Google Drive

Google Drive

[Paul Michael Reilly]

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Has anyone started to add support to Emacs so that Google Drive can be
treated as a usable directory?  Using dired on a development instance of
Emacs 24 yields the error message: "Format specifier doesn't match argument
type"

I have to confess that I love the concept of editing some files on my
desktop computer at home, grab my laptop and head to lunch at some local
spot with wifi and continue to work on my documents WITHOUT having to do
anything special, like use Tramp or a source controlled environment or
sshfs, etc.  Of course, one has be aware of privacy settings so that you
either make the documents deliberately public, deliberately private or
something in between.

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Re: Google Drive

[chad]

On May 1, 2012, at 7:52 AM, Paul Michael Reilly wrote:

> Has anyone started to add support to Emacs so that Google Drive can be treated as a usable directory?  Using dired on a development instance of Emacs 24 yields the error message: "Format specifier doesn't match argument type"
> 
> I have to confess that I love the concept of editing some files on my desktop computer at home, grab my laptop and head to lunch at some local spot with wifi and continue to work on my documents WITHOUT having to do anything special, like use Tramp or a source controlled environment or sshfs, etc.  Of course, one has be aware of privacy settings so that you either make the documents deliberately public, deliberately private or something in between. 

I've been doing this for years with DropBox and no special effort, and I'm surprised that it doesn't Just Work in this case.  I just set up Google Drive and it seems to work fine (well, except that most of the documents in it are useless inside emacs).

Could you maybe give some more details or file a bug report?

*Chad

Re: Google Drive

[Thomas Lord]

Are there any free software packages that 
provide functionality like DropBox or GoogleDrive?
Are there any companies that sell the utility
service of hosting that software, with 
freedom-respecting terms of service and security
features such as optional encryption of stored
data?

To me it seems like there *should*  be lots and lots
of small businesses doing that at a modest, fair
price mark-up.   And then lots of GNU software, including
Emacs, should support that functionality.

-t


On Tue, 2012-05-01 at 10:02 -0700, chad wrote:
> On May 1, 2012, at 7:52 AM, Paul Michael Reilly wrote:
> 
> > Has anyone started to add support to Emacs so that Google Drive can be treated as a usable directory?  Using dired on a development instance of Emacs 24 yields the error message: "Format specifier doesn't match argument type"
> > 
> > I have to confess that I love the concept of editing some files on my desktop computer at home, grab my laptop and head to lunch at some local spot with wifi and continue to work on my documents WITHOUT having to do anything special, like use Tramp or a source controlled environment or sshfs, etc.  Of course, one has be aware of privacy settings so that you either make the documents deliberately public, deliberately private or something in between. 
> 
> I've been doing this for years with DropBox and no special effort, and I'm surprised that it doesn't Just Work in this case.  I just set up Google Drive and it seems to work fine (well, except that most of the documents in it are useless inside emacs).
> 
> Could you maybe give some more details or file a bug report?
> 
> *Chad
> 
> 
> 

Re: Google Drive

[Geoffrey Teale]

On 1 May 2012 19:14, Thomas Lord <lord@emf.net> wrote:
> Are there any free software packages that
> provide functionality like DropBox or GoogleDrive?
> Are there any companies that sell the utility
> service of hosting that software, with
> freedom-respecting terms of service and security
> features such as optional encryption of stored
> data?
>
> To me it seems like there *should*  be lots and lots
> of small businesses doing that at a modest, fair
> price mark-up.   And then lots of GNU software, including
> Emacs, should support that functionality.

Ubuntu One has a GPLv3 licensed client.  The server code is proprietary

-- 
Geoff Teale
.

Re: Google Drive

[Thomas Lord]

On Tue, 2012-05-01 at 19:19 +0200, Geoffrey Teale wrote:
> 
> Ubuntu One has a GPLv3 licensed client.  The server code is
> proprietary 


So, that is not freedom-respecting at all.

Bummer.

This seems like it should be easy money (modest amounts)
for a lot of folks and very valuable.  Emacs support
would be awesome, especially if there were a compatible
port of Emacs to javascript and free software browsers.


-t

Re: Google Drive

[chad]

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On May 1, 2012, at 10:14 AM, Thomas Lord wrote:

> Are there any free software packages that 
> provide functionality like DropBox or GoogleDrive?
> Are there any companies that sell the utility
> service of hosting that software, with 
> freedom-respecting terms of service and security
> features such as optional encryption of stored
> data?

I know some people at MIT were working on such a thing, based on SUNDR (paper attached), but I'm far enough out of touch that I couldn't tell you if it was going to go anywhere. That group is pro-free-software, but when I last heard, they were primarily concerned with the (frankly terrible) security implications of DropBox, Box.net, MS SkyDrive, et al.

*Chad


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CFP Re: Google Drive

[Thomas Lord]

Is there anyone convenient to the East Bay
of (SF Bay Area) who would like to work 
on this with me?

