think that this could potentially be HUGE for UNO, especially if the software encouraged users to donate UNO to support the build process. If you decided to take this project on, ofcourse you would be the lead developer and receive the vast majority of the donations, but you could tip people UNO who compile builds for different systems. Now that you've taught me the build process, I could definitely help with making the Centos 7 build for each new release.
UNOFileSync could be our first UNO app (besides the UNO wallet) featured on Unobtanium.uno, and it could have its own site at something like UnoFileSync.uno, as I discussed in
this post.
Initially, FreeFileSync and UNOFileSync would be exactly the same, but we would eventually diverge, like OpenOffice and LibreOffice.
Now here is idea number two, and this is REALLY stretching my limited knowledge of how crypto-coins work, but someone much smarter than me may be able to take this idea to the next level.
This is inspired by recent podcasts that I've listened to on Ethereum and Storj blockchain-based file storage and sharing. What if we created UnoFileSync (don't worry if someone cybersquats these names, I have some much better ones in mind that I won't reveal), and what if we differentiated it from FreeFileSync by making it both a cloud-style file synchronization tool and a local file synchronization tool? Some workplaces (like mine) don't allow Dropbox and Bittorent Sync type file synchronization programs on their network, so those people could download and use a version that only allows local file syncing.
Anyway, the full cloud + local sync version of UnoFileSync would work just like Storj and FreeFileSync combined into one program:
- Users would pay Uno to buy file storage in excess of what they have installed locally on their machines.
- Users would get UNO by allowing the network to use storage room on their local hard drives.
- A strong firewall would exist between the local storage and "cloud" storage, and strong encryption would be used to prevent others from getting access to your private files.
- We would reach out to all of the major free OS distributions to try to get UnoFileSync into their default repositories: Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Centos, FreeBSD etc.
- We would pay bounties out to people who volunteer to do helpful tasks like building version for different OSs, making logos etc.
- The user could sync local files just as easily as cloud files, e.g. to a USB stick, or between folders on the same hard drive.
I am not naive. I know that building something like this would take a massive amount of work (and capital). But I also know that there are some REALLY smart people out there who might think about what I've presented here, and be inspired to build the UNO app that will blow everyone away.
I'd love to hear any comments and thoughts from the UNO community.
