iWhat?

Solutions for filesharing have been always a been one of the biggest problems to solve when it comes to Information systems.

Many appeared through the way: NFS, CIFS, FTP, SFTP ...
Thanks to the ubiquitous Operating System, the CIFS is now the 'de facto' standard but, due to the las changes in technology its ageing really fast. Bigger disks, internet access almost everywhere, crypto availability and web clients in every system make things different. Now it's not crazy to have more than 20 Gb of data in anyone's laptop. The need goes further than just accessing data, it needs to be stored, syncronized authorized and available online or offline.

Tere are several solutions to this. The ones from Redmond are a bit more than inssuficient, that's why they bought a little interesting company called Groove Networks. Its main product is called Groove, a simple, yet powerful, P2P workspace sharing. Now ... integrated into the world's favourite office suite. (not!)

So, what's the competitor or competitors to this. How can someone achieve similar functionality in an Open Source, Free and Mature manner. This is how we arrive to the iFolder shore. iWhat? ... iFolder. It is a filesharing application written by Novell, multiplatform (Linux, MacOS X, Windows), with syncronization capabilities and now OpenSource. It's not as complete as Groove but has got the main functionality integrated to be the filesharing application of choice.

From their FAQ:

What is iFolder?
iFolder is a solution that allows people to easily share folders of files of any type with other users, whether they use the same or different operating systems. Thus, Linux, Windows and Macintosh users can all use iFolder and share folders. The iFolder client runs in two operating modes, enterprise sharing and workgroup sharing.

What is the difference between the two methods for sharing?
When using the iFolder 3.0 server, the iFolder client first synchronizes the files in your iFolders to the intermediate server, then replicates them to other computers. With the iFolder server, you can also access your files from an Internet Browser, as well as back up your files from the server to suitable back-up media.
Using iFolder to share without the server allows you to synchronize and share files between two or more computers without the requirement for an intermediate server to exchange files. This is accomplished through add-on modules being developed in the open-source community. There are two methods under development to allow users to share using Gaim, the open-source instant messaging client, and using Bonjour (Rendevous).

And now I wonder: can it be integrated into the mainstream opensource world?

Can it be a part of GNOME?
Well, it uses Mono and works on top of it. Now (2.18) comes with it included, as it is needed for Tomboy, so it wouldn't be that much to include.

Can it be a part of Ubuntu?
It would be a great move for it to come with such a simple and GNOME integrated filesharing application. They already include Beagle or NetworkManager so, it would be really easy to include it. They could even give a backup service through their own public/private iFolder server.

So, here it is, the software needed to keep files synchronized in an asynchronous way, will Ubuntu and/or GNOME rescue iFolder from obscurity?