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Bloom — A free and open source Google
To bring an answer to the universal and unprecedented challenges of our century, we have created a free and open source 'Google': Bloom
Currently a suite of productivity apps, it'll be tomorrow the only ecosystem you will need to meet your daily needs.
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@jamesmudgett Thank you for the feedback. Be sure I will add it to the roadmap! 📅
"helps you capture and prioritize ideas, projects and to-do lists, so nothing falls through the cracks" copied from Evernote⠀ "Take note. It's easy to pull up your content from anywhere." copied from OneNote⠀ "Keep photos, stories, designs, drawings, recordings, videos and more." copied from Google Drive⠀ "Your files in Drive can be reached from any smartphone, tablet or computer. So wherever you go, your files follow." copied from Google Drive⠀ "If something happens to your device, you don't have to worry about losing your files or photos" copied from OneDrive⠀ "you don't need to download any program, all you need is a common browser." copied from BitPort
Pros:Open-source focus
Cons:Significant portion of their app descriptions are copied from the very apps they're trying to compete against.
Hi, Thank you for the honest feedback. As being myself primarily a tech person, I don't have much marketing skills so here is why I took some shortcuts for the Beta. Some makers call it outsourcing ;)
@sylvain_kerkour outsourcing and copying are two very different things.
Also, copying is not a shortcut. Some companies file lawsuits for copying less than that. Consider this a thing to fix ASAP.
@chrisbacke Hi, you are totally right!
I doubt any serious lawyer would call it copyright infringement but you are totally right on the substance, and you can be sure it will be fixed ASAP, (But real bugs will be fixed before :)
@sylvain_kerkour glad you're engaging with feedback from the PH community :) To emphasize, your product should have its own distinct identity—take the classic example of Coke vs Pepsi. Both sell the same soft drink product but have distinct branding. Challenging you to take the harder path of defining your own identity instead of mirroring others!
@dailen Hi, Thank your for the encouragements!
Search is not planned, a DDG integration would be nice, but I'm not sure if they have an API to allow that, I will take a look.
Regarding emails, it has been a extremely well requested feature, so there great chances that it will be added to the roadmap, even if it's hard to do it well and securely (IMAP, POP...).
I like this idea in principal, since I love open source, but I don’t understand how you are planning on building and maintaining “Google” like services without even a modicum of their resource.
The products already listed on your website are already numerous, and Google will have had large teams working on each of these products for several years.
I can’t see how you’re realistically going to be able to offer even a fraction of what Google offers unless you have some serious capital.
Some questions:
1. How big is your team?
2. Do you have funding?
3. Are you relying on the open source community to come together and build these products?
4. Something else?
@chrisvxd Hi, Thank you for the kind words.
As explained in the master plan https://www.kerkour.fr/blog/bloo... ( yeah I admit it's very long), we do not seek to imitate Google. I've dared the comparison to set the reference at which kind of impact we plan to have on the world.
1. Currently 2 full time
2. Currently self funded (and enough to keep the work going for years), but as said in the master plan, we conciliate the best of the startuplaland religion and open source, So if funding is needed there we do not have problems with that (we are relatively well connected in France: 42, EDHEC...). As explained in the masterplan, we have plan for short term enterprise products to sustain our growth :)
3. Yes, We truly believe that's the power of open source : Sharing and global scale collaboration
4. I really did not expected such traction for the beta launch, please keep in mind that the products currently online are just irrelevant in the long run, our mission is to empower the world with open technologies, whatever product we will build, nothing less.
got a notice that this was a google competitor, but not seeing it just yet? nice open source platforms of some google services - but missing more interesting things like your own tensorflow, gmail, collaborative docs platform, adsense (okay you don't believe in ads) etc
@yosun Hi,
It's not really a Google competitor, I've dared the 'Google' comparison because in my opinion Google is THE company which change the world, and that's what we aim. Currently released apps are just an implementation detail.
