Not sure how the apple rant is related to the post but;
I use syncthing (via mobius sync) on my iphone and am quite happy with it. It seems to be OK with enough background syncs as it is, but to top it off i added a shortcut that keeps the app in the foreground while the phone is charging and im always up to date, pretty much instantly. Used to keep a couple hundred gb in sync that way (books, papers, org files, passwords, etc).
It always leaves a bad taste in my mouth when opportunists charge money for software they didn’t produce, simply by capitalizing on the fact that it’s difficult and annoying to sideload on iPhones.
It’s a one time $5 fee, integrates with the files app and generally has a few features that are not part of the base OSS app, such as the background syncs. It also sometimes gets affected by bugs that are not do not affect the “vanilla” syncthing, which takes some non-zero time to resolve and which indicate there is some effort going into creating this “port”.
That took some time for the dev to create and would take me at least an hour of my time to reproduce, for which im happy to exchange $5.
I could probably set up an ST instance inside iSH but it won’t work as smoothly, or create a native port myself, but I would rather not and feel thus is a fair exchange.
Of course, I would welcome and am waiting for the release of your alternative free version. Until this time I’ll take your comment as yet another “i hate apple” post.
Judging by your comment I suppose you don’t use generic drugs or any products based on expired patents not by the original patent inventor.
I cannot enter into the Apple Developer Program, or I would have released a lot of free builds of f/oss iOS apps already.
Sadly Apple requires doxxing yourself to publish apps, which IMO is a human rights violation. You also need to provide a working phone number to be able to install even free apps on a phone or tablet you have already purchased. These policies stand directly in opposition to their stated value that “privacy is a human right”.
The time of forced side loading support cannot come soon enough.
> Of course, I would welcome and am waiting for the release of your alternative free version. Until this time I’ll take your comment as yet another “i hate apple” post.
In my home a few minutes ago I just re-hung a framed, signed, and numbered print of some of Susan Kare’s pixel art for the original Macintosh System 1.0. It’s a common misconception that I hate Apple, but nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, you are free to continue believing incorrect things. :)
FWIW, I paid the $5 and have Möbius Sync Pro installed on my phone. But, as a Syncthing contributor, fuck them.
(Separately, it doesn’t even work right, whilst iCloud does, because of Apple’s anticompetitive bias against third party apps replicating OS functionality.)
> Judging by your comment I suppose you don’t use generic drugs or any products based on expired patents not by the original patent inventor.
I don’t believe in the concept of intellectual property. You misunderstand where I’m coming from. It’s a dick move to profit directly off the misfortune or hard work of others, which is precisely what the Möbius Sync authors are doing. It has nothing to do with patents or copyrights or what is or is not legally permitted to be done with the code.
You will note that I release all of my own software into the public domain, not under copyleft licenses. People should be free to be a dick, just as I’m free to point it out.
If what the Möbius dev did is so easy and they are indeed freeloading, why doesn't anyone replicate it in the open?
It's not because of the forced doxxing, syncthing has a foundation with a legal address and real people, using that info on the app store is a non-issue. It's not because of the $99 fee, syncthing has some cash flow.
You could also ask the question of Blink, a f/oss SSH client for iOS that charges money for IAPs.
It is trivial to remove the feature gating and republish. Yet no one has. Would Apple deny it as being too similar to an existing app? Who knows?
I can’t test any of these theories as I am not in the ADP. I even tried applying one time like a dozen years ago and was denied because I didn’t have a DUNS number.
You don’t believe in intellectual property? Well, I don’t believe in gravity.
Ill be waiting for your public domain repo with ios syncthing build instructions - no need to doxx yourself. ill happily build it for myself - i don’t have a dev account either.
FWIW that app works much better than icloud has ever worked for me. eg with icloud you never know when the device decides to remove a file from local cache until youre offline and need to use it.
Intellectual property is a fiction, created to prop up an industry. It was invented and established and promulgated and maintained by modern human beings.
Gravity existed long before humans, and will exist after them.
Not affiliated with the product.