All the backend and services are written in Rust (You can learn more on the rust forum why I written it in JavaScript, then rewritten in Go and finally in Rust: https://users.rust-lang.org/t/bloom-a-free-and-open-source-g...) and is entirely free and Open Source on GitHub. No opencore, no bullshit.
It's a laudable project but why are you accepting bitcoin if you're so concerned about the ecological crisis? It seems kind of contradictory, given how bitcoin transactions are so computationally expensive now that they reportedly consume about the same amount of energy as Denmark.
I have a feeling that for Bitflow (the Bittorrent downloader) many customers will strongly prefer bitcoin. Offering it is not an arbitary choice but a requirement for success of that part of the product.
How would we know if that were too much? What if you were to describe the amount of energy consumed by the airline industry? Or all of the world's motorcycles? Would that be more or less than Denmark? And if it were more than Denmark's energy consumption, is that okay? Certainly more people benefit from the world's motorcycles or airplanes than just the population of Denmark, so why is that the reference? IMO including an arbitrary reference like some country's power consumption is the stuff of clickbait headlines, not useful discussion.
IMO a more constructive discussion point might be: "the power consumption required for Bitcoin's proof-of-work is 15x that of the power consumption of: { the equities markets + banking + US Treasury + EU Treasury }." The number I've cited is arbitrary, it could easily be 1/15 of that, for all I know. But normalizing the energy in terms of the related/baseline industry makes sense and would make for a clearer conversation on the topic.
Wow, ambitious! Your sheer nerve is enough to click on the link and check it out. :)
As a potential early adopter that has seen countless would-be world-changing technology efforts come and go, in order to personally get me on the bandwagon, it would help to know a few things that didn't stand out to me at first, even after visiting the https://bloom.sh website.
(1) When I think Google I think "search" first and foremost, and I didn't see a search demo or anything. I think your average visitor is going to be thinking the same. If you're not involved in search, then branding yourself up as a Google alternative seems a bit off.
(2) How do you intend to sustain the project? Funding, grants, donations, paid plans, etc. More light on the team behind it as well perhaps, their incentives, skills, etc. I want to know that you have a reasonable chance of existing long enough to grind Google to the ground. :)
(3) A past version of myself would like to know more about "What's in it for me, like right now"? Saving the planet is all well and good, but I was a selfish short-term thinker.
(4) A future version of myself would like to know (assuming points (2) and (3) are answered to satisfaction) more about what I can do for you, but just in small ways, i.e. I don't/won't have the time to help with an iOS app. Practically speaking, this may just mean placing your donation links or "Subscribe for updates" buttons somewhere more prominent. I know some of this is included in your peer comment here on HN, so speaking about the websites only.
Anyway, good on you for releasing, and good luck! I'll be following the project!
Hi, Thank you very much for these encouraging words!
(1) You are totally right, I plan to use this wording only to target the 'geeks' (those who may be early adopters, contributors), those who see Google more like a very innovative tech giant rather than just a search engine
(2) As written at the bottom of the article (yes I acknowledge it's very very long) the master plan is as follow:
1. Build free software and charge for hosting, security of hosted data and enterprise support
2. With this money reduce prices, free the data and the access to scientific knowledge
3. With this money and this community create the open infrastructure to run these software and host this open data
Not sure what kind of money you got, but for me S3-storage costs about 0.6USD/30GB*month. Multiply this by 100 and you got a bill of 60USD/month - which is not much if you are a cash-bloated startup but not really sustainable for a bootstrapped, non-exponential (that's the point when you're talking about challenges like climate change. stop growing) business, which want's to survive on user donations, once you reach several thousand users. If you got the really cheap stuff from online.net, I recommend you don't raise any hopes in Google-scale availability...
In france you have OVH - the invest heavily in solar energy and build datacenters with low energy consumption in mind. That might be a better choice (not working for them).
OP should talk to Octave Klaba who is very approachable and a big supporter of the FOSS spirit. maybe he can cut you a good price. I'd certainly try him (add him on LinkedIn and pitch it ... or oles at ovh.net )
FWIW, I work for Google (not on google.com), and would definitely fit into the "geek" category, and I still assumed you were talking about an OSS search engine.
