115
The Syncthing Android drama is exploding
(mastodon.pirateparty.be)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
115 points (100.0% liked)
Android
20793 readers
27 users here now
The new home of /r/Android on Lemmy and the Fediverse!
Android news, reviews, tips, and discussions about rooting, tutorials, and apps.
🔗Universal Link: !android@lemdro.id
💡Content Philosophy:
Content which benefits the community (news, rumours, and discussions) is generally allowed and is valued over content which benefits only the individual (technical questions, help buying/selling, rants, self-promotion, etc.) which will be removed if it's in violation of the rules.
Support, technical, or app related questions belong in: !askandroid@lemdro.id
For fresh communities, lemmy apps, and instance updates: !lemdroid@lemdro.id
📰Our communities below
Rules
-
Stay on topic: All posts should be related to the Android OS or ecosystem.
-
No support questions, recommendation requests, rants, or bug reports: Posts must benefit the community rather than the individual. Please post to !askandroid@lemdro.id.
-
Describe images/videos, no memes: Please include a text description when sharing images or videos. Post memes to !androidmemes@lemdro.id.
-
No self-promotion spam: Active community members can post their apps if they answer any questions in the comments. Please do not post links to your own website, YouTube, blog content, or communities.
-
No reposts or rehosted content: Share only the original source of an article, unless it's not available in English or requires logging in (like Twitter). Avoid reposting the same topic from other sources.
-
No editorializing titles: You can add the author or website's name if helpful, but keep article titles unchanged.
-
No piracy or unverified APKs: Do not share links or direct people to pirated content or unverified APKs, which may contain malicious code.
-
No unauthorized polls, bots, or giveaways: Do not create polls, use bots, or organize giveaways without first contacting mods for approval.
-
No offensive or low-effort content: Don't post offensive or unhelpful content. Keep it civil and friendly!
-
No affiliate links: Posting affiliate links is not allowed.
Quick Links
Our Communities
- !askandroid@lemdro.id
- !androidmemes@lemdro.id
- !techkit@lemdro.id
- !google@lemdro.id
- !nothing@lemdro.id
- !googlepixel@lemdro.id
- !xiaomi@lemdro.id
- !sony@lemdro.id
- !samsung@lemdro.id
- !galaxywatch@lemdro.id
- !oneplus@lemdro.id
- !motorola@lemdro.id
- !meta@lemdro.id
- !apple@lemdro.id
- !microsoft@lemdro.id
- !chatgpt@lemdro.id
- !bing@lemdro.id
- !reddit@lemdro.id
Lemmy App List
Chat and More
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Catfriend was actively openly looking for a replacement for ages and couldn't find one. No one was stepping up. When she eventually found someone, suddenly everyone wants to have a say. What was she supposed to do, put her life and mental health on hold until the community that wasn't helping maintain the project, vetted the replacement she found? I don't know how people can't see that their expectations are out of whack here. As I said before, if any one of the people who are whipping up the storm had stepped up to takeover, there'd somewhat of point to this, but that's not happening. It's just pitchforks for the sake of pitchforks.
I don't think this framing is completely accurate. nel0x, one of the people stepping up to maintain a fork, made reasonable requests to researchxxl that were ignored and denied. Basic stuff like "can you join the official syncthing forum". Trust is incredibly important when you are taking over distribution of an existing app, let alone one that has permissions to your filesystem and can push changes to other devices through NAT/firewalls. Processes to develop trust can be tying your online identity to real life identity, and/or being a visible, contributing member of a community over time. A transparent handover process would also be important. None of those conditions for trust were met and auto installed updates were pushed.
It's just the process of the handover that is making people skittish with the github going private then reappearing with a new maintainer.
I think best route would have been for researchxxl to just fork syncthing-fork to put on F-droid, and catfriend1 just leave their branch archived with an endorsement of researchxxl.
After some time passes and researchxxl gains trust in the community I'm sure people will trust their work. The transition just wasn't handled well.
Exactly; would have been much cleaner. The recent update to v2 already required migrating one's config. So doing it again (now knowing the process) to such new "fork-fork" would've been a no-brainer.
But the whole situation has a more critical aspect than this technical issue: the new dev's appearance out of nowhere, lack of reasonable communication, and arrogance.