I agree, I have a few qualms with this app.

1. As you mentioned, kdeconnect is a much better use case as it offers more features without locking you down to a system.

2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue.

3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?

>3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?

KDE people make free software so there is no concept of software being designed in a way to force consumers into a SAAS model or some paid thing.... that is the free software philosophy

>2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue.

what do you mean? i have a bunch of file i can just "share to kde connect" and that can be another laptop or a phone or a desktop or something else. i regularly use my phone as a "usb stick" because i have kde connect.

it works

You're replying to a parody comment, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 for reference

What a coincidence, just mentioned the comment you're refering to on a separate comment on this post.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33187258

> know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?

Of course they're charging users for this. It's a value-add to Tailscale the app. It's a paid service you have to use to use this.

Tailscale is free for personal use.

I set up Tailscale for personal use a couple years ago (shortly after the general availability announcement). I was blown away by how easy it was so set up, and the functionality it offered (which was only a fraction of what it offers now). I am also heavily involved in purchasing decisions for this sort of software for my employer. Tailscale's personal use plan led directly to a paid plan w/ my employer.

I'm sure I'm not the only such example of that path.

Exactly the same here. By the way, Headscale is great if you want to self-host, equally easy to run and manage.

As a Tailscale user, I am well aware. Tailscale being free doesn't mean they don't charge for it.

You comment makes it seem like it’s available only on the paid Tailscale product, or that Tailscale as a whole is only paid.

Ah, no, sorry. I meant "they charge for it in general so every feature that makes the product more useful makes them more money".

One interesting issue is that as the number of devices rises, the effort required to pair them all together rises as O(n^2) rather than O(n). With Dropbox, you can add all your devices into an account and they'll all share a folder, but on Syncthing you have to add every device to every other device, unless you have a central server (here a laptop I never sleep), set it as an introducer on every other device, then by adding a new device to the server it gets pushed to all other devices connected to the server. KDE Connect, unlike Tailscale, has the O(n^2) problem if you want to pair every device with every other device. I'm not sure the best way out; KDE Connect shouldn't require a central authority like Tailscale's management servers, perhaps a LAN server, or an optional integration to publish keys on Tailscale and auto-pair with keys available there? But is it secure to allow one device to connect to your account and add its keys to all your networked machines? Then again Syncthing introducers already do that, but Syncthing doesn't offer remote code execution while KDE Connect can emulate a keyboard.

kdeconnect is overall buggy ash and i had to stop using it after a year. just not that reliable. taildrop has worked way better.

KDEConnect is also available in iOS

And Windows.

And Mac.

Works pretty well on Windows.