Hi, currently we absolutely do not plan to create a search engine: it requires too much resources for self hosting,
I think we currently have great option for all the spectrum (From Google search to DuckDuckGo), and because an open source search engine will be tricked by all kind of nasty SEO Experts and it will be very hard to promote actually good Content.
I dared the Google comparison thinking about it's productivity suit, and because they have an app for all the need of our life. At an extraordinary price, even if it cost noting.
Productivity is the current foundation, but you can think having a Bloom open source tractor in some years :)
SearX is a meta-search engine, which means it isn't truly its own search engine. Still useful and open-source. I'd actually recommend the Bloom people to host their own SearX instance to cover search needs.
I think one of the reasons, is that people interested in agriculture are not the startup-geek who think scalability first but rather people more interested in collaboration and little community projects.
I think it's clear after reading your exchange with OC that you're not planning to take on Google search with Bloom. However what I think the commenter you're replying to is suggesting is that by calling yourself an open source 'Google' you're giving people the false impression that you are focused on search because when people think of Google the first thing they think of is search.
Perhaps you might consider something like free and open source 'Google Suite' or 'Google Apps' instead?
if i'd think that we have enough alternative search options, i'd have ignored this topic completely. i clicked because i disagree, because we do need more search options.
that said, we desperately need what bloom provides too. i just would not have recognized it from that title.
> and because an open source search engine will be tricked by all kind of nasty SEO Experts and it will be very hard to promote actually good Content.
FWIW I suspect that would be the opposite, because if it was free software then you would end up with many forks of the code that decides how to prioritize results, which would multiply the effort required by SEO spammers to target you. Meanwhile you would start with far fewer users and be that much less of a worthwhile target for that reason. And by the time you're big enough to be worth targeting, you have the resources to spend addressing it.
I want to move my radio station away from google so badly, and if you can add email hosting, even just a pop server I can start pointing my new address to you. As it is, I want to sign up without having to use another service (which is going to be google, let's face it) and it would be great to have this all stored in one place.
Honestly, even without the search function, I think this is one of the most base level functions of Google's toolkit. Everything else is just convenient
I'm a programmer and geek myself, and heck, even toyed with the idea of having open-source alternative to GSuite. But reading the title I too thought it's an alternative to Google search. Reading your first para cleared it up though. Just a heads up.
great project. But one question, why would you link paul grahams article and then use Rust and not Lisp? I failed to see the connection there, but it made me really interested in trying to learn more about Lips (and maybe Rust)
> When I think Google I think "search" first and foremost, and I didn't see a search demo or anything.
I was expecting something related to search as well. This project is about the Google applications, though. That's ambitious and a great thing! I wish the devs the best of luck!
Sadly, though, I don't use those sorts of online apps and so I'm not in the target market.
+1 on the search part. I fully expected a search bar on the landing page and just got sign-up and feature page. Seeing any form hits the : interest level exceeded: mark for me, but I'm so for supporting anti-google that I will wait for you to have bloom.sh have a nice big search bar in the middle like https://duckduckgo.com/
Do you have a comprehensive and viable plan to pay for costs? If it involves getting enough donations, does your plan include a viable way to optimize donations? Simply including a donation link, bitcoin addresses, etc, is NOT a comprehensive plan for that. I see only 2 patrons, zero ETH donations, zero BTC donations, despite what appears to be a considerable amount of work put into this.
Any plans to partner with someone who specializes in marketing or otherwise running the non-technical side of things? You'll attract more interested parties (including potential partners with expertise) by having a higher percentage of what you're presenting, something that looks like it's made by a winning team.
1. Build free software and charge for hosting, security of hosted data and enterprise support
2. With this money reduce prices, free the data and the access to scientific knowledge
3. With this money and this community create the open infrastructure to run these software and host this open data
Donation are just a plus, and because I didn't had time to implement payments before launching :) (it's the first day I talk publicly about the project, so I think it's understandable that donation metrics are not so great).
Regarding how much work have been done until today, it's been 6 months I eat pastes :)
Hi, currently we absolutely do not plan to create a search engine: it requires too much resources for self hosting, I think we currently have great option for all the spectrum (From Google search to DuckDuckGo), and because an open source search engine will be tricked by all kind of nasty SEO Experts and it will be very hard to promote actually good Content.
I dared the Google comparison thinking about it's productivity suit, and because they have an app for all the need of our life. At an extraordinary price, even if it cost noting.
