Sync 2.0: Skip the Cloud, Share Direct

I would love to try it but it is proprietary and closed-source. So far I am very happy with Syncthing, mostly missing public shares.

I feel that “Skip the Cloud” is misleading in that they still want us to rent the software. For me, half the point is being able to pay my money and walk away completely.

I'm trying to figure out a better solution for creative workflow management, and BT Sync was on my list before. From my (enterprise) perspective, this is how it seems to be set up:

- I get to host, configure, manage, monitor, and script my own infrastructure

- I don't get any user management or centralized auth

- Users have to create identities manually and then get people to share folders to them

But also!

- I still have to pay for the features I want, yearly, per-user

On top of that, there seems to be a lot of marketing material telling me the high-level overview, and lots of documentation telling me the low-level interface, but I'm not getting the whole picture. I'm sold on the idea, but not the implementation. There's nothing here that tells me, as a devops/IT guy, what this will do for my infrastructure or my users.

That said, there are a lot of features here that I love. Turning off 'sync all' and having placeholder files is great for a company which currently has an 80 GB SVN repository of all of our creative assets.

There's also no indication of whether I can revoke files from a user (and not just their access to future updates). When an employee/contractor leaves, I want them to stop having any of our files. Granted, they could just make copies before they get disconnected, but it's still a nice-to-have.

So, if there's any way to handle these issues (mostly authenticating users against an LDAP backend, in my case), I'm sold, sign me up. Otherwise, I have to go somewhere else (e.g. AeroFS, which can do this).

I have been using it since 1.3 (I believe) and I used to be a big fan of it. I think BTSync's strength was that it was fairly simple, somewhat more simple type of system where you could just share key and start syncing; no account creation required. Now it seems to be departed into more with a strong push to identify based access control and such. When they started moving toward that (I've tried their 2.0 beta briefly) I just felt Syncthing is where my usecase belong. (Simply, all I wanted was a solution to move and update files from A to B to C.)

It sounds like 2.0 still provides the same functionalities, but in any case, that 10 folder limitation will not work with me anyways. I don't mind paying for what I use, but I just don't think it's a implementation I prefer any more...

Every few years it's "Do it on a central server!" "No, do it localized!"

I really like the Sync UI, the functionality and the speed.

But the last time I looked at the forum there were several unanswered posts about serious bugs where files were deleted on both sync peers.

This scared me away from using it.

Now, I'm not sure if it being out of beta means that these showstoppers have been fixed or just ignored.

The stated primary goal of sync is that your files will always stay private. I wish the primary goal was that my files were not deleted.

Since it's closed source perhaps they could do better by documenting their testing strategy and coverage to convince potential users of the quality of their software.

It also scares me that bug reports are managed on a forum rather than through a bugtracker: http://forum.bittorrent.com/forum/108-sync-troubleshooting/

Not too long ago you guys took a big and extensive survey. The survey had business-speak written all over it. One could sense you're going down that path in the near future; and you have.

Me and my two tablets will survive without using this service for syncing. I wish you good luck with the business model.

The only thing that is really missing for me is the partial file sync. I have for example a big folder full of podcasts that I all, kind of want on my device but dont have space for. It would be awesome to, in theory, sync my hole NAS on my phone and then only partaly download some folders.

At the moment I get around this problem by having a special 'Sync Podcast'-Folder and I just copy files into it. Since my phone is only 64GB its not really that bad, but its still more work then just a click on the device itself.

So if there is any way I can get that for free, or only pay for the app. I would be happy.

Has anyone found a document discussing how to upgrade from 1.4.x to 2.x yet?

It looks like the 1.4.x era folders are now tagged as "Classic" and has a difference in capability.

The thing that I miss most is a good story for the cloud part. As it is, you have to keep one peer that is always on for convenience (we use a Raspberry Pi). But it would be nicer if a reputable company (rather than a random person in their forums) would offer a permanent peer.

This can be done without sacrificing privacy using a so-called 'encrypted read-only secret', which can be derived from the secret and gives the peer the possibility to sync data only in encrypted form.

well... I'm not sure I'm on board with everything on this new version. It seems to be getting in my way more. Perhaps I'll get used to it.

Great that there's an API, but I'm trying to think of the best way to use this in a product. You've got to get anybody on the receiving end of data to install Sync 2.0. I wish there was a way for them to offer it as a library that could be integrated into distributed software more-seamlessly to the end-user.