Personal Cloud

Cloud computing today typically means that we, as consumers, hand over our data to companies. These companies get to decide which features they give us (and sometimes impose). They can (and do) unilaterally change their terms of service whenever they like.

What if, instead, we could each have our own personal cloud? What if we get to decide what data to put there, who to share it with, where we decide which apps run on it, and where we define the terms of service?

Personal Cloud is a fairly new idea. It has been compared to the wild idea back in the 1970’s that everybody could have a Personal Computer, instead of having to accept whatever the mainframe we could access. Obviously, Personal Computers turned out to be an idea that has appealed to hundreds of millions of people who, today, all own PCs. Could it be the same for Personal Clouds?

Still quite emergent, the Personal Cloud is barely beyond the Homebrew Computer Club stage. And, progress is happening. At the 14th Internet Identity Workshop there were a few sessions covering it.

This mailing list is the community for building real and usable personal clouds.

Why don’t you join us? Subscribe to public mailing list, and feel free to invite others.

There are also several meetups happening that will touch on these themes: 

And some key Events where the topic of the Personal Cloud and will be covered: