PREDICTION: New Users heading this way

@Rewt0r++

What we need is people doing stuff about the problems they see. I see a lot of entitlement above. That’s not how this project, or any other open source project, works.

There’s an interesting paradox here for maintainers of open source projects. If what you make is uninteresting crap and no one cares about it, you don’t get the satisfaction of having a lot of users, but you do get to work on your project and enjoy that. If it becomes moderately successful, you are instead awarded by lots of people complaining about how you’re not doing enough to cater to them, that the software doesn’t work for them, that it has the wrong license for their business plan, and so on and so forth. Suddenly you need to defend every arbitrary decision, or you get branded stupid or lazy. This is tiring and at best takes time away from us doing something useful, at worst smothers the flame that keeps the project happening in the first place.

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Well, one problem has been solved. We now have a Windows Installer :smile:

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No, what I am saying is that it would be stupid to be mad because some people made a lot of money by taking over the business, while it was not your goal.

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What we need is people doing stuff about the problems they see. I see a lot of entitlement above. That’s not how this project, or any other open source project, works.

Well I did take a couple first steps. I am beta testing the iOS client, and synced my first file there. It is (currently) closed source, so I can’t help out on the code there. I filed two bug reports with Synctrayzor, which looks extremely promising (and I think should be advertised prominently to potential Windows users ASAP). I also forked the last MIT version of SyncThing. I would much rather be able to contribute to what you are doing, because I think you are doing a great job, and I value the developer community here.

I also found some automated Go language conversion possibilities via javascript or haxe, although I expect it to be a rough transition and probably not a good way to bring the software to a new language, but it could potentially make it a little easier to start something, and perhaps copy over some useful bits that translate well. (I am trying out TardisGo, and hoping to target C#, since with that, I can reach every major server/desktop/mobile platform at once. I don’t expect I will have time in the near future to make a good go of it though.)

There’s an interesting paradox here for maintainers of open source projects. If what you make is uninteresting crap and no one cares about it, you don’t get the satisfaction of having a lot of users, but you do get to work on your project and enjoy that. If it becomes moderately successful, you are instead awarded by lots of people complaining about how you’re not doing enough to cater to them, that the software doesn’t work for them, that it has the wrong license for their business plan, and so on and so forth. Suddenly you need to defend every arbitrary decision, or you get branded stupid or lazy. This is tiring and at best takes time away from us doing something useful, at worst smothers the flame that keeps the project happening in the first place.

As I stated earlier, my biggest hope for you and the team is you get the most satisfaction you can out of your efforts, and that simply means I hope you are objectively and open-mindedly considering how all the options might affect your own satisfaction.

I hope you don’t let the influx of hopes (perhaps presented negatively – sorry) for this great software ever tire you out. (Take it as a compliment that you are popular and in demand.) You don’t owe anybody anything. Decide what you want, do what you love, and let that be the end of it.

Hi!

That is not the official roadmap of Syncthing, but notes for Syncthing in the context of Tiki Suite → https://suite.tiki.org/Tiki+Suite

Tiki Suite is a Free / Libre / Open Source alternative to Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365:

Similar to the way “Microsoft OneDrive for Business” is part of “Microsoft Office 365”, Syncthing is part of Tiki Suite.

This will eventually permit easy access to features that are out of scope for Syncthing. Some examples:

  • A server node (with ClearOS)
  • Associate folders to users & groups. So when you join a group/team, you automatically get access to certain shared folders.
  • Have access to a Syncthing folder in your webmail (to save and attach files) (Roundcube/Kolab)
  • Make a file accessible via a URL (and that URL can be shared by email). Either password-protected or a hard to guess URL
  • Web-based browsing of files via File Gallery | Documentation for Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware and elFinder | Documentation for Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware
  • Full text search of the content of all the files, via Elasticsearch

All enhancements made for Tiki Suite are upstreamed to each component. Syncthing will always be available as a standalone project and I expect that more & more distros and larger projects will include it.

It’s all Open Development and Free / Libre / Open Source, so please join us to make things even more awesome!

Best regards,

M :wink:

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I’m sorry you feel there’s a lot of entitlement in the commentary - there are some of us (jared and I for example) who are more looking for insight/direction/leadership so we know what YOU want to do, while also throwing out ideas. And Michael above has created an installer, so he’s acively doing something (he beat me to the installer - I’m still trying to get it to run as a service with NSSM).

Again, forums aren’t the best avenue for this discussion, unless it’s a dedicated and moderataed forum with clear limits (end dates, specific items to discuss, etc), so I apologize if our enthusiasm is a bit overwhelming at the moment.

I’d certainly like to offer what expertise I have to help - but to do that I really need to understand where things are and where you want them to go, so I can perhaps identify what I can bring to the table for you.

At a minimum (as I mentioned above), I’d expect to see the leadership team clearly identified with responsibilities appropriately transitioned to that group so you can focus on being a dev/do whatever it is you want to do. (This of course, assuming the direction is contined dev/growth of ST).

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That’s a huge understatement. I came here from BTSync 2.0 debacle too and I honestly feel ashamed of the rudeness level towards calmh and AudriusButkevicius (and the SyncThing preexisting community at large).

As much as I would love SyncThing to become the one app to Sync them all (which is a lot), I don’t think the devs of this project are entitled to “clearly identify leadership team and appropriately transition leadership to that group” in any way.

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Can I politley suggest taking a look at http://www.dealingwithdisrespect.com/ as I’d hate to see discussions like this derail your love of this project.

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You could maybe have a look at the milestones: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/milestones

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Thanks bilz - I’ll put it on my reading list.

Thanks for not taking that as sarcasm or snark - I truly meant it sympathetically, and wanted to try to show that there’s good intentions here, some of it perhaps worded imperfectly.