Productivity is the current foundation, but you can think having a Bloom open source tractor in some years :)
> think having a Bloom open source tractor in some years
You're building open source products in all markets with no limitations? Assuming you plan to harness the open source community to help out? Serious question: How is this different from GitHub? I can go to https://github.com/search and find alternatives to all your products already built somewhere and open source.
Bloom conciliate the best of the Startuplaland religion: radical execution rather than bureaucracy, scalability, flawless user experience, strong product culture, iterative process, and open source: a mode of development that has proven its superiority, open governance, an unmatched sustainability and a perfect symbiosis between the interests of developers and those of users.
In short: yes there is already a lot of open source project, but I found that those open source project lack the user experience required to reach a non 'geek market'.
This is a set of projects that aims to reach similar functionality as g-suite. I think maybe the author is just getting ahead of themselves mentioning the tractor. The appeal of this is that it would be attractive for the same reasons google is - convenience and ease of use, but would be free and open source. Most foss projects don't focus on user-experience as much, or at all, or they're aiming for a good developer user experience, not a good mom user experience.
Not GPP, but in the tl;dr please state what you offer, not what you think you are ("a free and open source 'Google'"). Tell me what you offer and I'll decide what you are to me.
Bonus points if you can describe the benefits of your offerings without making me read a manifesto.
I've tried to make it clear by appending a summary at the top of the blog post and a big visual banner at the start of the offering (to catch the eyes of those who will speed scroll). But apparently it's not enough. I'll try to fix it.
No. Stop saying you're a new Google in the TL;DR. You have some Google-style services and an app; list them. Summarize the philosophy at the end of the TL;DR in one sentence max. Cover the community model (open source self hosted, paid service, federated blockchain something, etc) so people understand what's going on past the software.
We already know the critiques about Google. Nobody cares about hearing them again. We don't want an essay.
Tell us, in specific detail, what (a) bloom is and (b) how it addresses specific issues with Google.
Is this just about privacy/advertising? Is it about hosting your own stuff? Is it about the poor customer support Google has? The shutdown of services? The intelligence concerns with the us government?
We don't want to hear another nerd voice complain on the internet. None of it will be new. Focus on what you're offering.
Haha, I'm sorry if the English is not perfect, but as the blog post is long, I've translated it using my 3rd year of high school teacher's advice: formulate in your maternal language, and then translate it like if you're a 4 years old.
I've not tried to be fancy because English is simply not my primary language, and because I have studied CS and sport last years, not literature.
I was thinking the same thing, still not 100% this is real.
You lose a lot of credibility with the whole Google Search thing. Not trying to be harsh, but your responses on Search just seem to dig that hole deeper.
Wouldn't "G Suite" be more descriptive than "Google"? Putting it in quotes kind of makes you think you're not referring to the search engine, but still...
However that may be I love the mission, awesome work!
With respect, if you're not targeting Google Search, then you're not targeting "Google".
You don't help your case by misleading your prospective customers, who are themselves self-identified "geeks" who might be able to help you make this goal a success.
Apple is even a more unreasonable comparison. Do you build hardware and a complete software experience for the customers who buy your hardware? Well then no, you shouldn't compare yourself to Apple.
so, you are saying you are going to change the world by imitating Google? Good luck with that.
Besides the opaque sign-up scheme and a total disregard for standards (your calendar/contacts "sync" integrates with which clients?), even today your project is much less than Nextcloud...
I have to agree with the parent here. At least the TLDR should make this apparent without clicking additional links. If I didn't read anything else, I would think it was a search engine.
I didn't mention it because Mozilla is not really known for mere mortals (non geeks). But Mozilla is a great inspiration for me (their privacy first designs...)
I'm from France too, and Mozilla is already more known than many others in the Open Source space, and their user base is still huge compared to anything else.
Z0mbie42 is young and did not see when Mozilla was the browser alternative before Google Chrome and stole the show. It is coming back today though because users start to realize the "Google problem".
Now Mozilla is a browser alternative and not a services one. But this is a good example of how unrealistic and not so good it is to want to be a "google" alternative. Today Google is everywhere from search engine (the original google) to collaboration, music, pro apps, video, browsers and so on.
Building an alternative as open source is good but it should clearly not be as monolithic as Google is.
Now it's complicated because users want a more integrated experience and open source developers that manage to grow their tool in a specific area dont have that much time and funding to better integrate so it's slow.
