The campaign is not based on owning a piece of software, it’s about creating a platform that can empower people to share the things that matter to them with the people they care about. Pulse is the low-level synchronisation engine at the heart of that. And we do need to control the core of the platform if we are going to control the end-user experience. We need to control the end-user experience if we are to stand a chance of creating a consumer product that can compete on UX. (See my talk on experience design for details.)
I believe that’s also explained clearly in the campaign video.
Here’s also a recording of a version of the talk you saw in Cologne — I, Simulation — which explains why we are doing what we’re doing. And a link to the Ind.ie Manifesto which goes into further detail.
I made it clear the day I contacted you how important Syncthing was to our vision and that’s why we set up the stewardship and rebranding in the first place. It was a while ago, in August, when I first contacted you with the following email:
I have this zany idea to build a new platform around syncthing. Have you heard of the ind.ie/phone project? (See https://ind.ie/phone).
We’re designing a phone that doesn’t spy on people. Peer-to-peer at its core. And, having played with syncthing for a while now, I am convinced we can build the platform around it. I love how hackable it is. In my tests, it just seems perfect. We can build chat on top of it, photo sharing, everything. And since we are building hardware + OS + services, we can integrate it at the core…
So, my initial question (after hello, how are you?) is does this sound interesting to you? It would be awesome to have your eventual support + involvement.
I’d love to run you through my thoughts in more detail soon if you have some time.
(If you want to see why we’re doing this, and have half an hour free, please see the RSA talk I gave recently called Free is a Lie: thelink.is - thelink Resources and Information.)
I look forward to hearing from you and I hope we can work together on this going forward — we have a chance to make not just any dent but a meaningful dent in the universe and I believe that your work is essential to that.
I’m sorry if I was ever not clear about the central importance of Syncthing/Pulse to what we’re building but I feel that I was whenever I spoke about it.
Again, this is odd because, as part of our agreement, you were going to be joining our advisory board. And, as you remember, I also wanted you to be part of Ind.ie and I even suggested that we could make that part of the crowdfunding (to fund your joining us) but we decided it would be problematic because you already have a full time job. I did tell you at the time that it would be my dream to have you working on this fulltime at Ind.ie.
From README.md (line 2):
It is an officially-sanctioned fork of Syncthing.
The about dialog:
- From the post introducing the Pulse fork:
Syncthing will go back to being Syncthing and developed out in the open. Make sure you also read Jakob’s post on it. This way, Jakob and the community can evolve Syncthing as they’ve always done. We’ll be tracking the changes and incorporating the ones that make sense for Ind.ie into Pulse. In the same vein, we will be improving Pulse also and, of course, those changes will be available to the Syncthing project.
The separation means that we can concentrate on rapidly improving Pulse in line with the needs of the Ind.ie platform. It’s our hope that the Syncthing project can make use of those improvements also.
(PS. That post says Munich, I checked and it was Cologne — I’ll fix that.)
- From George’s first blog post, introducing the Dockerised discosrv we contributed back in the middle of the crazy week:
I contained discosrv and a set of commonly used startup options (thanks to the advice of Jakob Borg).
So I really don’t see how we are taking any credit away here. Quite the opposite, I’ve tried my best to credit Syncthing and you specifically whenever I talk about Pulse and we, of course, kept all of the credit in the source code — only replacing Syncthing with Pulse as that is the name of the fork.
[quote=“calmh, post:4, topic:1456”] As to your argument of it being really hard to create a fork – well, it has been quite hard to create this piece of software too.[/quote]
Of course it has and you know better than anyone how much I respect that. I’ve told you countless times how much respect I have for your work and for what you’ve created here. I truly believe that your work here is as important for the indienet era as Wozniak’s was for the personal computing era.
Unfortunately, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here. Not the lack of understanding bit, since I’ve been involved in open source for ages (I founded Open Source Flash in the bad old days and I’ve released [my share of open source projects] over the years10) but rather in that the way open source works today is broken for the purposes of tackling the societal problems we face.
