My motivations: why do I make SStorage the way I do

SStorage is an important project for me, I have spent more than an entire year worth of work into this project. It started on the 4th July 2019 with the first prototype of the data storage server based on the LMDB project concepts, but using a hashmap instead of a tree.

The data store

I am a lover of database systems. I write them, I love them, I analyse them like a clocksmith would dismantle an unknown mechanism. I am also ill. I have a very crippling chronic depression. At the start of July 2019, I took a glimpse in the design of LMDB. I decided to give a try at making a similar store: GoJDB. I worked on this for 4 days and got a working prototype. It was fast, it had networking done, and I was rather happy about it.

I started working on finding something to use that design with, and came up with the idea that would become SStorage after a few chats on Telegram on Linux related groups: A privacy centered, end-to-end encrypted, cloud storage.

The whitepaper

I started working on defining the scope of the project: the goals, what I could achieve and what I could not achieve, the accounting that I would need, the philosophy that I want to uphold and the political views of the project.

I then worked together the list of features to implement, as well as which part of the software will be fulfilling each feature. I then worked on the mathematical ideas behind the project and before I noticed, I had worked 6 months on the software. I started iterating on the whitepaper as well as spreading it to proofreaders: Melvin Rey from Refolded Games (a local game studio) as well as people on Telegram groups the inception happened.

A privacy oriented cloud storage is no simple software. I found mistakes and errors, poor premises, and entire paragraphs of specification I had to rewrite while I steadily worked through the Technical specification and the support library during the pandemic.

What it is to me

SStorage, or whatever name I thenceforth could give to this project, always was for me a way to find proper work despite my mental health issues: when the depression hits me, I can take a break, rest for the day, go and speak with friends, when it is milder I can power through the project; when I no longer feel like coding I work on the specification, take a walk to think about ideas, take a course on one thing or another, do some marketing...

I don't want to hand that project to anyone. It is mine, I want to bring it to fruiction, and I want it to help people. This project is a concretisation of ideologies. My view on privacy and security, on management, on companies... It is my take on the world I want to live in. A world where one can trust a company, and where a company adopts a cooperative stance with its employees and customers alike: acceptation, cooperation and reciprocity as well as trust. Right from the idea itself: encrypted cloud storage, I mean to show the importance of privacy centered software, trust.

Conclusion

I will publish later more articles on why and how my end-to-end cloud storage company was made.

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