Rclone is 10 years old today

The first commit for rclone was added 10 years ago today.

commit e9ae4f89a44b1cac8e83ede1572f15dace692c67
Author: Nick Craig-Wood <nick@craig-wood.com>
Date:   Sun Nov 18 17:32:31 2012 +0000

    Initial commit - some small parts working

In the beginning rclone started small and its first release public release (v0.96) contained just 3 backends, swift, drive and s3. I originally started the project to learn Go (1.0) and exercise the swift backend we were building at work but somewhere along the way I came up with the idea that it could have multiple backends and be a useful tool for other people.

Over the next 10 years rclone accumulated 50 backends and 80 commands. Highlights were releasing rclone mount (v1.33 in 2016) which was one of those aha moments and the crypt backend in the same relase! A long airplane flight produced rclone ncdu (v1.37 - 2017) and of course the --vfs-cache-mode full (v1.53.0 - 2020) which we have the covid lockdown to thank.

I've had a lot of run making rclone, I've given a couple of conference talks about it (1) (2) and been on innumerable podcasts. But the thing that keeps me going is the community. I love helping people with their problems and interacting with the community here on the forum or on GitHub.

Rclone has grown in popularity immensely over the years. From 0 to 30k GitHub stars, it is now running at ~1M downloads and ~5M docker pulls a month. It's included in just about every repository for every OS now (See the install docs for the list and how in/out of date they are!)

Rclone has had 87 releases, 666 different people have contributed pull requests, there are 4635 issues of which only 754 (16%) are open, there have been 1,878 pull requests of which 92 (5%) are open.

I'd like to thank all the rclone project members. The fantastic forum crew who answer question after question and the tireless developers who help me with the project.

I couldn't do it without you :heart_eyes:

33 Likes

Amazing, Nick. Congratulations, and keep up the great work!

2 Likes

This is inspiring, well done Nick. Thankful for you and your creations.

1 Like

Congratz Nick.

Love all the work you do.

Amazing software - keep up the good work.

1 Like

Congratulations, Nick, and thank you for such a great tool.

I use rclone to conveniently back up and synchronize old timey family movies, family photos, our family tree, and other important family documents. I don't know what I'd do without it. I was really stuck before finding rclone.

I encourage anyone who can to sponsor Nick on GitHub.

2 Likes

This is an outstanding project, with an outstanding maintainer. Thank you so much for your work, it has been extremely enabling in mine.

2 Likes

rclone is the most useful piece of software i have ever used (since 1977) !!

congratulations to nick for making the lives of users, developers, tinkerers etc so much more interesting and productive. you sir, are a very rare breed !

4 Likes

Happy birthday... You seems oldest than only 10 year...

1 Like

Happy Birthday, Rclone!

It's wonderful software.

2 Likes

Congrats,

our home nursing people cant be without this and so also not for you you!
Our sensible data need this and espacialy the crypt feature. We couldnt work without it.
Also in the name of our disabled and ill people at home.

So great!
Thank you.

:gift_heart:

2 Likes