This is not going to be popular here but the truth rarely is, so here goes 
…
As long as open source remains the out-of-hours hobby of privileged white Western men (which is what it still is, for the most part), its wares will appeal only to a similar demographic of enthusiasts. This is not to say that great things haven’t and aren’t being created or that there’s no value in it. Quite the contrary. The Internet runs on open source and free software. Enthusiasts making tools for themselves usually end up making great tools for themselves and other enthusiasts. And there’s nothing wrong with that either.
But the problems we face today are ones faced by a diverse community of people who do not, for the most part, share our privilege. Those of us who can open up a Terminal window can, to some degree solve the privacy problem for ourselves today (while it might still be inconvenient and possibly even painful). What you’ve created here is an awesome tool in that arsenal and none of what I write here is meant to diminish that in any way.
Again, Syncthing is amazing and you’re one of the best developers I know.
Syncthing will no doubt continue to become an even more awesome tool for enthusiasts under your leadership. But it cannot magically morph into a consumer product and compete with other consumer products without focus on exactly the areas that you mention above as being unnecessary or superfluous. Eventually, if we want solutions that respect human rights to be able to compete, they must compete on convenience — and today, ultimately, that includes a seamless experience that combines hardware, software, and services.
So that’s where we differ in our approach. And this is fine.
You were also very clear from the beginning that Syncthing is your hobby and I get that. That’s not to say that either of our approaches is superior, simply that they are different — that we have different goals. And that’s ok.
These are issues I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I stated as much in my blog post introducing that I would start working on Ind.ie in July, 2013 (back then, ‘project prometheus’),
So, I do not misunderstand of how open source works but rather I understand that the way open source works today cannot solve the problems we have in the consumer space where our new everyday things are eroding our human rights.
That’s why Ind.ie cannot be an after-hours hobby or take part in the traditional open source development process. It’s an initiative that we work full time at (I say ‘work’ but I don’t mean it in the traditional sense of ‘for financial gain’ — I’ve only put in money so far and I will probably only be putting in money for a while yet). It’s a cause that we’ve devoted our lives to. That’s why it’s hugely important that we do not make the mistakes that open source and free software have been making in their attempts at breaking into the consumer space for the last however many years. That’s why we’re doing things differently. Not because we’re unaware of how open source or free software works but because we are painfully aware of it.
All this to say that it is probably best that these cultural differences come up now, at the beginning.
I see nothing wrong with Syncthing continuing as it always has with its development methodology and Pulse pursuing our own path. I said as much in my post introducing the fork.
Yes, we are doing things differently. No, it doesn’t mean that we don’t respect you (we respect you hugely). And no, we’re not trying to take credit for anything anyone else has done.
I think the best thing for Ind.ie to do right now is to concentrate on what we do best (making things) and let our actions speak rather than words. (Ironically, perhaps, after writing so many words.)
I would like us, as a first priority, to tackle interoperability between Syncthing and Pulse (which I believe you mentioned also means that we’ll tackle IPv6) as that should make the whole ecosystem stronger for the Block Exchange Protocol in general. I’m happy to have George make that his priority as he starts full time tomorrow but we will need your cooperation on this on the syncthing side. So, if you also feel that it’s worthwhile, let’s pursue this. If not, that’s all right but we’ll need to know as we cannot implement this on our end alone.
Regarding the licensing issue, please feel free to revert back to MIT and we will fork from there if you do.
And regarding credits, I will see what we can do to make it even clearer than it already is that Pulse is a fork of Syncthing.
(PS. thank you for pointing out the other rough edges. We will make sure that links, etc., are properly updated. Now that George is starting full time and with the initial rush out of the way, we have more capacity to look into the details.)
And, finally, regardless of the difference in approaches and processes, I do believe that we all want similar things and that we’re working on this because we care about making the world a better place. Having met you, Jakob, I know that’s true for you. If anything, having two different approaches tackling the same problem can only make the solutions stronger. So I hope that we will concentrate on that and not on the differences going forward.
Here’s to a stronger Syncthing and a stronger Pulse — because the two are not mutually exclusive.