Also copying as is Google as Open Source is also not the solution. What about privacy. I believe end to end encryption is key. There are advancement in this area (the project cryptpad.fr we work on is one of them). What about decentralization ? There are tools building up in this area like mastodon or peer tube.
I wish Open Source can come out with an alternative, but it will need to be an integration of solutions, and not only a monolithic solution. Check out Framasoft.org for an incredible list of open source services they host.
The collaborative encryption is exactly what is solved in CryptPad.fr and at the core of the storage model. This is actually key because it's not the only problem you will get once you try to add encryption. You'll realize everything needs to be rebuild with no database on the server side, otherwise you will get only partial encryption. Encryption needs to be built in first and then the rest should be added.
Concerning user experience, do not confuse design and user experience. Yes some design is needed to improve cryptPad, but the user experience starts with making it super easy to start to share something. In the case of bloom you first needed to register which is not needed on cryptpad to start working collaboratively.
Note that cryptPad storage is a bit like S3 but with e2e encryption and collaborative documents built in.. so you could build your UI on top of it, but e2e encryption means everything needs to be done from the client side, not from the server side.
There is also a roadmap. I will contact you. We can meet. We are next to Beaubourg.
I will happily pay twice as much as I do/would for any given google service if it means this survives.
If there could be a "sign in with bloom" on every site, that would be great. I would be happy to donate for email for something like this as well. I really want an email service that isn't gmail.
God I just hope non-technical people can be made aware of and interested in this, because it would be absolutely incredible for everyone if it succeeded.
It works like any other torrent client, if a rightsholder finds a torrent of their content they can attempt to sue whoever was downloading by looking at the IPs in the swarm. In this case that would be Bloom's servers.
In case the product gets popular you are 100% getting a copyright notice from Google, so may as well change it now rather than after the brand is established
so I tried the app.... Design looks nice.... but the features ain't workin... I like your texting-skills.... put your stuff to github.. I will help out building stuff..... the tryItFree button on you page irritates me..... I know we all need money.... maybe some Bitcoin-whale will help out, once we get some cool features running?
Joking aside, it's because my friend who help me for the graphic design don't have so much time, and me the developer, don't have much graphic design skills.
Material design is one of the only design system freely available on the internet, with very good documentation, and very good libraries in all languages.
Google's design language is pretty unsurpassed, well documented and very user-friendly, thanks also to a ton of research that has been done in connection with Android, I guess.
So I see nothing wrong with him using that, in fact it would be a major factor for me personally in considering any Google service alternatives.
Keeping the switching barrier low is key for successful and widespread user adoption.
I actually think bad UI design is THE single greatest impediment for widespread adoption of free or open-source software imho. A lot has been written on that subject but I think the trope is "open-source developers cannot create good UIs". It is an old but well-accepted axiom, same as "Poland cannot into space", and it seems everyone adheres to it... ;-)
So using an established and "known good" design language is in fact ingenious.
This[0] is an CSS implementation under the MIT license I'm using on 3 different websites[1][2][3] right now. Google can't really take back Material Design at this point (IANAL), which I'd call a feature!
These seem a bit similar to some of the services offered by Disroot.org? They're also leveraging open source software such as NextCloud in providing related services. I'm curious of how you are paying for initial hosting costs, especially if more users start using it and you'll need to scale up? Are the operations strictly relying on donations at the moment?
EDITED: I just read your comment and realized you plan to charge users for the services. I noticed Disroot's free services experience down time quite often, but it's free. You're probably going to need an army of support staff since the expectation will likely be quite high once people have to make payments.
Gave it a quick try and looks like very similar to cozy before they pivoted. I guess this is also like nextcloud/owncloud/seafile. Can you explain how your product will be different from those?
While I agree in principle, like, it probably applies to most companies, this seems a little dismissive for something with such a clearly altruistic goal. At least look into the profit model and remark upon that instead of adding two words to a four word citation and posting that to the thread.
> Bloom is an organization which use open source / access / data... to redistribute freely its production, relying on new technologies to do it cheaply at scale, rather than using them as an imperialist weapon.
FYI to the site maintainer: The above excerpt is repeated in subsequent paragraphs.
