4 ms·

I've been using syncthing for several months now, syncing lots of files (code under active development) between a total of five computers, Linux and MacOS. It'

by jwr 6y ago

I've been using syncthing for several months now, syncing lots of files (code under active development) between a total of five computers, Linux and MacOS. It's been fantastic. It works well, it gets the job done, it doesn't pester you with notifications and upsells. It also doesn't eat all of your CPU/battery by watching changes everywhere, like Dropbox does. And it doesn't try to get at your photos. And other stuff. I have not run into a single problem with it over the course of several months now, which is impressive. I am about to sign up and start sponsoring it on a monthly basis — I started doing this recently with open-source software that I rely on. If everybody chipped in, we'd be in a world of great sustainable software, with people able to make a living on developing solutions like this. BTW, a plug for another similarly impressive piece of software: https://vpncloud.ddswd.de https://vpncloud.ddswd.de — if you need to set up an encrypted VPN between a bunch of servers.

leipert 6y ago
To add to their reliability: I have been running it on my Synology NAS and my computers for six years now. I have been switching systems three times, ran it on Android. Never had a hiccup. Will probably contribute some money to the project tomorrow.
smichel17 6y ago
> If everybody chipped in, we'd be in a world of great sustainable software, with people able to make a living on developing solutions like this. This is exactly the goal of Snowdrift.coop. (Disclaimer: I am a volunteer contributor and "replacement cofounder"). Unfortunately, not many people currently do donate. We posit that there's order(s) of magnitude more people who are willing to donate, but not willing to be the "sucker" who donates while others free-ride. (The game theory term for what they're after is mutual assurance). Fundamentally it's a coordination problem. To solve it, we need a mechanism that allows those folks to say, "I'm willing to do my bit, but only if others do theirs." Snowdrift.coop is a crowdfunding platform (in development) that aims to provide such a mechanism. We call it crowdmatching. To support a project, patrons pledge to give a monthly donation of $1 per 1000 patrons of that same project. By pledging to match others, you invite them to join you, so we can reach that world of great sustainable software. And if they don't, you're left with a tiny bill, so it's safe to pledge to all the projects you'd like to support, without worrying that your lone $10/month is going to a project where it won't really move the needle. There are two "safety measures" that are not part of crowdmatching, but I have to mention (opinions tend to be split on whether they are too obvious to be worth mentioning or too important not to say up front): - You can set a monthly limit so you're not on the hook for more than you can afford. - At low levels, donations are sometimes delayed and pooled (charged in arrears) to minimize processing fees. I'll stop here to keep this a reasonable length, but will check back later and follow-up with replies. If you don't want to wait, I'd suggest reading down the list at https://wiki.snowdrift.coop https://wiki.snowdrift.coop until you get as far down the rabbit hole you want to go. Finally, we can use help getting all the way launched, especially if you're experienced with css or haskell (or, on the off chance, are a layer interested in doing pro bono work and/or serving on our board).
- archagon 6y ago
  Oh hey! How's it going with Snowdrift? I first heard about you guys back in 2016 and the project sounded interesting and ambitious, but little news since then...
  - smichel17 6y ago
    In late 2016, we (ironically) ran out of funding to pay our lead developer (who has stuck around as a volunteer but with greatly reduced capacity). Since then, development progress on the site itself has been mostly stagnant — we are still in a very soft launch, where you can sign up and pledge real money in the system, but Snowdrift.coop itself is the only project; we've held off on any kind of public announcement because (1) the site UX needs a bit of work, and (2) we don't want to give the impression that funding ourselves is the goal of the project. While development hasn't seen much progress, other areas have: - Formed a preliminary board of directors[1], currently working on drafting our bylaws, hopefully done (ready for lawyer review) by the end of the month. - Moved most of our hosting from AWS to managed infrastructure from the Oregon State University's Open Source Lab (OSUOSL)[2]. This will be great once we're all the way migrated, since infrastructure maintenance has taken up a lot of the limited time that would have gone towards development. - Almost-finished setting up a civicrm instance[3], to better organize the contact info of the many people who have expressed interest in helping over the years. - Design folks have continued iterating to solve the site's current UX issues and clean up its css, to make it more approachable to volunteers with limited time. A lot of that has been implemented in a static site generator prototype[4], but we've been missing a good process for getting it integrated back into the main site. I've been working on this slowly for the past few weeks, and am taking next week off to hopefully finish that, so we can get that progress onto the main site. - I'm not sure of the timeline, but we also moved our code to gitlab.com[5] and our mailing lists to a discourse forum[6]. Almost all development (discussion, project management, and code) now takes place in those two places. We've also kept up weekly team meetings[7], usually attended between 5-7 team members (the total team size right now is ~10, with varying levels of activity). Progress may have been slow (picking up a little recently), but the project is in no danger of dying. Just to come full circle and tie back with my first post, the main things we still need for a full launch are: 1) Updated UX on the main site, ideally facilitated by making the frontend more approachable. This is why we can use help from anyone with css experience. 2) Backend support for multiple projects. This is why we can use help from Haskellers. 3) Governance and bylaws fully in place. This is why we can use help from a lawyer. -------- [1]: https://community.snowdrift.coop/g/board https://community.snowdrift.coop/g/board [2]: https://osuosl.org/ https://osuosl.org/ [4]: https://sdproto.gitlab.io/ https://sdproto.gitlab.io/, repo at https://gitlab.com/sdproto/sdproto.gitlab.io https://gitlab.com/sdproto/sdproto.gitlab.io [5]: https://gitlab.com/snowdrift/snowdrift https://gitlab.com/snowdrift/snowdrift, and a few other repos under the snowdrift organization umbrella, https://gitlab.com/snowdrift/ https://gitlab.com/snowdrift/ [6]: https://community.snowdrift.coop https://community.snowdrift.coop [7]: https://community.snowdrift.coop/t/weekly-all-hands-on-deck-check-in-meetings/1010 https://community.snowdrift.coop/t/weekly-all-hands-on-deck-...
jwr 6y ago
Correction: over the last week, syncthing has corrupted my git repository twice. I reported this as an issue, but the issue was immediately closed with an explanation I disagree with. I no longer trust syncthing until this gets resolved, unfortunately.