Today oriented productivity, we plan to be tomorrow an entire ecosystem.
You can imagine having your Bloom open source tractor in a few years :)
Yeah, you need to show people what they're walking into before you ask them to commit. Even if it's just real screen grabs.
@gregw Thank you for the feedbak. It's a recurring comment, so be assured I will add it to the roadmap!
Cool initiative! :-) If you have built it with FaaS you might have a chance to compete with Google. I suppose that adding email and analytics is a bit of a challenge.
@appernetic Hi, Thank you for the kind words!
Currently not built using serverless because we have great objections regarding the sustainability of this paradigm, and the Rust language allow us to have very good performance in the Backend.
Analytics is not planned (there is already a lot of existing solution, and we are not comfortable with all the privacy implications of such product).
Regarding emails, it has been a extremely well requested feature, so there great chances that it will be added to the roadmap, even if it's hard to do it well and securely (IMAP, POP...)
@leo_galley Hi,
Thank you for the feedback!
We currently used Material design because as being myself a tech guy, my graphic designer friend didn't had much time (exams), I needed an extensive and openly available design system. In my knowledge, Material is the only one.
Furthermore, there is a lot of high-quality frontend libraries which implements Material design :)
@sylvain_kerkour For sure, but you can see the irony ;) also FYI I'm a UX Designer / full stack eng so I'd be happy to help build your own CSS/UI library !
Hey @charlieirish could you add the maker's profile it's https://twitter.com/z0mbie42, he's on product hunt too as @sylvain_kerkour
@charlieirish @sylvain_kerkour @vijay_selvaraju he was already added but since the Product Hunt username is not the same as the Twitter one, it didn't show up. Has been fixed now, thanks 🤗
The one main doubt I always have when switching to such providers is "how long will they last". That's a huge worry.
@swiftpolar I sincerely advise against switching now, as written when registering, data may be lost, but as we are open source, I sincerely that sustainability won't be a problem!
My vision for the future is a federation of Bloom providers (and not only https://bloom.sh) that communicate between each others (like emails providers today, or Mastodon, or Matrix chat)
It doesn't appear to have search, so the description should probably include what google service replacements it does include.
@jbatutis Hi, Thank you for the feedback!
Done! (I didn't created the post so didn't read the description)
Hi, I did not expect being hunted, but I'm really honored :)
Be aware it's a Beta, so please do not store sensitive data ;)
You can learn more about how we plan to make open source software sustainable by reading the master plan: https://www.kerkour.fr/blog/bloo...
@phillipprado Thank you very much for the kind words!
You can stay informed by following us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/42bloom :)
I really like this. There's a huge market up for grabs as companies gear up for the privacy debate that's been brewing for years now. It's only more recently picked up speed and media coverage.
Open source is a must if you're creating a privacy-oriented product. And free, well that's awesome.
The biggest improvement I would love to see for Bloom is a better Privacy Policy. If this were encrypted and zero-knowledge, I would probably consider moving most (if not all) my assets to Bloom.
I know of quite a few people (myself included) who are always on the lookout for products like this because they're always in search of encrypted, zero-knowledge, free and open source software like this.
This is a great start! Where is data stored? Would be great to store with users so it's fully portable and interoperable.
This would be a fantastic product to see come to fruition. As a tech educator it would be nice to see another service such as Google that could possibly be more trustworthy within an education environment.
@rantulaofficial Thank you very much!
As I (almost) graduated from School 42 (https://www.42.fr/) empowering education is one of my mains drivers.
I sincerely believe that education (at least in Europe) took the wrong turn by being very expensive and I want to change that!
@kraftykyle Hi, Thank you for the feedback.
If I committed any kind of legal infringement I will happily fix.
Currently the logo is as it because my graphic designer friend didn't had much time (exams) and as not being a graphic designer myself, I just followed the material design spec, which is the only extensive open system design I'm aware of :)
Kong