I developed the original Mac port, I guess about 15 years ago now. I’m pretty conflicted as to what’s happened with Synergy recently, but not because I feel like there’s anything morally wrong in what Nick did. I’m more bummed out because it feels like a market failure, for lack of a better way of explaining it: how could a useful open source project, valued by many and (tbh) not terribly complex, require a pivot to a commercial license to remain viable?

I’m as guilty as any for not contributing anything beyond my initial port. But I’m still bummed it’s come to this.

His twist towards a commercial license came from the fact that despite it being used by many people, few ever paid. He obviously felt he had to force the issue but clearly chose poorly. This is an itch many people feel, but clearly few wish to scratch. It's frustrating.

(Edited, thanks corpMaverick and stagger87)

Now they are keeping the key members responsible for the buggy v2 (CEO + Devs).

I loved v1. I am skeptical that they will produce a reliable v3...

Here’s a fine example of Nick Bolton addressing a longstanding bug:

https://github.com/symless/synergy-core/issues/5226

He deleted a bunch of comments, locked the conversation and then has the audacity to say this a rare issue. I would have gladly helped them debug this issue if he had behaved like an adult.

I feel it is the right thing to do, so they can focus on improving the product.

Seems like a really terrible plan, when you need to retrain CSRs to do your engineering.

It got so bad I had to unsub from their mailing lists.

This certainly did create a bit of a crisis, because hiring C++ talent in small towns outside of London is hard.

I don't understand, with the nature of the product (coming from open source) why is Symless doubling down so hard on centralizing this? Look for remote C++ developers across the world and get the tools to make remote work work well.

I was just talking with a coworker -- I used Synergy around 4-8 years ago, then my employment situation changed and I didn't use it for about 3 years. Have just started using it again, and it seems like it's actually worse than it was then. Anecdotal, obviously, but that's not a good trajectory.

I really hope it can become a great product.

[1] https://github.com/Blub/netevent

This is a great, charitable interpretation of someone's work.