I have actually wished for someone to create an open-source self-hostable copycat of Gmail (the UI) for a long time. Having trialled a multitude of alternatives (both commercial and open-source) I haven't found anything that doesn't require a huge adjustment re: usability and many compromises feature-wise.
Unfortunately, both in design and feature philosophy, Gmail is and has been for years the "non plus ultra" imho (and I gladly left Outlook-style emailing behind for it).
Of course it too still has room for improvements but they will probably never happen (such as a one-touch PGP integration or better usability with many aliases), as we have most likely already reached "peak-Gmail". (Many other services, incl. Google Search, have also been deteriorated slowly, de facto killed (Google Books) or "optimised" to fit Google's/Alphabet's new strategy).
As a user of pretty much the first hour (when it was still invite only) and having moved several companies over to Gsuite from Exchange, I've felt more and more queasy over the last months and years...
When I found out recently thanks to a HN post that even my highest-paid Gsuite accounts track ALL my purchases (and many that aren't actually mine) and this CANNOT be switched off or deleted, it sort of finally broke the part of my heart that kind of still hung on to the old and long-since gone spirit of "don't be evil"...
Sorry for the rambling.
Bottom line: I do not know if you have any plans to add a "Gmail"-type email client/front-end (which could easily utilise one of the many very good open source email servers and spam filters) but I for one would welcome it with open arms.
Literally, it means "not more further", i.e. it is the peak, there is nothing better, this is the ultimate thing compared to others (like, you could say "my Model X is the non plus ultra of electric SUVs", just for example).
I guess it is not a common expression but I like the phrase. ;-)
Mails are currently not a priority because it's really hard to make it right (IMAP, POP and all the things...), but if the community shows an interest, we may plan it :)
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 55.9 ms ] threadToday is a good day, the achievement of months of works (but also the start of a great adventure ).
I'm very excited to announce Bloom: A free and Open source ‘Google’.
Our mission ? Empowering the world with open technologies.
Why? How? What? https://kerkour.com/blog/bloom-a-free-and-open-source-google
Website: https://bloom.sh Android App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bloom42.bl... Code: https://github.com/bloom42
All the backend and services are written in Rust (You can learn more on the rust forum why I written it in JavaScript, then rewritten in Go and finally in Rust: https://users.rust-lang.org/t/bloom-a-free-and-open-source-g...) and is entirely free and Open Source on GitHub. No opencore, no bullshit.
The project seems awesome and you want to help ? - By spreading the word on Twitter: https://twitter.com/z0mbie42/status/1136297238387482625 - by contributing on GitLab: https://gitlab.com/bloom42 - By becoming a patron: https://www.patreon.com/bloom42 - By becoming a sponsor: https://bloom.sh/become-a-sponsor
Let's spread freedom
Sylvain Kerkour, a.k.a z0mbie42
I'll fix it !
I'm not anti-cryptocurrency, but we should be striving to be better than what we're creating an alternative to.
IMO a more constructive discussion point might be: "the power consumption required for Bitcoin's proof-of-work is 15x that of the power consumption of: { the equities markets + banking + US Treasury + EU Treasury }." The number I've cited is arbitrary, it could easily be 1/15 of that, for all I know. But normalizing the energy in terms of the related/baseline industry makes sense and would make for a clearer conversation on the topic.
I hope you can keep up the good work and would love to see more of this.
As a potential early adopter that has seen countless would-be world-changing technology efforts come and go, in order to personally get me on the bandwagon, it would help to know a few things that didn't stand out to me at first, even after visiting the https://bloom.sh website.
(1) When I think Google I think "search" first and foremost, and I didn't see a search demo or anything. I think your average visitor is going to be thinking the same. If you're not involved in search, then branding yourself up as a Google alternative seems a bit off.
(2) How do you intend to sustain the project? Funding, grants, donations, paid plans, etc. More light on the team behind it as well perhaps, their incentives, skills, etc. I want to know that you have a reasonable chance of existing long enough to grind Google to the ground. :)
(3) A past version of myself would like to know more about "What's in it for me, like right now"? Saving the planet is all well and good, but I was a selfish short-term thinker.
(4) A future version of myself would like to know (assuming points (2) and (3) are answered to satisfaction) more about what I can do for you, but just in small ways, i.e. I don't/won't have the time to help with an iOS app. Practically speaking, this may just mean placing your donation links or "Subscribe for updates" buttons somewhere more prominent. I know some of this is included in your peer comment here on HN, so speaking about the websites only.
