I’m a seasoned admin and developer, and decided I need a way to give back to the community I love so much. I use nextcloud for 99% of my data sync, on a private instance, and decided why not make a public one since I know I can manage it well?
Note This is invite only right now, but want to be transparent about everything.
What it’ll offer
To start, 1 GB of space for file syncing for free;
Will have Patreon tiers for larger storage amounts
Not 100% set on Patreon yet, let me know if you have other/better suggestions
All sorts of nextcloud apps installed and configured by default;
Cheaper to run at $5.99 USD per month per terrabyte
Backups:
Borg as backup system
Currently saving to my home server, which then get’s sync’d to wasabi as an offline storage location.
Checklist before going public - Help me add to this
Load balanced and replicated Postgres database
Setup automation for allowing people to join
Configure Patreon or another provider to help pay for it - Not required for free usage
Security audit in some form (metasploit?)
Terms of Service - Need help. I’m not a lawyer
Privacy Policy - Need help, I’m not a lawyer
btw, if you want to mention anywhere that I’m asking for help with a community nextcloud service, that would be great. Really want this to be a thing, and I don’t want to be the only one excited for it.
That is super generous of you! I really would be afraid though of potential legal issues. . . good thing we got a good community here! Maybe keep it invite only and use some method to see if the user is in good standing?
You could have tiers, like at $1 a month they get access to collabora or something
I want to have a good TOS document, that removes liability from me, and allows me control to delete accounts who don’t solve an issue that is reported to them.
First of all, I salute your efforts, @stobbsm. I hope it works out as you envision.
Isn’t it kind of ironic that the technical part is not really the hard part, but rather it’s the messy human nature (as in, potential abuse by users, and taking pains to mitigate liability issues) which is the hard part.
It’s for this reason I run my own little Nextcloud server (on a $5US/month VPS), where I’m the only user. And Nextcloud has been so low-maintenance, that it’s actually worth doing this, IMHO! It upgrades itself with security updates, and I control when the upgrades between major versions occur, using the “channels” feature of snapd (as in, manually “switching” between channels).
You’d want to ask around for the most desired use cases but one might be an instructional guide on how to locally encrypt a folder/database and upload it to your service (possibly in an automated way via command line). Then how to pull it back down and restore.
This would reduce your liability, provide free instructions to the community should they wish to roll their own server and give them a very easy way to use yours.
You may even have people with NextCloud servers wanting to use your server to backup their NextCloud configs/data as a centralized quickie solution.
Good idea! I do have end to end encryption turned on, as well as encryption at rest on the wasabi side.
I like it! I’ll look at a way to do that.
What I need the most help with is the ToS though, of course. Don’t want to open up anything to the public until I have my liability taken care of. I’m in Canada, so it’s a little less restrictive, but better safe then sorry!
So literally a few days ago quidsup did a YouTube on Argos Translate I just got to. The sole developer tried a NextCloud venture similar to yours with a specialized privacy policy. I’d link the page but it’s since been editted out though you can still see it on quidsup’s video. May be worth asking him for a copy of the ToS, Privacy Policy, ect he came up with?