Inaccessibility of synthseg 2 model

[FrancescoCorrenti]

The pre-trained models for SynthSeg v2 are no longer downloadable. The manual links provided in the documentation point to Dropbox URLs (associated with UCL) that now return a 404 error.

This prevents new users from running the tool and breaks automated deployment pipelines.

Expected behavior
The weights should be downloadable (ideally automatically) via a persistent alternative link (e.g., GitHub Releases, Hugging Face, or a stable institutional repository).

Environment Information
SynthSeg Version: v2.0

Hosting Source: Dropbox (UCL account)

Error Message: 404 FILE NOT FOUND

Additional context
It appears that UCL (University College London) has recently changed the status of shared Dropbox folders, causing many academic links to break.
Could you please provide an alternative download location or host the model weights directly on the GitHub repository's Releases page to ensure long-term availability?

[BenBillot]

Hi,
I lost access to my github account for some stupid reason, and at the same time my UCL account expired.
Anyway, long story short I put up the models at another link. See this issue #114 for more details about how to set it up :)

[FrancescoCorrenti]

It’s honestly surprising that GitHub still doesn’t have a proper solution for this. This repository is a huge resource for the neuroscience community and really deserves to be maintained.

Anyway, thanks a lot for the support. I actually already had a backup of the model weights on my local machine, so I was already covered. I’d suggest keeping this issue open until a real patch is found, both because it might make the solution easier to track down and because, realistically, the problem isn’t fully solved yet.

Also, after reading your story, this image immediately came to mind 🥲

[BenBillot]

Thanks for the kind words!