There's no need for a first "product" offering
to start with something as fancy and speculative
as SUNDR.   We can start with off-the-shelf parts,
conveniently configured, I think.  I think it's 
OK for users to trust their storage provider
so long as the provider respects the users' freedoms
well enough to merit that trust.

(Since this message suggests a new and separate
project, branching off from an Emacs issue, it 
is probably best for those inclined to reply to 
reply off-list.)


-t


On Tue, 2012-05-01 at 10:48 -0700, chad wrote:
> On May 1, 2012, at 10:14 AM, Thomas Lord wrote:
> 
> > Are there any free software packages that 
> > provide functionality like DropBox or GoogleDrive?
> > Are there any companies that sell the utility
> > service of hosting that software, with 
> > freedom-respecting terms of service and security
> > features such as optional encryption of stored
> > data?
> 
> I know some people at MIT were working on such a thing, based on SUNDR (paper attached), but I'm far enough out of touch that I couldn't tell you if it was going to go anywhere. That group is pro-free-software, but when I last heard, they were primarily concerned with the (frankly terrible) security implications of DropBox, Box.net, MS SkyDrive, et al.
> 
> *Chad
> 
> 

Re: Google Drive

[David Engster]

Thomas Lord writes:
> Are there any free software packages that 
> provide functionality like DropBox or GoogleDrive?

Last I checked, the most promising approach was

http://sparkleshare.org/

which is based on git and should work with basically any git hosting
provider.

-David

Re: Google Drive

[Lennart Borgman]

On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 7:50 AM, David Engster <deng@randomsample.de> wrote:
> Thomas Lord writes:
>> Are there any free software packages that
>> provide functionality like DropBox or GoogleDrive?
>
> Last I checked, the most promising approach was
>
> http://sparkleshare.org/
>
> which is based on git and should work with basically any git hosting
> provider.


It looks very interesting, but I can't find any documentation about
how it really works. Does it do automatic sync like Dropbox, or?

Re: Google Drive

[Tekk]

On Tue, 01 May 2012 10:14:25 -0700
Thomas Lord <lord@emf.net> wrote:

> Are there any free software packages that 
> provide functionality like DropBox or GoogleDrive?
> Are there any companies that sell the utility
> service of hosting that software, with 
> freedom-respecting terms of service and security
> features such as optional encryption of stored
> data?
> 
> To me it seems like there *should*  be lots and lots
> of small businesses doing that at a modest, fair
> price mark-up.   And then lots of GNU software, including
> Emacs, should support that functionality.
> 
> -t
> 
> 
> On Tue, 2012-05-01 at 10:02 -0700, chad wrote:
> > On May 1, 2012, at 7:52 AM, Paul Michael Reilly wrote:
> > 
> > > Has anyone started to add support to Emacs so that Google Drive
> > > can be treated as a usable directory?  Using dired on a
> > > development instance of Emacs 24 yields the error message:
> > > "Format specifier doesn't match argument type"
> > > 
> > > I have to confess that I love the concept of editing some files
> > > on my desktop computer at home, grab my laptop and head to lunch
> > > at some local spot with wifi and continue to work on my documents
> > > WITHOUT having to do anything special, like use Tramp or a source
> > > controlled environment or sshfs, etc.  Of course, one has be
> > > aware of privacy settings so that you either make the documents
> > > deliberately public, deliberately private or something in
> > > between. 
> > 
> > I've been doing this for years with DropBox and no special effort,
> > and I'm surprised that it doesn't Just Work in this case.  I just
> > set up Google Drive and it seems to work fine (well, except that
> > most of the documents in it are useless inside emacs).
> > 
> > Could you maybe give some more details or file a bug report?
> > 
> > *Chad
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> 
SparkleShare and OwnCloud. SparkleShare is basically a pretty wrapper
around git, OwnCloud is a proper system.

Re: Google Drive

[Paul Michael Reilly]

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On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 1:02 PM, chad <yandros@mit.edu> wrote:

>
> On May 1, 2012, at 7:52 AM, Paul Michael Reilly wrote:
>
> > Has anyone started to add support to Emacs so that Google Drive can be
> treated as a usable directory?  Using dired on a development instance of
> Emacs 24 yields the error message: "Format specifier doesn't match argument
> type"
> >
> > I have to confess that I love the concept of editing some files on my
> desktop computer at home, grab my laptop and head to lunch at some local
> spot with wifi and continue to work on my documents WITHOUT having to do
> anything special, like use Tramp or a source controlled environment or
> sshfs, etc.  Of course, one has be aware of privacy settings so that you
> either make the documents deliberately public, deliberately private or
> something in between.
>
> I've been doing this for years with DropBox and no special effort, and I'm
> surprised that it doesn't Just Work in this case.  I just set up Google
> Drive and it seems to work fine (well, except that most of the documents in
> it are useless inside emacs).
>

In that case, I'll debug the issue.  Thanks for letting me know that it
works for you.

-pmr

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