Anyway, good on you for releasing, and good luck! I'll be following the project!
(1) You are totally right, I plan to use this wording only to target the 'geeks' (those who may be early adopters, contributors), those who see Google more like a very innovative tech giant rather than just a search engine
(2) As written at the bottom of the article (yes I acknowledge it's very very long) the master plan is as follow:
1. Build free software and charge for hosting, security of hosted data and enterprise support
2. With this money reduce prices, free the data and the access to scientific knowledge
3. With this money and this community create the open infrastructure to run these software and host this open data
(3) I tried to make it clear by putting a large banner in the blog post in the section explaining what we currently have, in order to catch the eye of the bored one who will speed scroll: https://www.kerkour.fr/blog/bloom-a-free-and-open-source-goo...
(4) ACK, thank you, I will try to improve this
I did not expect to reach Google's scale during the next month so currently we are bootstrapped and rely on some AWS credits :)
https://gizmodo.com/amazon-is-aggressively-pursuing-big-oil-...
In france you have OVH - the invest heavily in solar energy and build datacenters with low energy consumption in mind. That might be a better choice (not working for them).
I dared the Google comparison thinking about it's productivity suit, and because they have an app for all the need of our life. At an extraordinary price, even if it cost noting.
Productivity is the current foundation, but you can think having a Bloom open source tractor in some years :)
You probably mean from SearX to YaCy.
Both don't cover average use cases.
Open source agriculture has so much potential for good. I’m surprised it isn’t more of a thing already
I think one of the reasons, is that people interested in agriculture are not the startup-geek who think scalability first but rather people more interested in collaboration and little community projects.
Perhaps you might consider something like free and open source 'Google Suite' or 'Google Apps' instead?
that said, we desperately need what bloom provides too. i just would not have recognized it from that title.
FWIW I suspect that would be the opposite, because if it was free software then you would end up with many forks of the code that decides how to prioritize results, which would multiply the effort required by SEO spammers to target you. Meanwhile you would start with far fewer users and be that much less of a worthwhile target for that reason. And by the time you're big enough to be worth targeting, you have the resources to spend addressing it.
I want to move my radio station away from google so badly, and if you can add email hosting, even just a pop server I can start pointing my new address to you. As it is, I want to sign up without having to use another service (which is going to be google, let's face it) and it would be great to have this all stored in one place.
Email is currently not planned, because it's not easy (IMAP, POP...) to do it correctly and securely.
But as many users seems interested, I may add it to the roadmap :)
great project. But one question, why would you link paul grahams article and then use Rust and not Lisp? I failed to see the connection there, but it made me really interested in trying to learn more about Lips (and maybe Rust)
I was expecting something related to search as well. This project is about the Google applications, though. That's ambitious and a great thing! I wish the devs the best of luck!
Sadly, though, I don't use those sorts of online apps and so I'm not in the target market.
Offline first[0] is planned for Q3/Q4 2019 :)
[0] https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html
Everyone's lives would improve and productivity would increase worldwide? Was this a trick question?
But sorry I haven't thought more about the question.
Any plans to partner with someone who specializes in marketing or otherwise running the non-technical side of things? You'll attract more interested parties (including potential partners with expertise) by having a higher percentage of what you're presenting, something that looks like it's made by a winning team.
1. Build free software and charge for hosting, security of hosted data and enterprise support
2. With this money reduce prices, free the data and the access to scientific knowledge
3. With this money and this community create the open infrastructure to run these software and host this open data
Donation are just a plus, and because I didn't had time to implement payments before launching :) (it's the first day I talk publicly about the project, so I think it's understandable that donation metrics are not so great).
Regarding how much work have been done until today, it's been 6 months I eat pastes :)
> And Bloom Drive is encrypted using SSL.
You mean the connection is encrypted, right ? Or was there a typo ?
Currently it's only uploaded on a S3 (with encryption activated).
End to end encryption is on the roadmap.
I dared the Google comparison thinking about it's productivity suit, and because they have an app for all the need of our life. At an extraordinary price, even if it cost noting.
Productivity is the current foundation, but you can think having a Bloom open source tractor in some years :)
You're building open source products in all markets with no limitations? Assuming you plan to harness the open source community to help out? Serious question: How is this different from GitHub? I can go to https://github.com/search and find alternatives to all your products already built somewhere and open source.
