5 ms·

Synergy used to be great, the original developers really knew what they were doing, but since then it's been taken over by a commercial developer that seems to

Synergy used to be great, the original developers really knew what they were doing, but since then it's been taken over by a commercial developer that seems to have no interest in making a good product and far more interest in charging money for it and licensing - more bugs are introduced with every release, clipboard support is half-broken on Linux for years, the Synergy 2.0 release now causes my mouse to continuously leave my screen while gaming even when locked and random restarts of the service and jumping back to the middle of the screen are far too common. I have to revert back to a very specific version to make Synergy work acceptably and I'm reliant on it for my daily workflow. Worst part is I actually paid them money for it hoping they'd have fixed it by now...

hateful 8y ago
I had been using Synergy to control my work laptop from my home machine. I hadn't used it in a while (2+ years) and my computer would constantly run out of memory (I think it was in dwm.exe, if I remember correctly) and I would need to reboot. It wasn't until I read the Random ASCII article linked from here (https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/zombie-processes-are-eating-your-memory/ https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/zombie-processe...) about zombie processes that I was able to track it down to Synergy and uninstall it.
ionforce 8y ago
> no interest in making a good product This is a great, charitable interpretation of someone's work.
- cuckcuckspruce 8y ago
  Actions betray intent.
  - burnte 8y ago
    Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. In Nick's case, lack of experience.
MrUnderhill 8y ago
There was an open letter from the CEO just last week about re-staffing the team to be more engineering-oriented: https://symless.com/blog/open-letter-synergy-team https://symless.com/blog/open-letter-synergy-team (Edited, thanks corpMaverick and stagger87)
- yakk0 8y ago
  well that's not good. I use Synergy daily.
- stagger87 8y ago
  To be more specific, most non-software developers were let go with the intent to be to hire more software developers and streamline other aspects of the business. (saw the edit)
- corpMaverick 8y ago
  Not everybody. They let go "all staff whose role is not purely hands-on Software Engineering" I feel it is the right thing to do, so they can focus on improving the product.
  - kafene 8y ago
    Except it looks like Nick fired everyone except himself and one customer service person who is 'Rather excitingly, Sarah is also spending some of her time to improve her software engineering skills so she can help with developing Synergy' (https://symless.com/blog/open-letter-synergy-team https://symless.com/blog/open-letter-synergy-team)? Seems like a really terrible plan, when you need to retrain CSRs to do your engineering.
    - mintplant 8y ago
      Reread the sentence, the parent commenter is correct.
    - morganvachon 8y ago
      Yep, and starting several months ago I was getting weekly emails asking if I'd be interested in moving to England to work for them as a software engineer. Except, I'm not a software engineer (I'm a hardware guy), just a customer of theirs from V1 days. They made it sound like an emergency situation where they had to stall development until they could recruit some more talent. It got so bad I had to unsub from their mailing lists.
dperfect 8y ago
That's been my experience also. It's kind of surprising given that I was able to replicate 90% of the functionality (that I normally use) for a Raspberry Pi project using only netevent[1] and netcat. Obviously cross-platform and international support (+ handling edge cases) would complicate things, but even in the most basic scenarios, Synergy has been terribly unreliable for me lately. [1] https://github.com/Blub/netevent https://github.com/Blub/netevent
- megous 8y ago
  I thought of using something like this for switching input devices between 4 of my computers that have some kind of desktop interface. Out of desire for much better robustness I opted for a 4-way physical USB switch instead. Extremely cheap, and works even in u-boot, during early boot for FDE password entry, etc. Also has a clear visual indication of apushed in button of where the input is connected atm.
burnte 8y ago
Nick forked a dead project and wanted to keep developing it, but still needed to pay rent and eat (a common problem among programmers). In order to try to both continue paying for necessary life functions and work on Synergy, he began asking for money. This isn't evil. The project was abandoned when he came along. I'm not saying Nick Bolton has done everything right, he clearly had little to no business experience before taking this on and was far too optimistic, but he did something no one else was doing: work on Synergy.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- BillyBreen 8y ago
  I think you summed it up quite nicely. I developed the original Mac port, I guess about 15 years ago now. I’m pretty conflicted as to what’s happened with Synergy recently, but not because I feel like there’s anything morally wrong in what Nick did. I’m more bummed out because it feels like a market failure, for lack of a better way of explaining it: how could a useful open source project, valued by many and (tbh) not terribly complex, require a pivot to a commercial license to remain viable? I’m as guilty as any for not contributing anything beyond my initial port. But I’m still bummed it’s come to this.
  - burnte 8y ago
    I think he just put too many eggs in that basket too quickly. It's a great product, and the cross platform support is killer since Multiplicity from EdgeRunner/Stardock and Mouse without Borders are both Windows only. I think Nick Bolton saw an opportunity, but wasn't necessarily the most qualified person to handle the task. I'm not trying to insult him, but I was around when Synergy was waiting on Chris to release the fabled 2.0 and when Nick Bolton jumped in to try to make a business out of Synergy. His twist towards a commercial license came from the fact that despite it being used by many people, few ever paid. He obviously felt he had to force the issue but clearly chose poorly. This is an itch many people feel, but clearly few wish to scratch. It's frustrating.
- YunHi 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

