[Board] Changing from Dropbox for OSGeo Shared Folders?

[Michael Smith]

Jeff,

Its perfectly fine to add to the public board list, I was just including
those folks directly involved but you're right to include the larger
community.

The cost for Dropbox Pro is $99/year for 1Tb. And OSGeo already has a
Dropbox Pro account. The problem is that this does not help anyone the
dropbox folder is shared with. Each individual still has the amount used
up. So if the OSGeo folder gets to 50Gb (for example), each person it is
shared with gets 50Gb used up, whether it comes from a dropbox pro account
or not. This is the same with Cubby. Copy.com divide the amount amongst
all the various users (eg if 5 users, each gets charged 10Gb) and for
Google Drive, it would all come from the owner of the shared folder and
none from the members shared with. That¹s why I concluded that Google
Drive seems the best for our situation where we have to have one paid
account (OSGeo) with high storage and everyone that has access (whether
synced to local drive or not) has no allocation changed to them.

Mike

----
Michael Smith
OSGeo Foundation Treasurer
treasurer at osgeo.org




On 2/22/15, 10:09 AM, "Jeff McKenna" <jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com> wrote:

>Hi Mike,
>
>This is a great conversation for the public Board list (why would it be
>private?).  The decision we make here will affect future Board members,
>so I prefer to have this talk publicly.
>
>I am one of those with limited Dropbox space.
>
>Thanks for doing this research.
>
>I don't see a cost in your message for Dropbox Pro.
>
>My opinion is that we should keep this simple, use something that
>everyone has access to easily (supported on major platforms), and use
>something that is common/popular.
>
>So my strong vote is Dropbox Pro (whatever the cost may be).  Each Board
>member would get the costs covered for the length of their term on the
>Board.   When we donate our free time to OSGeo, for Board activities, we
>shouldn't be forced to use tools that are unfamiliar and may take more
>time to use/understand.
>
>-jeff
>
>
>
>
>On 2015-02-22 10:57 AM, Michael Smith wrote:
>> All,
>>
>> We've had some suggestions to change from Dropbox for the OSGeo shared
>> folders (finance and intl) as the shared folders owned by OSGeo take up
>> space on the local account of the person that this is shared to and that
>> this is a problem for some of the folks. We have some suggestions of
>> alternatives. I'd like to get us discussing this,
>> pros/cons/gotchas/incompatibilites so that we can change (or not) in an
>> informed fashion. Some of the proposed alternatives are
>>
>>  1. Dropbox Pro
>>  2. Cubby
>>  3. Google Drive
>>  4. Copy.com
>>
>> I've already upgrading the OSGeo Account to Dropbox Pro thinking that
>> the now the shared space would count just against the Pro account.
>> Evidently this is incorrect. So to not impact others, we'd have to
>> upgrade all users to a Pro account. From my reading of the Cubby
>> website, it appears things are the same with Cubby.
>>
>> Google Drive indicates that Files that others have shared with you don't
>> count against your limit. So this appears to be an attractive
>> alternative. A 100Gb storage plan for OSGeo is only $1.99 a month. No
>> Linux client however. Is this a deal breaker? The default free account
>> is 15Gb.
>>
>> Copy.com has Fair Storage. If 5Gb is shared with 5 people, then only 1Gb
>> is changed against each. (their forums have a large amount of spam
>> posting though). A Linux client is available. Default free is 15Gb also.
>>
>> Overall, it would seem like Google Drive would be the best alternative
>> as none of the OSGeo space would count against all the people it is
>> shared with. But it would be a change from how it is setup now with
>> Dropbox. And there is no Linux client.
>>
>> Opinions?
>>
>> Mike
>>