Our secret sauce is:
Bloom conciliate the best of the Startuplaland religion: radical execution rather than bureaucracy, scalability, flawless user experience, strong product culture, iterative process, and open source: a mode of development that has proven its superiority, open governance, an unmatched sustainability and a perfect symbiosis between the interests of developers and those of users.
You can also learn more about how we plan to make money: https://www.kerkour.fr/blog/bloom-a-free-and-open-source-goo...
In short: yes there is already a lot of open source project, but I found that those open source project lack the user experience required to reach a non 'geek market'.
Maybe 3 points about how to solve the issue you are raising ?
Bonus points if you can describe the benefits of your offerings without making me read a manifesto.
Best of luck!
I've tried to make it clear by appending a summary at the top of the blog post and a big visual banner at the start of the offering (to catch the eyes of those who will speed scroll). But apparently it's not enough. I'll try to fix it.
We already know the critiques about Google. Nobody cares about hearing them again. We don't want an essay.
Tell us, in specific detail, what (a) bloom is and (b) how it addresses specific issues with Google.
Is this just about privacy/advertising? Is it about hosting your own stuff? Is it about the poor customer support Google has? The shutdown of services? The intelligence concerns with the us government?
We don't want to hear another nerd voice complain on the internet. None of it will be new. Focus on what you're offering.
Thank you for the honest feedback.
Please take a look at the 2 following videos: https://kerkour.fr/blog/the-just-cause-and-the-infinite-game...
To understand the structure of the article.
This article is not intended to everyone, it's intended to those who believe what we believe. The early adopters, the potential contributors.
I've not tried to be fancy because English is simply not my primary language, and because I have studied CS and sport last years, not literature.
You lose a lot of credibility with the whole Google Search thing. Not trying to be harsh, but your responses on Search just seem to dig that hole deeper.
Joking aside, as you can read in the blog post I'm really eager that people join the project and contribute.
Sadly my time is like all taken up and Rust skills are zero but I'd love to contribute to such a cause for sure.
However that may be I love the mission, awesome work!
Productivity is the current foundation, but you can think having an open source Bloom tractor in some years.
I've dared the Google comparison, because I see Google as an innovative tech giant who have an app for all our needs.
We have the same goal. But open source.
You don't help your case by misleading your prospective customers, who are themselves self-identified "geeks" who might be able to help you make this goal a success.
I used 'Google' because it's really clear for everyone how this company is shaping the world (for the better or the worst).
They might, but that's a rather uphill battle.
I've dared the Google comparison, because in my point of view, It's THE company who is changing the world.
Besides the opaque sign-up scheme and a total disregard for standards (your calendar/contacts "sync" integrates with which clients?), even today your project is much less than Nextcloud...
Maybe the article is not crystal-clear but the goal is clearly to become the next Google. Not to be Google :)
I didn't mention it because Mozilla is not really known for mere mortals (non geeks). But Mozilla is a great inspiration for me (their privacy first designs...)
My friends from CS school know it well, but my friends from Business schools does absolutely not.
Z0mbie42 is young and did not see when Mozilla was the browser alternative before Google Chrome and stole the show. It is coming back today though because users start to realize the "Google problem".
Now Mozilla is a browser alternative and not a services one. But this is a good example of how unrealistic and not so good it is to want to be a "google" alternative. Today Google is everywhere from search engine (the original google) to collaboration, music, pro apps, video, browsers and so on.
Building an alternative as open source is good but it should clearly not be as monolithic as Google is.
Now it's complicated because users want a more integrated experience and open source developers that manage to grow their tool in a specific area dont have that much time and funding to better integrate so it's slow.
Also copying as is Google as Open Source is also not the solution. What about privacy. I believe end to end encryption is key. There are advancement in this area (the project cryptpad.fr we work on is one of them). What about decentralization ? There are tools building up in this area like mastodon or peer tube.
I wish Open Source can come out with an alternative, but it will need to be an integration of solutions, and not only a monolithic solution. Check out Framasoft.org for an incredible list of open source services they host.
Ludovic
As being a huge topic, federation is planned for Q3/Q4 2020.
I checked cryptpad, but I feel it's really lacking focus on user experience.
