Introduction

What is Synapse X?

Synapse X is only but a programmable Lua engine that interfaces with third party software for interoperability purposes. It is the brilliant product of over 4+ years of excellent software design, respectable development ethics and thorough research. Initially written by a single teenager with a simple concept in mind, it is now maintained by an organized team of developers supported by a massive albeit unruly community.

Due to the software's nature and capacities, it is often considered a malicious or sketchy piece of work. We understand that, but we firmly insist that Synapse X was not designed with malicious nor sketchy purposes in mind. We crafted our license agreement to enforce the lawful and ethical use of our works, but as with any other powerful thing, it doesn't stop a bad person from using our software for bad purposes. It's akin to the controversy of firearms: if someone mishandles a handgun and hurts someone, would you blame the one that mishandled the handgun, or the industry that produced it?

For all intents and purposes, we can consider Synapse X a hack, but in the same sense as Atom is a "hackable" editor; Synapse X is, after all, a programmable Lua engine that can easily be extended and modified, not unlike Atom or any open source text editors. I will often refer to Synapse X as a hack, and the communities surrounding it as the hacking scene. Take note that Synapse X isn't solely used for hacking purposes, but is also used for development or debugging situations.

The situation that plagues the hacking scene

Synapse X is arguably the hack with the largest market share, with its gigantic community and vast hearsay advertising. It first existed as an insignificant program offered for free to the hacking scene, containing only a subset of Lua and interoperability. If we are to compare that first iteration to modern-day Synapse X, we couldn't find a single striking resemblance, but it is indeed the base of what Synapse X is today. Development started in early 2016, suffered multiple hiatuses due to numerous and unpreventable problems during its rise, but stood strong. It was the experience gained during those problems that made Synapse X strong, and is the reason why it owns the largest market share.

But the situation is quite volatile lately. Unfortunately, Synapse X's livelihood correlates directly to the third party software it supports. Synapse X, being an unofficial interoperable utility (foremost, an addition) for the third party software, is by itself useless. Only when combined with a third party program that it becomes somewhat useful. After all, it's a programmable Lua engine -- made to program using the environment of other programs using interoperability policy. Due to this, if the third party software makes a significant change to their protocols, Synapse X has to adjust itself to them in order to guarantee functionality and stability, and this adjustment is a time-consuming process especially due to the team's clean room design technique.

This, of course, isn't solely Synapse X's problem. Many other programming engines of this sort has this issue, but enough competence combined with determination and hard work will always show satisfying results - a working program. We believe ourselves to be good enough to sustain Synapse X's development even when faced with a volatile development cycle.

Our position on reverse engineering

Reverse engineering is quintessentially the act of trying to understand something with no description. It is the art of extracting readable information from a pit of obfuscation and foreign data. Reverse engineering itself doesn't infringe any ethic, moral or law, it is rather what you do with the reverse engineered information that may or may not break a law or cause some jimmies to be rustled. To us, reverse engineering is simply curiosity. We are deeply interested in the intrinsic of complex programs, but we do not commit our research to malicious purposes, nor do we try and replicate the behavior of software to clone it or integrate it in our own projects. Furthermore, we do not offer any of our research to third parties, as we understand divulging it may result in unforeseen consequences for both us and the reverse engineered software.

When we hear "reverse engineering", we often think of nerds staring at their computer screen reading disassemblies and making hacking software based on the research they do, but in reality, reverse engineering has more purposes than you think. For example, our understanding of critical malware(/vulnerabilities) is given by the art of reverse engineering, and from it companies are able to produce good anti-viruses or software patches. In another example, digital rights management suites often make use of operating system features that aren't exactly publicly detailed for reasons we ignore, and to comprehend those features, reverse engineering is necessary. ## Our position on FOSS (free and open-source software)

Free and open-source software is ideal. The principle behind open-source development guarantees that a single piece of software can be indefinitely maintained, and the collective genius of the computer science community helps to optimize and improve software in a way that a single developer can't. It is for this reason that we try to make use of several open-source libraries and standards in our software, and it's also why we try to open-source some of our commercial software's components.

Our preferred license for our open-source software is the Affero General Public License, which is similar to the GPLv3 but fixes a loophole in the original license wherein the source code distribution clause could be bypassed by indirectly distributing the software via networking (in the case of web applications, for example).

Synapse X itself is not open source. However, its interface is, along with some libraries available in the syngp organization page.

Where to go from here?

If you want to obtain Synapse X, then you will have to find it on search engines or somewhere else. Due to GitHub guidelines, we cannot offer links to non-free software. If you are interested in Synapse X's API and internals, you can consult the rest of the wiki.