Yeah I know people say “Syncthing is not a file backup tool!” but when I am dealing with 99% text files and I can slam the “keep X amount of previous versions of file” up to 30 well… I mean it still isn’t the way Syncthing was meant to be used but it works, it is minimal and it is simple and that is LITERALLY a lifesaver for me given how much I struggle with executive function.
I hope the people that work on these tools understand that for some they literally have a lifesaving potential, organization is a massive struggle for me and my society provides no social safety net for just being bad at focusing no matter how much people claim to be accomodating and accepting of severe ADHD. I don’t mean this to place undue burden or weight on the developers but to emphasize the work they contribute is real and directly impacts people’s lives for the better in a way they should be proud as fuck about.
Most people who obsess about organizational tools, project management systems and thinking tools have no problem switching from one system to the next, it is almost a hobby for people into this kind of thing. Not me, I find it desperately hard to get myself to commit to even a single system longterm and not just randomly drop the habit and never go back. Critical for my quality of life are open source softwares like Syncthing that just do what they do with no company to become bankrupt and shut down the tool, enshittify the tool, require an account login, have all my organization locked in a proprietary format on cloud servers or any number of other things corporations attach to software tools that make them useless for my condition.
In the software development world “friction” is the thing you introduce to compel people towards your monetization scheme and “attention” is a resource to be harvested, meanwhile I try to use these tools while drowning in internal friction from task switching difficulties and constantly having my attention ripped away by my ADHD from the important things I am trying to get done. This is what I mean when I say open source tools like Syncthing are literally lifesaving for me.
Even other hobbiest DIY filesyncing tools like Nextcloud are mostly useless for me as they require a complex annoying fiddly maintenance of a central server that is a single point of failure, and the idea I will keep that fiddly and fragile of a system going longterm is downright laughable even though I think those tools are cool. With Syncthing I am able to just keep leapfrogging my important files from device to device, there is no central server I have to maintain with focus I don’t have even for the thing I am trying to use the organizational tool to help myself get done in the first place.
<3 devs of Syncthing!!!
editI would like to add a personal “burn in hell” to the people who run Google Drive and Microsoft Onedrive. The entire setup of these services encourages you to get lost creating and uploading a bunch of files, run out of cloud space and then be so totally overwhelmed in trying to manage all the files you have created and uploaded that you just acquiesce and purchase the premium subscription to get more space instead. From my perspective this kind of monetization architecture is blatantly predatory and hurtful and is one of the reasons I see these corporations as enemies trying to hurt and entrap me for profit.
Yeah I know people say “Syncthing is not a file backup tool!” but when I am dealing with 99% text files and I can slam the “keep X amount of previous versions of file” up to 30 well… I mean it still isn’t the way Syncthing was meant to be used but it works, it is minimal and it is simple and that is LITERALLY a lifesaver for me given how much I struggle with executive function.
I hope the people that work on these tools understand that for some they literally have a lifesaving potential, organization is a massive struggle for me and my society provides no social safety net for just being bad at focusing no matter how much people claim to be accomodating and accepting of severe ADHD. I don’t mean this to place undue burden or weight on the developers but to emphasize the work they contribute is real and directly impacts people’s lives for the better in a way they should be proud as fuck about.
Most people who obsess about organizational tools, project management systems and thinking tools have no problem switching from one system to the next, it is almost a hobby for people into this kind of thing. Not me, I find it desperately hard to get myself to commit to even a single system longterm and not just randomly drop the habit and never go back. Critical for my quality of life are open source softwares like Syncthing that just do what they do with no company to become bankrupt and shut down the tool, enshittify the tool, require an account login, have all my organization locked in a proprietary format on cloud servers or any number of other things corporations attach to software tools that make them useless for my condition.
In the software development world “friction” is the thing you introduce to compel people towards your monetization scheme and “attention” is a resource to be harvested, meanwhile I try to use these tools while drowning in internal friction from task switching difficulties and constantly having my attention ripped away by my ADHD from the important things I am trying to get done. This is what I mean when I say open source tools like Syncthing are literally lifesaving for me.
Even other hobbiest DIY filesyncing tools like Nextcloud are mostly useless for me as they require a complex annoying fiddly maintenance of a central server that is a single point of failure, and the idea I will keep that fiddly and fragile of a system going longterm is downright laughable even though I think those tools are cool. With Syncthing I am able to just keep leapfrogging my important files from device to device, there is no central server I have to maintain with focus I don’t have even for the thing I am trying to use the organizational tool to help myself get done in the first place.
<3 devs of Syncthing!!!
edit I would like to add a personal “burn in hell” to the people who run Google Drive and Microsoft Onedrive. The entire setup of these services encourages you to get lost creating and uploading a bunch of files, run out of cloud space and then be so totally overwhelmed in trying to manage all the files you have created and uploaded that you just acquiesce and purchase the premium subscription to get more space instead. From my perspective this kind of monetization architecture is blatantly predatory and hurtful and is one of the reasons I see these corporations as enemies trying to hurt and entrap me for profit.