What’s The Problem?

It’s The Cloud. That’s the problem. It’s been the problem from the first time someone installed Dropbox or iCloud or OneDrive or Google Drive. They’re all the problem. A problem pitched as a solution. That’s how I think about it most of the time. Let’s take a walk back in time, shall we?

A Slice Of History

The first instance of this kind of nonsense that was wide-spread enough to be A Thing was Gmail. I don’t know how many people will remember having to get an invite to get a Gmail account, but that was how they built it out. False scarcity from the jump. It also, undoubtedly, ket track of who invited who and how they were related. This was well before Facebook. Same benefit for the owner of the service: a network graph of users. Who knows who? Well, with invites, there’s a shortcut. They don’t even have to monitor the actual Tos or Froms of the actual emails sent.

The first thing I thought when I saw Google giving away “free” email was that they would train their search against the text of the email. So many people out there believing that Google would not be evil. We saw where that went, right? Well, once you give them a license to scan your email for search purposes, it’s nothing to shift that to training language models or translations or any number of other things they might want. Did anyone who needed a free email account think that through? I doubt it.

Oh. And the email? It was on the server of someone with whom the user had no financial agreements or transactions. It wasn’t like a telco. No money changes hands? They can shut it off whenever they want. Email addresses are too valuable for that kind of relationship. But in the early days of Gmail, there was no real thought about MFA. People were really out there just doing stupid shit like that. Or rather, stuff that would be stupid soon enough.

No Responsibility!

The thing I heard most about cloud computing from corporate leadership in the early days was that it would offload the responsiblity of maintaining infrastructure. In other words, no servers to buy. No hardware to maintain. No admins to employ. Sounds great!

Ever sat through a major cloud outage and try to explain to a customer that you’ll let them know as soon as you know something when the cloud provider isn’t going to tell you shit? Maybe in a regulated environment? Maybe where there is a crushingly critical time component? Sure, maybe Mike, your SysAdmin would be sweating it out in front of a server trying to get things back online, but at least you’d know what really went south, how to prevent it, and even be able to put your hands on the person solving the problem for after action reports.

The risk shifted with The Cloud. Sure, you didn’t have to worry about the infrastructure, but you had to worry about the black box that now holds, well, everything.

That right there? That’s a shitty trade-off in terms of risk. And it’s not better when it’s your personal data. In fact, I’d argue, it’s way worse.

Shifting Things Around

I got to a place in my head where I realized that I needed to get my data back into my own hands. It didn’t take too long to find Nextcloud. It’s a collection of software centered on Apache and WebDAV that allows a user to attach to it like they would iCloud or Dropbox and just move files around. It has some middle of the road contact management and photo management and even some functional mobile apps. For my money it works best when it’s a fileserver and manages the sync of data between devices.

The best part of Nextcloud, if you host it yourself (and I do), is that it’s Your Server, Your Rules. You can configure it any way you like and do what you want. Limits? No limits? Let the kids have accounts? Whatever you want. No extra cost. No license fees. It’s Free AND Open Source!

The worst part of Nextcloud, if you host it yourself (and I do), is that it’s Your Server, Your Rules.

See what I did there? Yeah. Knives are sharp. You can cut onions and fingers equally well. I’ve spent time restoring and rebuilding my servers because I screwed things up or botched some administrative work. But I have never lost data (yet) and I know where my shit is.

I like that!

The other thing that I like is that Nextcloud is Free and Open Source. It’s flexible. There is an active community maintaining it. There are All-In-One Docker containers for it. Administration is easy. It runs on Debian. It’s exactly what I need and not much more than that. Though it could be.

What Do I Do With It?

Mostly, I use it to manage files across my mobile devices and desktop. My Mac, my laptop, my dev box, my iPad, my iPhone…all of them run Nextcloud. My main note taking software is Joplin and it works perfectly with Nextcloud out of the box. I am also in the process of moving all of my contacts and pictures over to it because, well, Apple is making me twitchy. That’s a ME problem, but it is a problem.

I also use the server it’s on as a Wireguard server so I can use the wide-open-hack-my-shit WiFi at the library a little more securely. More on Wireguard later when I’ve learned more.

What Am I Going To Do With It?

The thing I’m doing with Nextcloud right this minute is developing against it. I’m building some iOS apps to handle Notebooks, Contacts, and Photo Management. None of the Nextcloud aware apps out there are good enough or reliable enough for me. So, like Thanos, I’ll do it myself.

No, there probably won’t be Android versions. I’m not here to make apps. This is about solving the problem in front of me, not starting a business. I won’t rule anything out, but jumping from Apple to Google isn’t in the cards for me.

I’m also going to mak it available to my family. Let them move their data to where we can keep it safe.

Strategy

Yeah, I have off-site backup plans. I need to get my house in order with that in a more formal way. I’m also looking at upgrading the hardware that I’m using. I don’t need “Big Iron” but something will a little more oomf than the retired Mac Mini I’m running it on now would be nice. Again, this isn’t resource intensive software with the number of users I have, but I would like to be in a position to think less about the hardware for a 5 year horizon.

The Moral Of The Story

Nextcloud is the base upon which I’m building my de-clouding. Sync is important. File servers matter. Having data accessible across the internet is something that we can hardly live without in 2026. There are worse ways to do this and I’m sure there are better. I haven’t found the better ones yet. Nextcloud it is.