hateful 8y ago

I had been using Synergy to control my work laptop from my home machine. I hadn't used it in a while (2+ years) and my computer would constantly run out of memory (I think it was in dwm.exe, if I remember correctly) and I would need to reboot. It wasn't until I read the Random ASCII article linked from here (https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/zombie-processes-are-eating-your-memory/ https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/zombie-processe...) about zombie processes that I was able to track it down to Synergy and uninstall it.

ionforce 8y ago

> no interest in making a good product This is a great, charitable interpretation of someone's work.

cuckcuckspruce 8y ago
Actions betray intent.
- burnte 8y ago
  Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. In Nick's case, lack of experience.

MrUnderhill 8y ago

There was an open letter from the CEO just last week about re-staffing the team to be more engineering-oriented: https://symless.com/blog/open-letter-synergy-team https://symless.com/blog/open-letter-synergy-team (Edited, thanks corpMaverick and stagger87)

yakk0 8y ago
well that's not good. I use Synergy daily.
stagger87 8y ago
To be more specific, most non-software developers were let go with the intent to be to hire more software developers and streamline other aspects of the business. (saw the edit)
corpMaverick 8y ago
Not everybody. They let go "all staff whose role is not purely hands-on Software Engineering" I feel it is the right thing to do, so they can focus on improving the product.
- kafene 8y ago
  Except it looks like Nick fired everyone except himself and one customer service person who is 'Rather excitingly, Sarah is also spending some of her time to improve her software engineering skills so she can help with developing Synergy' (https://symless.com/blog/open-letter-synergy-team https://symless.com/blog/open-letter-synergy-team)? Seems like a really terrible plan, when you need to retrain CSRs to do your engineering.
  - mintplant 8y ago
    Reread the sentence, the parent commenter is correct.
  - morganvachon 8y ago
    Yep, and starting several months ago I was getting weekly emails asking if I'd be interested in moving to England to work for them as a software engineer. Except, I'm not a software engineer (I'm a hardware guy), just a customer of theirs from V1 days. They made it sound like an emergency situation where they had to stall development until they could recruit some more talent. It got so bad I had to unsub from their mailing lists.

dperfect 8y ago

That's been my experience also. It's kind of surprising given that I was able to replicate 90% of the functionality (that I normally use) for a Raspberry Pi project using only netevent[1] and netcat. Obviously cross-platform and international support (+ handling edge cases) would complicate things, but even in the most basic scenarios, Synergy has been terribly unreliable for me lately. [1] https://github.com/Blub/netevent https://github.com/Blub/netevent

megous 8y ago
I thought of using something like this for switching input devices between 4 of my computers that have some kind of desktop interface. Out of desire for much better robustness I opted for a 4-way physical USB switch instead. Extremely cheap, and works even in u-boot, during early boot for FDE password entry, etc. Also has a clear visual indication of apushed in button of where the input is connected atm.

burnte 8y ago

Nick forked a dead project and wanted to keep developing it, but still needed to pay rent and eat (a common problem among programmers). In order to try to both continue paying for necessary life functions and work on Synergy, he began asking for money. This isn't evil. The project was abandoned when he came along. I'm not saying Nick Bolton has done everything right, he clearly had little to no business experience before taking this on and was far too optimistic, but he did something no one else was doing: work on Synergy.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
BillyBreen 8y ago
I think you summed it up quite nicely. I developed the original Mac port, I guess about 15 years ago now. I’m pretty conflicted as to what’s happened with Synergy recently, but not because I feel like there’s anything morally wrong in what Nick did. I’m more bummed out because it feels like a market failure, for lack of a better way of explaining it: how could a useful open source project, valued by many and (tbh) not terribly complex, require a pivot to a commercial license to remain viable? I’m as guilty as any for not contributing anything beyond my initial port. But I’m still bummed it’s come to this.
- burnte 8y ago
  I think he just put too many eggs in that basket too quickly. It's a great product, and the cross platform support is killer since Multiplicity from EdgeRunner/Stardock and Mouse without Borders are both Windows only. I think Nick Bolton saw an opportunity, but wasn't necessarily the most qualified person to handle the task. I'm not trying to insult him, but I was around when Synergy was waiting on Chris to release the fabled 2.0 and when Nick Bolton jumped in to try to make a business out of Synergy. His twist towards a commercial license came from the fact that despite it being used by many people, few ever paid. He obviously felt he had to force the issue but clearly chose poorly. This is an itch many people feel, but clearly few wish to scratch. It's frustrating.
YunHi 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]