It took me a while to realise you completely misunderstood what I said. To be clear, I specifically said:
I didn’t hypothesise that…
I was saying that Mozilla’s service could go down. Your personal data sync could be disrupted for whatever time period they’re down. Just like how today Outlook and other MS services gave me grief because their OCSP servers were down.
You’re really coming off as wilfully ignorant (which I’m sure I also specified…)
Actually, they do, since the auth server holds your encryption key. Now I’m going back through your posts, you’re amazingly ignorant of how Mozilla’s sync 1.5 server works. You’re verbalisations are quite embarrassing.
I have thought about what you wrote, and you’re wrong.
What’s the point of hosting my own data if I cant read it without the permission of some foreign company? It’s encrypted with a key only accessible with the permission of a foreign company. What if I’m trying to access that data and that foreign company is inaccessible or decides to impose further obstacles? I’m not sure you understand why people use own/Nextcloud in the first place.
Your devices store the data themselves. The syncserver stores a copy. If there is no connection to the syncserver, you can access the data. Of course, you cannot sync. If there is no connection to the Accountserver, you cannot sync, too.
If Mozilla goes down or shuts down the service, you can access one ore more copies of your data.
Mozilla decides if I can access my data on my server. But Mozilla cannot access my data or my sync key. Firefox sync 1.5 implements key stretching in client and server. It is extremely difficult to brute force your key, if Mozilla’s database is compromised. If someone should accomplish this, he may know your key. But he does not know where you store your data.
Is this a valid reason to stop syncing now? Because sometimes in the future eventually Mozilla may cancel the service? Hey, just sell your car. The manufacturer may stop supplying spare parts in a couple of years. Delete the operating system of your computer, sometimes there will be no support for it. And: which personal data does mozilla have? One e-mail address.
Good decision. Very good decision. You decide calling me willfully ignorant. I have my arguments, you have your’s. More objectiveness would have been a better choice. From my side, this is the end of discussion.
Good luck waiting and complaining.
Your devices store encrypted and inaccessible data themselves, yes. Inaccessible without the immediate permission of some foreign company. You keep ignoring that.
I started using as personal sync (1.1) server because syncing used to take 15 (or more) minutes before timing out and failing. Why would I want access to personal data to be at the whim of a foreign entity? You keep dodging and evading that question which I’ve repeatedly asked.
Then what’s the point? You seem to keep ignoring the point of running your own sync server - WHAT’S THE POINT OF A SYNC SERVER THAT CAN’T SYNC?
You’re pretending this is a fringe case that doesn’t count, yet this COMMON problem is why I’m running my own sync server now!
They can if you were using them for authorisation. THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT OF AUTHORISATION. They have your key, and therefore can access the data you’re hosting.
You really don’t understand how any of this works, do you?
It doesn’t matter. It only takes one flaw for the whole system to become weak, and that weakness IS NO LONGER UNDER YOUR CONTROL. Some foreign company controls it. The more you try to justify yourself, the more ignorant you appear. You should stop.
That information is part of your account. You know, the account you’re leaving under the control of some foreign company.
No, and I never said it was. I’m giving you reasons to HOST YOUR OWN SYNC SERVER like I do. I’m currently utilising a 1.1 server on ownCloud (for my primary browser Pale Moon), while trying to set up a cloud-independent (but inconvenient) 1.5 server for Firefox.
You can’t pretend you’re right just because you pretend I’m saying the opposite of what I’ve said.[quote=“franz.hartwig, post:45, topic:103”]
I have my arguments, you have your’s.
[/quote]
No, I have my arguments, and you have straw men.
I’m not waiting, I’ve set up a 1.5 server (accounts, auth, and sync) that I’ve built from source, but it’s not convenient. I’m hoping a real coder will create the two apps I specified for NextCloud. What I wrote isn’t hard to understand, unless you’re intentionally being obtuse.
Shall we de-escalate this please?
Thank you. I do not know why he is yelling around. Perhaps someone can tell him, that Mozilla does not hold my sync key. They hold just a hashed key.
Perhaps someone can tell him, that he can access the data on his devices. They are locally encrypted. He can access them even without connectivity to the account server or sync server.
