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Syncthing-Android have had a change of owner/maintainer

https://github.com/researchxxl/syncthing-android/issues/16
101•embedding-shape•3h ago

Comments

embedding-shape•2h ago
Additional context from the original author of syncthing-android, Catfriend1: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/does-anyone-know-why-syncthing...
sevg•1h ago
Thanks for sharing this.

I thought this comment was strange at the end of Catfriend1’s post:

> I’ll review the progress from time to time and if I find anything malicious going on, I’ll let you know here.

That’s absolutely not something you say when you trust the person you’re handing things over to :s

sneak•1h ago
Lack of trust is not the same as distrust.
sevg•1h ago
I didn’t mention “distrust” in my comment :)
bgbntty2•1h ago
Seems like a statement to reassure users who don't necessarily have any trust in the new maintainer. And even if the users trust the new maintainers, it's better to have the reassurance of previous maintainer on top.

Trust is not transitive, nor should it be. We (the users) trust the previous maintainer. They trust the new one. We don't (naturally). The old maintainer says they'll review the new one's work, so we'll have trust the old maintainer (mostly).

Not that the whole trust system can't improve in various ways in general. But for now we have to trust someone.

sevg•59m ago
> Seems like a statement to reassure users who don't necessarily have any trust in the new maintainer.

The statement didn’t seem reassuring.

It’d have been reassuring to hear something like “This person has been a committer for X period, and has demonstrated Y and Z.”

> They trust the new one.

Well my point is it doesn’t sound like they actually do trust the new maintainer. Maybe just poor choice of words, but it didn’t fill me with confidence.

altairprime•35m ago
‘I’ll keep an eye on the project and speak up if I discover my trust was misplaced’ is a kind reassurance to the anxious community, but anxiety will just use it as a launchpad for more anxiety. Nice of them to try, though.

I suspect a lot of folks would be horrified at how typical the former maintainer’s approach to trust is in actual reality. It ends up being necessary because there are maybe a single digit number of people in the world who are willing to commit to long-term project maintenance (beyond their own pet peeves, anyways) at all, and with the general hostility towards compensating anyone for their work in software, it’s not like a maintainer can afford to hire and develop a protégé. This is how maintainership worked in CPAN for decades and, barring a culture shift towards paying project maintainers for their maintenance effort, it’s how it’s going to continue working in most projects as us maintainers grow tired and fade out.

honktown•2h ago
I ended up moving from Syncthing to FolderSync, the Syncthing setup for adding folders is pretty tedious and I can reuse my existing webdav (or sftp) server with FolderSync.

My use case was probably simpler than some peoples use of syncthing as I just use it for backing up photos/messages/settings and dont need it to be instant.

My only issue with FolderSync is that its proprietary but its the only option i found that worked well. The various rclone frontends that exist also didnt work nicely with the webdav server I use so I settled on it, its very polished so I dont mind too much.

raybb•1h ago
For those curious: https://foldersync.io/

10 euros for an Android license for or $28 (yes they use two currencies on one page) for a desktop license. The free ad supported version on the play store has over a million downloads.

yoavm•1h ago
FWIW, I see EUR for both offerings.
dotancohen•1h ago
I'm glad to see that they have a Linux client.
NelsonMinar•2h ago
Syncthing is such a reliable workhorse. I hope the Android situation gets sorted out. It's been tricky over the years as Android makes it harder and harder to work with simple files.
zelphirkalt•1h ago
Nowadays there are people out there, who use computing devices (can we still call Android phones that?), who don't even know what a "file" is. Mind-boggling, or maybe not so much, considering the constant pushes by big tech.
robbiet480•2h ago
I love using Syncthing for syncing all my ROMs and saves across my handhelds (RG35XXSP running muOS, AYN Thor running Android), my NAS and MacBook. I'm trying to figure out what my concern level should be with a change in ownership of syncthing-fork for Android though. I guess let's see what happens?
DrSAR•2h ago
This is how AGI takes over. A first, clumsy attempt, easily spotted. But soon we will wake up one morning and all of our bases belong to them. /s
bigstrat2003•2h ago
All our base will be belong to them. You forgot the verb!
shantara•2h ago
I’m using Syncthing, though not the Android version. After reading the forum thread, the whole situation seems to be mishandled pretty badly. I wouldn’t feel comfortable entrusting my sensitive data to them after such a sketchy handover process. As mentioned by the others there, it’s suspiciously similar to browser extensions being sold to the data mining / adtech companies.
XorNot•1h ago
Urgh okay I'm confused about what's happening: looking at F-droid it looks like the handover has happened so what are people feeling about this now?
bxparks•1h ago
I don't follow the Syncthing ecosystem, so it's difficult to understand what is happening.

[Edit: The GitHub repos are called "syncthing-android". The Android apps are called "Syncthing-Fork" or "Syncthing-Fork Wrapper", which adds to the confusion.]

If I recall, there used to be a syncthing-android app on Google PlayStore. That was discontinued by @imsodin in Oct 2024 (https://forum.syncthing.net/t/discontinuing-syncthing-androi...).

There was a version of sycnthing-android on F-Droid. I don't remember who maintained that. I have version 1.30.0.4 installed. But I cannot find any information about that version anymore.

The current version on F-Droid is 2.0.12.1. That seems to be maintained by a fellow named @researchxxl. Apparently @researchxxl claims to have inherited the source code and signing keys from a person named @Catfriend1 (Not sure who that is, the maintainer of version 1.30.0.4?)

There is another fellow named @nel0x who seems to be maintaining a different version of synchthing-android? (Edit: Here it is, https://github.com/nel0x/syncthing-android, which says that it is a fork of the one maintained by @Catfriend1).

s_ting765•1h ago
> I have version 1.30.0.4 installed.

Can confirm same case here. App was installed from f-droid, no longer linked to the store.

xnx•34m ago
tldr. What should I use? I've got "Syncthing-Fork Wrapper Version v2.0.10.1"
jazzyjackson•6m ago
I've been sketched out by syncthing since I found the default behavior is "global discovery" and your IP address is broadcast as "hey everyone! This guy has syncthing installed!" I started getting port scanned after installing.

I wish this would be made clear and have the option given on startup. Many use cases only need local discovery, maybe throw a VPN in there if you want to roam networks.

rolandog•5m ago
Seems like I hadn't switched away from the previously official Play store app (v 1.27.3) [0] archived on 2024-12-03.

[0]: https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-android

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