Non-Google Sync Servers why/why-not?

[Kestred]

Hay Chromium developers/community.

After recent concerns about privacy, I like many other ponies have been looking into where my data goes.

I use Chromium and Chromium sync and wanted to host my own sync server, but Chrome doesn't support this except through a command-line option.

After some searching I found a single issue on the subject, https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=181429. 

The issue was closed simply saying 'there are no plans to expose this via the sync setup page'.

In general, I'd like some insight on why it isn't exposed in a more user-friendly location.

1. Is the sync setup page just the wrong place for it?
2. Is it remaining unexposed because there is no self-hosted sync server available?
3. If I were to create/contribute-to such a server, where is the appropriate home for such a project in the chromium community?

... any other thoughts on the subject are appreciated.

    -- Kestred

[dreakan]

Even though Chromium is an open-source project, you have to remember it is administered, managed, and controlled by Google.  And Google uses Chromium code to directly build and release Chrome browser.

Read between the lines.  The simple reason there are no plans to expose sync server settings is because in that Chromium code that Google uses to build Chrome, Google does not want to expose such settings.  They want all syncing to go through Google servers because they want your info.

Of course, any patch you submit for other sync servers has to be vetted by the Chromium dev admins, ie. Google staff.  If they don't like what you're doing, probably like allowing other sync servers, they will disallow the patch.  This is regardless of whether the patch works or not.  Chromium devs also accept or reject patches based on whether they want such features in Chrome or not.

I have my suspicions that there would not be any home for a sync server patch in the Chromium community, and you would probably have to fork a copy to do your sync work.

[Rouslan Solomakhin]

If what you want to do is protect your data from Google, then you should use Encrypt all synced data with your own sync passphrase option. See https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1181035?hl=en.

[Kestred]

One additional benefit of being able to self-host sync servers will be being able to use the Chromium sync feature from within a SCIF.

Many of the utilities we use in the scif at my work are in-house web apps built to be used with Chrome.

In such a situation it would be great if we could host a chromium sync server in-scif to synchronize things like Apps, Extensions, Settings, and Passwords.

[Ryan Tseng]

Adjusting the sync server is not for the faint of heart, and there are more ways to break this setting than for it to be useful.  Why not just roll a Chrome alias for your work with the custom sync server baked into the command line?

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