Syncthing for Mac

Development
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When I saw Syncthing Bar (looks great BTW), I couldn’t resist showing off my project. Similar idea, different take. Please Download and report an ideas or concerns here, or message me on the forum.

Syncthing for Mac v1.0

No limitations or licence just yet.

NB: current plans are to possibly sell the app to make a little money to cover some costs (Mac dev license, graphic designer, etc…). To comply with Mac App Store sandboxing rules, Syncthing will need to be moderately re-written. I’m up for that, but it will take much time. Sooo, when the current revision is up for sale, please purchase a copy if you’d like Syncthing to hit the Mac App Store!

2 Likes
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Can you provide screenshots for those who don’t have a mac?

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You got it! Edited original post.

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Hey, not bad!! Quit cool. Only for my taste a little bit too much infos in the bar. I think only the logo of Syncthing would be nicer :wink:

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there is only the logo in the bar.

the menu appears when you click on it.

compare with the ownCloud Client

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thanks for creating this. looks good

i like to see the transfer rate and the notifications!

why does it start on some random port instead of 8080 configured in syncthing?

to the license: Syncthing is free software licensed under GPL, so the user has lots of freedoms.

https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw

everyone has the right to redistribute the software but apple disallows exactly that for software from the app store. so you can’t upload it to the app store.

also the license disallows you to sell our work to your profits. this is also a moral question if it is ok if someone profit from the work of the community. the license allows to sell service like support or hosting. so you can use linux, apache, mysql, and php to build a webhosting company.

the same problem appears here: [archived] On GPL without contributor licenses, the App Store, and future of Pulse

but its more a problem of apple not allowing free software then a problem of the GPL or Syncthing. on android it’s not a problem!

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Ah, ou sorry, I thought, it’s the green logo and the Logo on the left is the older Syncthing-Mac-Bar-App :wink:

So in this case, it would be nice, if the new App maybe could uses my created Logos? I think they look smother ;)Continuing the discussion from Syncthing Bar for OS-X:

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your logos looks good. this is a little bit pixelated.

could you license it under a free license like CreativeCommons CC-BY? than it can be freely redistributed.

here are some infos if you don’t know CC: https://creativecommons.org/

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Ahm, I’m not very familiar with licensing. So this License should be placed in the Logo-Package?

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i think it is enough to mention the license in a readme and link to it.

here you get the links to the different licenses: https://creativecommons.org/choose/

CC-BY ist most open, by adding NC you disallow commercial use and so on.

with all CC licenses you must be mentioned as the creator while distributing it. so @blezek must do that in his program.

on some platforms like youtube and flickr you can choose this licenses.

if you provide a download link you should always mention the license. so everyone knows what his rights are to use it.

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That is not entirely true. According to the Free Software Foundation, it is allowable to sell “free software”. Call it what you will, anyone could bundle up Syncthing, slap a price tag on it and sell it. However, they would need to comply with the GPL, which gives anyone who buys it the right to the source code, and the right to re-distribute the source code. Effectively, only one person would need to purchase Syncthing and they would be free to re-distribute the source as needed.

In my version, the Syncthing executable is entirely separate from the Mac app.

2 Likes
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But your App will be closed source? I dont like it so much in relation with opensource-projects (especially with cryptographically functions) and privat datas.

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so my first sentence is just wrong? thanks for clarifying that.

do i understand that right that someone who contributed nothing to the program is allowed to sell it or only the contributors?

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You might need to check and see if the whole package would be treated as a ‘greater work’ in regards to the GPL.

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Thank you for doing this. Working great for me so far.

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Is this safe ?

Daniel does not seem like a villain or anything, but when you have a closed source addition to open source code posted on a random amazon cloud server, that is attributed to an LLC with no public presence, initial thought is not to trust it. :-/

This is great for newbs to syncthing, it makes the install and interface very user friendly but these are the exact type of users who would download software posted on a random forum link.

1 Like
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@StartupSync, you raise some great points, for what it’s worth, I’m not sure you should trust what I posted, even if it came from a full blown website, and/or was open source. I likely jumped the gun posting my work, perhaps some history will help out.

After using BTSync for a long time, I decided I didn’t like the lack of transparency (who exactly was getting my files?). Syncthing seems like a great alternative. And I like the command line as much (or more) than the next guy, but it’s not handy and hardly competes with BTSync. So, as a personal project I wrote Syncthing for Mac, contacting @calmh to get his opinion. My code is hardly more than a glorified bash script for Syncthing. The Syncthing Go executable is embedded in the Mac app and run as a separate process. This can be easily verified, as can be replaced by copying a fresh copy of Syncthing into the app (though code signing verification may fail, I haven’t tried it). MD5 sums could be compared with the embedded executable, but i forget what version I included, it gets auto-updated anyway.

As for running untrusted downloaded code on your Mac? I had planned to offer my app in two versions, one is pre-compiled, like i posted. The second is pre-compiled with source code. The interested user could compile their own after reviewing the source code.

Just have not had the time to get the full website and store up and running yet.

If any Syncthing user requests, I’d happily send them a copy of the code. However, I’m not (yet?) going to make it Open Source.

Thanks.

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Does it (or will it?) incorporate inotify?

I’d love to take a look at the source at some point, mostly for my curiosity. I’d love to see how you’re hooking things up.

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Hi guys,

I’m digging up this old topic.

I have written something similar but in native Objective-C as a full application bundle.

This is much more advanced then a simple bash script (which I also used before on my mac).

1 Like
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Please don’t dig up year-old posts for things like this.