Perhaps someone can tell him, that my server address is not part of my account.
Yup fine. Any further arguing will close the topic. Focus on constructive conversation around ffsync instead.
The Mozilla Sync Owncloud app still works on Nextcloud 12 and Pale Moon.
Hi guys, I evaded as well to sync 1.5, because I want to sync to my android device. And it didn’t work for me on palemoon. Even I do not fully technically understand what the 1.5 complexity means, I know that complexity introduces new weaknesses. So lets get back to the topic…
Does someone know, if the technology Mozilla uses in the current setup (auth, acc, sync) is compatible with Nextcloud? There is python, fast_cgi, sql. Does this matter in the end?
I am not a developer and ask myself if this is just about packaging all parts and adopting the config files or does someone has to put hands on the source to make it finally work with NC? I understand that for the NC app itself for sure development is needed!
I know that Dan Callahan initially showed support/interest for a Nextcloud app. Does someone know why this got so silent?
Floccus works pretty well. The problem is that as a Firefox-Addon it cannot sync tags due to (upstream) restrictions by Mozilla. Anybody found a way to sync Firefox Bookmarks (incl. Tags) with NC?
Where would be the proper place to request Tag support from Mozilla? We should connect with them.
I’ve asked Mozilla whether they’ve abandoned supporting open source alternatives to their own sync service. Click to see what they say back on the support page.
Hopefully this discussion will take off within Mozilla. What features would you like to see supported or improved for us selfhosters? @marcelklehr
@tchncs @nullnvoid @jknockaert @godfuture @Krypto_Orgonit @anon87376550 @Jacob_Bruinsma @alfred @rugk
Here is the open response from Mozilla for feedback:
“I know the self-hosted community is
not satisfied with the current implementation of Sync 1.5 Afaik.”, but that’s not our experience - we can certainly do a better job on documentation, but we really need feedback on the areas that need help
and try to be responsive when we notice things that can be improved. We also try to act on bug reports and pull requests in a timely manner.
In that vein, we are happy discuss how things could be improved for the greater community - what did you have in mind?
Also curious to hear current thoughts from past thread contributers @tflidd @blizzz @DarkSteve @grandpianisto @weka @BobJonkman on how to improve current Firefox 1.5 self-hosted sync.
The syncserver works on my Raspberry Pi. I am lucky with it. It would be great not depending on the Firefox auth server. Setting up the auth server with node.js is a pain and it seems impossible to set it up on a Raspberry Pi. So another implementation with much fewer dependencies would be great.
I think, as was pointed out before and has lead me to creating floccus, that, while hosting your own firefox sync server is nice and a nextcloud app that does that would be useful to many, we would be, once again, at the mercy of mozilla since we basically replicate infrastructure that they probably perceive not as an API or standard that needs to be maintained, but as a private service that they can change whenever they like. (I know this might be changing, as more people implement sync clients, but I don’t think many will do so.) However, I’m happy they have adopted the WebExtension quasi-standard, as I expect this to be much more stable – even more so, since a lot of extensions depend on it rather than just a few people running their own sync infrastructure.
That being said, the landscape for WebExtension support in Firefox still leaves some things to be desired, from my perspective as the developer of floccus: It’s currently impossible to access bookmarks’ tags with a webextension, and Firefox for Android doesn’t offer access to bookmarks at all, which is a major drawback for me. [1]
Still, I feel things are improving and we’re getting closer 
Any other specific features or additions to the API that you would find helpful?
Not much to add, except that I’m not using any kind of web browser
sync at all. Self-host, or nothing!
I’m happy to anounce Floccus v2.0.0 is now available which comes with complete folder sync support, the ability to select a custom folder to sync (even the browser root folder), improved performance (no more freezing!), overhauled UI and lots of fixes for edge cases for an improved overall experience. Time to gather those bookmarks in your cloud!
The most important (tagging) isn´t working well and it´s not so nice as I have for imaginations. All synced tags will have the tag floccus:>.
It´s anyway good work, but it´s improveable. 
At the moment is the javascript function the best option for me 