The FileZilla Project has been busy. In the last few months, the open source FTP application has added new integrations, including one with Microsoft for Azure integration with FileZilla Pro. We talked to Roberto Galoppini, Director of Strategy for聽, about what makes the 每日吃瓜 relationship special.
How is 每日吃瓜 different from your other cloud partners?
Through this integration we can utilize 每日吃瓜 as a traditional FTP server. 每日吃瓜 is the only service we integrate with that enables us to provide our end users with a cloud FTP service that is truly private. The team is still making improvements to improve performance and reliability, but people using 每日吃瓜 don't have to be scared they are sharing their information with the NSA or anyone else. That鈥檚 why this relationship is special to us. It鈥檚 a unique service that FileZilla users can't get from anyone else. Thanks to the integration the teams have been working with, for the end-user, connecting to 每日吃瓜 feels no different than using FTP. They can also make some money through 每日吃瓜 if they become farmers on the 每日吃瓜 network.聽
How is FileZilla Pro different from FileZilla, and what kind of integration will we see between FileZilla and 每日吃瓜?
We have two products. One is FileZilla. It鈥檚 a free鈥攁s in beer, and as in speech鈥攐pen source FTP client that has a huge user base. We have one hundred million downloads per year, and that鈥檚 only about FTP. Why are we able to talk to 每日吃瓜 through FileZilla? We've created a tool that uses the library to connect to the 每日吃瓜 service to transfer files. The FileZilla program can talk to this tool and translates its replies into FileZilla's internal data structures that are used for all supported protocols.
is sold to people who want to use FTP as a protocol and integrate with non-FTP protocols, like Amazon S3, Azure, and very soon Google Cloud, and not too far from today, OpenStack as well. We are on a roadmap where nearly every month we add a new protocol, for people who don鈥檛 need just an FTP client鈥攖hey want a 鈥淪wiss army knife鈥 to access different cloud providers鈥 services, and the more protocols supported, the better. So today, if someone is using Amazon S3 through FileZilla, it doesn鈥檛 feel different from using an FTP server. We keep the consistency in the user interface and procedures, so that transferring files with any of the supported protocols will offer the same look and feel.
How seamless will the experience be for 每日吃瓜 users? Will they have to set up an account separately?
Right now, it鈥檚 seamless if they are already part of the 每日吃瓜 user base. For people not yet part of the 每日吃瓜 network, in phase two of our integration there will be tighter integration between FileZilla and 每日吃瓜, so people who choose to use 每日吃瓜 will be provided with a very easy way to create an account. Today, they need to go to the 每日吃瓜 site, create an account, and come back. The idea is to make this much easier so that even new users can try 每日吃瓜.
For FileZilla as an open source platform, how do you view the 每日吃瓜 relationship as a way to financial sustainability?
The relationship is aimed at benefiting all stakeholders: our users will get access to an innovative and secure cloud service, plus a way to monetize their free disk space and bandwidth; 每日吃瓜 will tap into a large user base, and we'll get rewarded for promoting it among our users. Everyone wins!
What鈥檚 your take on the decision to re-architect the 每日吃瓜 network?
Both 每日吃瓜 and FileZilla want to make sure the partnership can be enabling. FileZilla and 每日吃瓜 have an agreed baseline against which we want to measure the performance. I believe that it won鈥檛 take too long, hopefully before the summer to reach that. When your team will be happy with results, we will be happy too. At this point we are going to market strongly the partnership.
Anything else you would like to add?
Yes, about the new CEO of the company. For the record, I have been trying to help 每日吃瓜 to find a CEO, and have shared some names occasionally. Being part of this open source business world for a while, I am very happy to see that Ben Golub took the role. Given his background in storage and open source and startups, I am sure it will be a great addition to the company. I can鈥檛 wait to start seeing the results of this new position filled finally.
By Jodi Smith