About e2e encryption, it's planned for Q4 2019, but collaborative encryption is really not an easy stuff. "Cryptography is a serious matter".
Concerning user experience, do not confuse design and user experience. Yes some design is needed to improve cryptPad, but the user experience starts with making it super easy to start to share something. In the case of bloom you first needed to register which is not needed on cryptpad to start working collaboratively.
Note that cryptPad storage is a bit like S3 but with e2e encryption and collaborative documents built in.. so you could build your UI on top of it, but e2e encryption means everything needs to be done from the client side, not from the server side.
There is also a roadmap. I will contact you. We can meet. We are next to Beaubourg.
Currently I didn't had time to implement subscription before lauching.
At least, as code is free (as in freedom) and open source, users with the knowledge will be able to self host.
I will happily pay twice as much as I do/would for any given google service if it means this survives.
If there could be a "sign in with bloom" on every site, that would be great. I would be happy to donate for email for something like this as well. I really want an email service that isn't gmail.
God I just hope non-technical people can be made aware of and interested in this, because it would be absolutely incredible for everyone if it succeeded.
Good luck, this looks to be a good start.
It's like a free VPN.
Ignoring that, this stuff all looks fantastic.
I call it outsourcing ;)
Joking aside, it's because my friend who help me for the graphic design don't have so much time, and me the developer, don't have much graphic design skills.
Material design is one of the only design system freely available on the internet, with very good documentation, and very good libraries in all languages.
So I see nothing wrong with him using that, in fact it would be a major factor for me personally in considering any Google service alternatives.
Keeping the switching barrier low is key for successful and widespread user adoption.
I actually think bad UI design is THE single greatest impediment for widespread adoption of free or open-source software imho. A lot has been written on that subject but I think the trope is "open-source developers cannot create good UIs". It is an old but well-accepted axiom, same as "Poland cannot into space", and it seems everyone adheres to it... ;-)
So using an established and "known good" design language is in fact ingenious.
[0] https://materializecss.com [1] https://danger.world [2] https://taormina.io [3] https://www.print2press.com
About Cap'n'Proto what benefits does it brings, and what are the trade-offs ?
An example of a capability is any Android permission apps have to ask user for.
EDITED: I just read your comment and realized you plan to charge users for the services. I noticed Disroot's free services experience down time quite often, but it's free. You're probably going to need an army of support staff since the expectation will likely be quite high once people have to make payments.
I'm not aware of cozy's story, but Bloom's goal is not to stay a nth productivity self hosted Cloud.
We have a different offering (like Bitflow) and our goal is to bring open source to far more domains like agriculture, architecture.
Our goal is to have like Google (therefore the title) an app for all the needs of our life. But open source.
We were focused on making it work first, and thanks to your feedback we'll make it great.
FYI to the site maintainer: The above excerpt is repeated in subsequent paragraphs.
I have actually wished for someone to create an open-source self-hostable copycat of Gmail (the UI) for a long time. Having trialled a multitude of alternatives (both commercial and open-source) I haven't found anything that doesn't require a huge adjustment re: usability and many compromises feature-wise.
Unfortunately, both in design and feature philosophy, Gmail is and has been for years the "non plus ultra" imho (and I gladly left Outlook-style emailing behind for it). Of course it too still has room for improvements but they will probably never happen (such as a one-touch PGP integration or better usability with many aliases), as we have most likely already reached "peak-Gmail". (Many other services, incl. Google Search, have also been deteriorated slowly, de facto killed (Google Books) or "optimised" to fit Google's/Alphabet's new strategy).
As a user of pretty much the first hour (when it was still invite only) and having moved several companies over to Gsuite from Exchange, I've felt more and more queasy over the last months and years...
When I found out recently thanks to a HN post that even my highest-paid Gsuite accounts track ALL my purchases (and many that aren't actually mine) and this CANNOT be switched off or deleted, it sort of finally broke the part of my heart that kind of still hung on to the old and long-since gone spirit of "don't be evil"...
Sorry for the rambling.
Bottom line: I do not know if you have any plans to add a "Gmail"-type email client/front-end (which could easily utilise one of the many very good open source email servers and spam filters) but I for one would welcome it with open arms.
Bonne chance!
Mails are currently not a priority because it's really hard to make it right (IMAP, POP and all the things...), but if the community shows an interest, we may plan it :)