syncthing/README.md

syncthing
=========

This is the `syncthing` project. The following are the project goals:

 1. Define a protocol for synchronization of a file repository between a
    number of collaborating nodes. The protocol should be well defined,
    unambigous, easily understood, free to use, efficient, secure and
    languange neutral. This is the [Block Exchange
    Protocol](https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/protocol/PROTOCOL.md).

 2. Provide the reference implementation to demonstrate the usability of
    said protocol. This is the `syncthing` utility. It is the hope that
    alternative, compatible implementations of the protocol will come to
    exist.

The two are evolving together; the protocol is not to be considered
stable until syncthing 1.0 is released, at which point it is locked down
for incompatible changes.

Syncthing does not use the BitTorrent protocol. The reasons for this are
1) we don't know if BitTorrent Sync does either, so there's nothing to
be compatible with, 2) BitTorrent includes a lot of functionality for
making sure large swarms of selfish agents behave and somehow work
towards a common goal. Here we have a much smaller swarm of cooperative
agents and a simpler approach will suffice.

Signed Releases
---------------

As of v0.7.0 and onwards, git tags and release binaries are GPG signed with
the key BCE524C7 (http://nym.se/gpg.txt). The signature is included in the
normal release bundle as `syncthing.asc` or `syncthing.exe.asc`.

Documentation
=============

The syncthing documentation is kept on the
[GitHub Wiki](https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/wiki).

License
=======

All documentation and protocol specifications are licensed
under the [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

All code is licensed under the [MIT
License](https://github.com/calmh/syncthing/blob/master/LICENSE).