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I think this thread may have run it’s course and I don’t think I have much more to add… It’s awesome with all the new attention, and there’s a lot of new people suddenly helping out with the project as well (by filing issues, if nothing else) – plus all the fantastic work going on with Windows installers and service managers that I wasn’t even aware of.

But to a large extent, in terms of coding, reading and answering issues and support requests, setting up infrastructure and so on this is still a two man team. Expect response times, roadmaps and clearly identified leadership responsibilities accordingly. :wink:


Edit, additions. There’s a lot of talk above about taking syncthing to the next level, to cater for the ten million users abandoning btsync, and how to incorporate and grow the project. I think those are fine questions to ask, but they are also questions the current team probably isn’t equipped to answer.

Suggestions are welcome. Not suggestions as to what you think I should care about. Concrete suggestions, preferably phrased as “I could … which would be awesome for the project” instead of “You should … because I think the project needs it”. That thing could be an excellent Windows integration (we have that! People have stepped up, now it’s just a question of integrating and polishing), a Syncthing non-profit foundation that can manage a kickstarter to hire people, or whatever.

But if you’re asking me what’s the plan for the next five years, I certainly have no such plan. Never had one. Making such plans isn’t what makes me tick. If I’d have considered that from the beginning I would have gotten scared and never started coding.

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I can relate to that :laughing:

I’m curious what the “two man team” thinks of Bountysource and using financial incentives to potentially further Syncthing and perhaps attract new developers into the mix? There are already a few Syncthing requests posted.

I’m largely in agreement with others in this thread. BTsync has taken a significant turn for the worse and open source is a much better option in many ways. With increasing numbers of servers/databases being hacked/compromised, concern about back doors, government spying, etc. I think many are more interested in a self-hosted open source solution and/or client-side encryption.

From that perspective, Syncthing is also competing with Boxcryptor, Tresorit, Spideroak, etc. None of those are open source but they do offer reasonably credible client-side encryption, well sorted multi-platform support, and are comparatively turn-key, mature, and painless. They also all cost money if you want to sync more than a few GB of data and have access to their full feature set.

It’s not out of the question the core Syncthing engine could remain open source (unlike BTsync) while a premium paid solution is offered to those who want a more turn-key solution. There are a number of options for a “value added” version of Synchthing. Other open source projects have managed to make money with similar business models (i.e. Ubuntu, etc.).

In the meantime, I’m still curious what the developers think of Bountysource?

Donations via Bountysource are definitely appreciated (I think I can speak for @calmh here).

Regarding monetization, I’ve already suggested on IRC to offer a syncthing hosting service where you can optionally sync your files to (like Dropbox basically, but entirely optional). Another idea would be support for companies. The problem with both is that we are all programmers, and I think no one knows about setting up a company and all that. Maybe we could figure something out if someone would help with the business side.

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Thanks for the reply. I think those kinds of things are realistic and worth pursuing. I’m not opposed to potentially helping out with the business side of things. But I think client-side encryption is a big component for multiple reasons. Without it, there’s a lot more competition and many will, rightly, be more concerned about data security, etc. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a tempting platform, for example, but many are concerned about back doors, etc. A reasonable client-side encryption scheme would remove most of those concerns.

I’m currently using your Android client and, for an alpha release, I’m impressed. Nice work! With things like the mTime issue sorted out it will be even better. Several commercial offerings have somehow transparently solved that problem so I’m hopeful you’ll find a solution. The Android app, SyncTrayzor, etc., have gone a long way towards making Syncthing appeal to a much wider user base.

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Yeah I’d say client-side encryption would definitely be a requirement for that, but it’s a small cost compared to build an entire sync solution from scratch :wink:

Great you like the app. It’s actuallly quite stable now (we should really update that dialog). Regarding mTime, the best solution seems to be a database of mTimes within syncthing. It’s just a lot of effort to implement and no one had the time for it yet.

Btsync ex-user here. Loving Syncthing so far. The way to add hosts and folder are the right (secure) way. Don’t change it.

The only complaint that I can think of, is the “restart Syncthing after every click” thing. An “reload” implementation would be great.

The Android Version is also a need for me. It’s great that Syncthing supports android.

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The moment Bittorrent Inc announced the new 10 folder limit on BTSync2.0 I immediately moved to Syncthing. And it’s an absolutely fantastic application. It runs well on our small network of Windows, Linux and Mac machines, and is easy to maintain. So thank you Developers for making a beautiful app that does one thing well.

Also it’s interesting to note that for version 2.0 BTSync changed their device connection method to a model that is very similar to the model that Syncthing uses. It’s cool to see that Syncthing was “built right” from the start. I was always leery of global announce without a robust device verification method, and always will be.

Meh I disagree. Syncthing is a tool for syncing files and folders among a network of trusted devices. And it works very well for that. By nature cloud storage is not a trusted device so you need local encryption before uploading/syncing and if you absolutely need cloud backup storage of encrypted files then something like encfs+rsync is better than forcing Syncthing to run all your backups for you.

If you want, you could use Boxcryptor Classic or EncFS or Spideroak in combination with Syncthing. They are compatible applications, not competitive.

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Correct you are.

I’m here fresh from Bittorrent Sync 2.0 (shortly 1.4) and damn I’ve had many problems with that software. Including but not limited to loss of files due to old files overwriting new files, files not syncing and who knows what. So far I’m VERY happy with SyncThing, and will probably replace BTSync during today.

I don’t think SyncThing is competing with Boxcryptor etc. I am actually using Boxcryptor Classic 1.7 to encrypt files in my SyncThing folder to ensure that not only the transmission is encrypted, but also the endpoint storage.

This is going to be a great replacement for Dropbox, or well at least for those who have a server online 24/7.

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