by jwr 6y ago

leipert 6y ago

To add to their reliability: I have been running it on my Synology NAS and my computers for six years now. I have been switching systems three times, ran it on Android. Never had a hiccup. Will probably contribute some money to the project tomorrow.

smichel17 6y ago

> If everybody chipped in, we'd be in a world of great sustainable software, with people able to make a living on developing solutions like this. This is exactly the goal of Snowdrift.coop. (Disclaimer: I am a volunteer contributor and "replacement cofounder"). Unfortunately, not many people currently do donate. We posit that there's order(s) of magnitude more people who are willing to donate, but not willing to be the "sucker" who donates while others free-ride. (The game theory term for what they're after is mutual assurance). Fundamentally it's a coordination problem. To solve it, we need a mechanism that allows those folks to say, "I'm willing to do my bit, but only if others do theirs." Snowdrift.coop is a crowdfunding platform (in development) that aims to provide such a mechanism. We call it crowdmatching. To support a project, patrons pledge to give a monthly donation of $1 per 1000 patrons of that same project. By pledging to match others, you invite them to join you, so we can reach that world of great sustainable software. And if they don't, you're left with a tiny bill, so it's safe to pledge to all the projects you'd like to support, without worrying that your lone $10/month is going to a project where it won't really move the needle. There are two "safety measures" that are not part of crowdmatching, but I have to mention (opinions tend to be split on whether they are too obvious to be worth mentioning or too important not to say up front): - You can set a monthly limit so you're not on the hook for more than you can afford. - At low levels, donations are sometimes delayed and pooled (charged in arrears) to minimize processing fees. I'll stop here to keep this a reasonable length, but will check back later and follow-up with replies. If you don't want to wait, I'd suggest reading down the list at https://wiki.snowdrift.coop https://wiki.snowdrift.coop until you get as far down the rabbit hole you want to go. Finally, we can use help getting all the way launched, especially if you're experienced with css or haskell (or, on the off chance, are a layer interested in doing pro bono work and/or serving on our board).

archagon 6y ago
Oh hey! How's it going with Snowdrift? I first heard about you guys back in 2016 and the project sounded interesting and ambitious, but little news since then...
- smichel17 6y ago
  In late 2016, we (ironically) ran out of funding to pay our lead developer (who has stuck around as a volunteer but with greatly reduced capacity). Since then, development progress on the site itself has been mostly stagnant — we are still in a very soft launch, where you can sign up and pledge real money in the system, but Snowdrift.coop itself is the only project; we've held off on any kind of public announcement because (1) the site UX needs a bit of work, and (2) we don't want to give the impression that funding ourselves is the goal of the project. While development hasn't seen much progress, other areas have: - Formed a preliminary board of directors[1], currently working on drafting our bylaws, hopefully done (ready for lawyer review) by the end of the month. - Moved most of our hosting from AWS to managed infrastructure from the Oregon State University's Open Source Lab (OSUOSL)[2]. This will be great once we're all the way migrated, since infrastructure maintenance has taken up a lot of the limited time that would have gone towards development. - Almost-finished setting up a civicrm instance[3], to better organize the contact info of the many people who have expressed interest in helping over the years. - Design folks have continued iterating to solve the site's current UX issues and clean up its css, to make it more approachable to volunteers with limited time. A lot of that has been implemented in a static site generator prototype[4], but we've been missing a good process for getting it integrated back into the main site. I've been working on this slowly for the past few weeks, and am taking next week off to hopefully finish that, so we can get that progress onto the main site. - I'm not sure of the timeline, but we also moved our code to gitlab.com[5] and our mailing lists to a discourse forum[6]. Almost all development (discussion, project management, and code) now takes place in those two places. We've also kept up weekly team meetings[7], usually attended between 5-7 team members (the total team size right now is ~10, with varying levels of activity). Progress may have been slow (picking up a little recently), but the project is in no danger of dying. Just to come full circle and tie back with my first post, the main things we still need for a full launch are: 1) Updated UX on the main site, ideally facilitated by making the frontend more approachable. This is why we can use help from anyone with css experience. 2) Backend support for multiple projects. This is why we can use help from Haskellers. 3) Governance and bylaws fully in place. This is why we can use help from a lawyer. -------- [1]: https://community.snowdrift.coop/g/board https://community.snowdrift.coop/g/board [2]: https://osuosl.org/ https://osuosl.org/ [4]: https://sdproto.gitlab.io/ https://sdproto.gitlab.io/, repo at https://gitlab.com/sdproto/sdproto.gitlab.io https://gitlab.com/sdproto/sdproto.gitlab.io [5]: https://gitlab.com/snowdrift/snowdrift https://gitlab.com/snowdrift/snowdrift, and a few other repos under the snowdrift organization umbrella, https://gitlab.com/snowdrift/ https://gitlab.com/snowdrift/ [6]: https://community.snowdrift.coop https://community.snowdrift.coop [7]: https://community.snowdrift.coop/t/weekly-all-hands-on-deck-check-in-meetings/1010 https://community.snowdrift.coop/t/weekly-all-hands-on-deck-...

jwr 6y ago

Correction: over the last week, syncthing has corrupted my git repository twice. I reported this as an issue, but the issue was immediately closed with an explanation I disagree with. I no longer trust syncthing until this gets resolved, unfortunately.