[joshstrange]

I don't trust anything released by BitTorrent. Sync was a huge let down and frankly I'm not going to waste my time on any more of their software after the ad/toolbar/bitcoin-mining infested installers they put out for uTorrent...

[solomatov]

Completely agree with you. If they want it to be focused on privacy, they should at least document their protocol.

[reymus]

I dont understand. Could you explain why?

[solomatov]

I don't trust a product which is closed source and closed protocol. It's ok to be closed source and closed protocol for a product which isn't focused on privacy, but for the product which is it's a showstopper.

Also, bittorrent did bait and switch with btsync, and had supplied utorrent with spyware. I just don't trust the company.

[guelo]

I totally agree with you that they are total scumbags. At the same time, I am amazed that they've been able to keep that company going for so long, probably close to 10 years. They've somehow stayed afloat and kept producing new products while so many other more worthy startups came and went that I can't help but give them some grudging respect. How do they stay alive?

[hkmurakami]

Toolbar installs were responsible for most of their revenues before the ads came to be on their clients.

Meebo (remember them?) was also staying afloat with toolbar installs.

[joeyspn]

> Sync was a huge let down

Same with BitTorrent Live...

[GutenYe]

Syncthing is the way to go.

[higherpurpose]

Care to elaborate on why Sync is a huge let down?

[zaroth]

Sync was great until it locked all my folders and demanded $39 to start working again. Their free tier makes it sound like you get 10 shares free but I think it actually turned out to be 10 folders including sub-folders within a share...

[microtonal]

I think it actually turned out to be 10 folders including sub-folders within a share...

No. The documentation says it is 10 shares with any number of subfolders and that is also my experience - when the Pro trial expired, I could sync 10 shares with a large number of subfolders without any problems.

Of course, changing the number of shares from unlimited to 10 was a bait and switch move, and a scam because their website said that they wouldn't remove any functionality from the free version.

Also, it's very weird that they switched to a subscription model. You bring most of the infrastructure (bandwidth & disk space) and they bring mostly software (and some infrastructure). Why not just let people buy the software?!?

[seanp2k2]

Because then you don't generate recurring revenue. Microsoft also gets this now (finally).

[black_puppydog]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8626931

[Sir_Substance]

That's as dishonest as btsyncs statement, in it's own way.

Because it's closed source, we don't /know/ how secure btsync is. However, we do know that microsoft, google and dropbox will just hand your shit over if the US government asks.

Something is better than nothing. The only open source competitors in this space are owncloud, who /still/ won't let me upload to both a work and person cloud at the same time, and syncthing, which I have high hopes for but which currently has a workflow so bad I think I'd rather just use a thumb drive.

I've stuck with btsync 1.3.94, the version with the beautiful workflow, just before it went off the rails. It solves my need to avoid google/facebook etc. /Maybe/ it doesn't protect me from the US government, but that's still better than dropbox.

I think bleep's gonna struggle, because it requires me to get /other/ people to buy into my disquiet, which turns out to be really hard if my experiments with XMPP over skype tell me anything.

You know what I might actually pay for? A gateway to facebook/gtalk/skype. I'd be willing to pay $5 per month for a bleep-to-everything gateway, either from bittorrent or someone else. Half of bleeps value is simply in my not needing another account (e: I could say the same about btsync).

[microtonal]

I've stuck with btsync 1.3.94, the version with the beautiful workflow, just before it went off the rails.

Plus, pre-2.0 shares had a killer feature: read-only encrypted peers. These were peers that would only retrieve the encrypted data in read-only form.

Using read-only encrypted peers, you can have an always-on node in the cloud, with the security of end-to-end (client-side) encryption.

I hope they will bring this back in Sync 2, but it seems much harder now that they switched to the identity model.

[joepie91_]

The problem is that there's no "something". All BitTorrent does is make a promise, and that is worth nothing. Thus, "something is better than nothing" doesn't apply.

Now if it were a verifiably half-assed solution, I'd agree with your statement.

[microtonal]

They did let iSEC partners review their source code. So, it is not nothing.

But I agree that it would be far more trustable (and popular) if Bittorrent Sync were open source. And there is still a profit model with an open source BTSync: let people (who need it) get a tracker, relay server, and always-on (read-only encrypted) peer subscription.

[aw3c2]

There is more than Owncloud and syncthing. For example give Seafile a try. It's really, really good.

[Immortalin]

Try Syncthing

[microtonal]

Unfortunately, Syncthing only supports a subset of what Bittorrent Sync does:

- There is no tracker/relay server infrastructure. As a result, Syncthing doesn't work if two peers are behind a firewall/NAT without uPnP or manual port forwarding. The number of peers behind carrier-grade NAT is only growing (IPv6 migrations) and if you are often on the move (hotels, etc.) you have no control over the firewall.

- Syncthing does not support selective sync yet, let alone with the ease of BTSync where it is a Finder/Explorer extension.

- Syncthing does not support link-based sharing, which is handy if you quickly want to share something with family/colleagues.

- Syncthing is too hard to set up for most family/colleagues.

tl;dr Syncthing is great for synchronizing two machines on networks under your own control, but it is not a nearly-complete P2P replacement of Dropbox like Bittorrent Sync is.

[nodata]

> As a result, Syncthing doesn't work if two peers are behind a firewall/NAT

Yes it does, it uses local discovery to find the nodes.

> Syncthing does not support selective sync yet

Yes it does, but admittedly it's not user friendly.

[Sir_Substance]

>and syncthing, which I have high hopes for but which currently has a workflow so bad I think I'd rather just use a thumb drive.

[chanux]

Also they call it peer-to-peer (IIRC) and now it comes with an annual fee (how about, maybe a one time charge?). Also the software felt pretty complicated with the Pro update.

In the beginning it was all amazing. But we all know we can't have nice things.