There is no reason why syncthing cannot work on both a server in the "cloud" and an end-user device. Syncing files is a well researched and solved problem, at this point dropbox et al are not selling syncing, they are reselling IaaS + integration and gaffataping on anything else tangentially related they can conceive of to squeeze money out of users.
The fundamental value is already there to have for free and at a much higher UX quality, while paying for the IaaS directly... if only non-technical users were aware of it, and could access it as easily.
Exactly. It worked perfectly to sync my Android tablet data on my NAS, but I never tried it as a cloud file server. However it should be relatively easy to set up a VPN on a broadband (non NATted) connection, if it has a dynamic IP hook it to a free domain name using for example DuckDNS (.org), then redirect the VPN traffic to a *PI or similar board and a USB disk that will stay up 24/7, so that no matter when or from where, any other device with the right credentials can use that space as cloud storage from anywhere. The big difference being that there are no strings attached, no size caps, no sign this and that, no download of closed apps, no ads etc.
Syncing is not a square peg, monetisation is.
There is no reason why syncthing cannot work on both a server in the "cloud" and an end-user device. Syncing files is a well researched and solved problem, at this point dropbox et al are not selling syncing, they are reselling IaaS + integration and gaffataping on anything else tangentially related they can conceive of to squeeze money out of users.
The fundamental value is already there to have for free and at a much higher UX quality, while paying for the IaaS directly... if only non-technical users were aware of it, and could access it as easily.