MediaFire Launches Linux/Open Source-Friendly Cloud Storage

Another cloud storage vendor is eying the open source community. This week, MediaFire announced a new open source toolkit compatible with Linux and FreeBSD, giving Linux desktop fans another cloud storage option to compete with Dropbox, Google Drive and the like.

MediaFire’s open source developer toolkit, which it announced Jan. 21, provides several tools, among them a FUSE interface for POSIX-compatible operating system. In non-programmer terms, the FUSE tool makes it possible to connect applications running on Linux, FreeBSD and most other Unix-like operating systems to MediaFire’s cloud storage platform, and to access and sync MediaFire files through interfaces such as the Nautilus file manager.

The toolkit also includes a command-line interface for open source operating systems that allows users to access the company’s cloud storage nodes through the terminal.

The open source toolkit notably does not offer a graphical client for connecting to MediaFire from Linux and its sister-operating systems. So far, those exist only for Windows, OS X, Android and iOS. But the FUSE module should make it possible for any third-party developer to build a graphical front-end-for-MediaFire client that will run on Linux, or to integrate the company’s file syncing and storage directly into Nautilus through a background daemon in the way that Dropbox’s Linux client does.

A MediaFire representative said in an email that the company hopes its new open source-friendly offerings will appeal to Linux fans seeking a good cloud storage solution in the wake of Canonical‘s decision last year to end the Ubuntu One file-sharing service, the only major cloud syncing and storage solution to date that was designed specifically for Linux.

Given the paucity of Linux-friendly cloud syncing services relative to the number of cloud storage offerings out there, MediaFire may well find a good following within the open source community. With storage plans starting at 10GB of space for a free account, or an entire terabyte for $2.50/month, MediaFire beats Dropbox, the only other big-name cloud storage vendor with fully functional, unbuggy Linux support, in bang-for-buck terms. And while Google Drive’s free plan, at 15GB, exceeds MediaFire’s in storage availability, Google’s longstanding failure to deliver on its promise of an official Linux client for Drive means that only third-party solutions currently exist, none of them particularly feature-rich or reliable. So MediaFire’s announcement can’t come as anything but good news for the open source ecosystem.