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Sounds like that should apply to Dropbox, as well.

No, because Dropbox is a file syncing utility so symlinks, which are special files that point to other files, should be synced as symlinks. Replacing the symlink with the target file or directory is obviously broken behavior.

> symlinks, which are special files that point to other files, should be synced as symlinks

How would that work on, e.g., the iOS client? Or a Windows client, even?

Syncing tools are tricky because they bridge and overlap (at least) two filesystems - local and remote. It's not obvious how to handle symlinks there in general case. The default behavior dictated by filesystem abstraction is wrong (would duplicate files and break links). There are multiple other ways to handle it, but it's not clear what's best.

Explain what was wrong with Dropbox’s previous behavior (which is described in the link).

"would duplicate files and break links"

And did the previous behavior preserve symlinks that are located inside a folder in Dropbox and link to somewhere else inside the same folder? Because a symlink-blind program would screw that up royally.

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