That sounds like the answer is actually yes because you have to run the various computers, provision enough storage to hold everything, secure them, and make sure you have a backup plan.

> run the various computers

Are you saying dropbox works without computers O_o?

> provision enough storage to hold everything

It's true that on all your clients put together, you need enough space to have one copy of your data; where for dropbox you can have one single sparse checkout and let their servers hold the full data set. I've never seen that be an issue in practice though - on the contrary, my laptops have enough space to hold all my data, and my dropbox account doesn't, which is why I went to syncthing in the first place.

> secure them

What security do you need to add to syncthing that you don't need for dropbox?

> make sure you have a backup plan

I guess dropbox counts as having offsite backup implicitly; personally I'm using syncthing between a few laptops and desktops in different locations and counting that as the off-site backup plan.

> > run the various computers > > Are you saying dropbox works without computers O_o?

I'm saying that Dropbox does not require you to run every computer yourself. If your house burns, floods, gets burgled, etc. not losing every copy is a really nice benefit for the average person. Not needing to make sure that their laptop is running at the same time as a desktop computer is similarly nice for being able to depend on having n > 1 copies.

> > provision enough storage to hold everything > > It's true that on all your clients put together, you need enough space to have one copy of your data; where for dropbox you can have one single sparse checkout and let their servers hold the full data set. I've never seen that be an issue in practice though - on the contrary, my laptops have enough space to hold all my data, and my dropbox account doesn't, which is why I went to syncthing in the first place.

It definitely depends on the user and is less of a problem as SSDs get larger but I definitely know people who had things like large photo/video libraries which they didn't want to have taking up 80% of storage on every computer they own.

> > secure them > > What security do you need to add to syncthing that you don't need for dropbox?

Two aspects: one is relatively low-impact but still worth making sure you're comfortable with any risk of data loss. If you use FDE on your phone / laptop but someone steals the desktop which has all of your synced data on it, is that a problem? Do you forensically wipe drives before getting rid of them? Dropbox's data is encrypted at rest and since they're hosted in a proper data center you don't have to worry about someone stealing a copy as easily as breaking into someone's apartment.

The other is more important now that ransomware is an industry: if you get malware, how robust are your recovery options? Simple versioning doesn't help if, say, the malware touches a file multiple times or if the versioning system wasn't designed to handle malice and so e.g. an attacker can just empty the trash or overwrite the old versions too.

One nice thing about the hosted model is that it has a completely different trust chain so even if you're totally compromised it doesn't allow them infrastructure-level access. That's far from perfect but enough people have recovered deleted Gmail messages, Dropbox files, etc. that it's worth asking whether you're comfortable about your data recovery options in any comparison.

> > make sure you have a backup plan > > I guess dropbox counts as having offsite backup implicitly; personally I'm using syncthing between a few laptops and desktops in different locations and counting that as the off-site backup plan.

That probably works for most scenarios other than a bad security compromise but how frequently do you verify those copies? Does syncthing have checksums to ensure that the copy you think you have hasn't been corrupted?

Again, I'm not saying that syncthing is a bad choice, only that “It works better” is a very broad claim which is clearly not true as a general statement. Convenience and reliability have significant value to most people.

> run the various computers

That's a vague assertion that can apply to anything.

> provision enough storage to hold everything

Syncthing can ignore directories/patterns at the local level.

> secure them

And this notion somehow doesn't apply to your Dropbox credentials or shared folders? Furthermore, Dropbox has access to your data - with Syncthing that's limited only to the synchronized devices.

> have a backup plan

Another non-sequitur. Either tool can be part of a backup solution.

> > run the various computers > > That's a vague assertion that can apply to anything.

It's a very specific assertion which does not apply to every thing: with syncthing, you need to operate every piece of the system. With a cloud service, you are delegating that to other people, presumably professionals. That's a big difference for most people and it has significant implications for things like backups — e.g. if someone breaks into your house and steals two computers, did you just lose every copy of your data?

> > provision enough storage to hold everything > > Syncthing can ignore directories/patterns at the local level.

That's an unrelated topic. This is about the total size of your data and whether it fits on multiple devices without inconvenience. If you have a phone and a laptop, do you have enough storage for a full copy of everything? If not, you need to add a third computer, deal with external drives, etc. One appeal of cloud services for many people is that you can save your data without needing to have enough space to have a full local copy and still be able to access it.

> > secure them > > And this notion somehow doesn't apply to your Dropbox credentials or shared folders? Furthermore, Dropbox has access to your data - with Syncthing that's limited only to the synchronized devices.

Again, this is a comparison question. A service has a separate security trust boundary so someone who compromises your account doesn't get infrastructure-level access and cannot permanently delete things without you having a chance to recover. If you're doing it yourself, you're taking on that responsibility entirely yourself. Maybe you're confident with that, maybe you're not but it's something that you absolutely have to think about for a data storage system.

> > have a backup plan > > Another non-sequitur. Either tool can be part of a backup solution.

You might want to check the definition of non-sequitur – it's not a get-out-of-jail-free card for avoiding an answer. Just to reiterate, ask what happens if your hard drive starts corrupting blocks, someone steals your computer, your house burns down, you get malware which encrypts every file on your computer, etc. With Dropbox the answer is “I buy a new computer and restore my data. Since the malware couldn't overwrite the older copies, I lost nothing”. If you're self-hosting, that could have the same answer but it requires more skills and ongoing commitment to do things like off-site backups.

What I've found to be sadly common is that people do these comparisons without actually matching equivalent levels of service and then get a painful educational lesson when something goes wrong and they lose something they cared about.

> with syncthing, you need to operate every piece of the system.

Again, this is false. The P2P relay/discovery nodes are operated by third parties donating server time and bandwidth. The user is not required to operate those parts of the network.

> That's an unrelated topic.

Definitely related to storage provisioning.

> This is about the total size of your data and whether it fits on multiple devices without inconvenience.

Convenience is entirely dependent upon the user's requirements. As I said, each node is not required to maintain full replication.

> you can save your data without needing to have enough space to have a full local copy

I'm not sure that putting a significant fraction of one's proverbial eggs in one basket is a selling point.

> If you're doing it yourself, you're taking on that responsibility entirely yourself.

I would add that you're always responsible for your data, third parties or not.

> What I've found to be sadly common is that people do these comparisons without actually matching equivalent levels of service and then get a painful educational lesson when something goes wrong and they lose something they cared about.

You and I could tell those people until we are both blue in the face, they are not going to learn until they have experienced it themselves.

> > with syncthing, you need to operate every piece of the system. > > Again, this is false. The P2P relay/discovery nodes are operated by third parties donating server time and bandwidth. The user is not required to operate those parts of the network.

Okay, let's think about this a bit more in depth: who's operating the computer which stores the data? If I have a laptop and a desktop, can my laptop backup its data if my desktop is powered off or my cable modem is down? If those third-parties decide to stop donating their time or something breaks and they don't have time to fix it, does my data still sync?

I don't see how the answers to any of those questions are compatible with “this is false” being a correct statement.

> You and I could tell those people until we are both blue in the face, they are not going to learn until they have experienced it themselves.

… and that's why for most people it makes sense to outsource these tasks to professionals who specialize in that work, just as most people pay mechanics to work on cars and contractors to fix their houses.

Again, my point was not that syncthing is bad but that an open-source project is not the same thing as a supported service. I get that you like this and want to evangelize it but misrepresenting what it does is just asking for someone to be disappointed.

If you want absolute feature parity with dropbox, then yes I suppose you do. But you don't have to stand up a server just to sync files between your devices.