ProtonDrive is open-source, what's blocks us from building Linux client?

Question

ProtonDrive is listing "open source" as one of it's main features. They provide links to source for Android and iOS apps. Are there any hurdles to build an open-source Linux client, that would work like classic "dropbox", just syncing files between ProtonDrive account and local computer?

zshrc · Accepted Answer

Proton has a rather "curious" interaction with the word "open source".
Most of the time, they wait to release the source code of their products around the time a specific version is released, and perform active work on a hidden or private clone tree.
It's better than other companies, but isn't the type of open source you typically see with most FOSS projects.
As for ProtonDrive, I don't see the source code anywhere (other than Android/iOS version). Where are you seeing this? I'm assuming both offerings use Windows/macOS specific APIs (at least I hope), so you'd need to go through a large amount of engineering effort to get it working with Linux, and that's before even choosing how to implement it. FUSE driver? Nautilus extension? Electron web app?

darthShadow · Answer

You can always use rclone which added ProtonDrive support 2 releases back: https://rclone.org/protondrive/You can also mount it using rclone to present it as an external drive.

ZunarJ5 · Answer

Rsync has a port for it

aborsy · Answer

You can connect 2X10TB to a PI, mini PC or similar at home and access your files over a variety of interfaces (SFTP, nextcloud, syncthing, etc) using a vpn such as Tailscale. Why does one need to pay for expensive storage?