Dropbox Founder on New Features and Global Expansion | Hacker News Reader

Dropbox Founder on New Features and Global Expansion

thenextweb.com

94 pointsimmad36 comments

Dropbox is great, and it's one of the few companies I don't mind pimping out. However, even I have my limits, and "the best 30 comments on this post explaining why Dropbox is awesome will be given 5GB, of extra storage on their account" crosses the line. It's just ego stroking and obvious advertising at that point.

If you must, why not reward people with the best ideas to improve dropbox or who have unique ways of leveraging it? I'll give you $5 to tell me how great I am...seriously?

Dropbox did something interesting with "best comments" on this reddit thread. Reddit spoofed our logo, and we did it to celebrate. http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/dm8ep/ohai_reddi...

The best comment was about interesting ways to use dropbox. Some even I hadn't heard of. The second comment thread was recursive actually, showing how awesome reddit can be.

These things are more fun than serious. Throwing around GBs to people that like Dropbox is really common (see Dropquest, http://dropbox.com/edu http://dropbox.com/free ). I wouldn't read too much into it here; folks just thought it would be nice and fun.

btw I work for Dropbox. I ran that reddit mini campaign.

Any files and folders that haven't been specifically made public by users through the existing "Public" sharing model and/or the new shareable link model are Private and inaccessible to anyone who does not have direct access to a user's Dropbox account.

The new sharing model allows you to create links to folders and individual files outside of the "Public" and "Photos" folders. The feature is currently still being tested and it has only been enabled for a subset of users. The links created by this sharing model utilize SSL, they can be revoked at any time by going to dropbox.com/share (in the "links" section) and they only provide access to the specific folder or files that the users creates the link to.

We also have specific policies with regards to intellectual property. More information about this and other Dropbox policies can be found here:

https://www.dropbox.com/terms

The one thing that Dropbox fails on, together with just about every other version control system, is that novice users (or your business-type cofounders), easily create conflicts with Word, Excel and other files. There's no easy way to handle it, but the current way is very annoying at best. Most of the time I guess it, and delete the one I think is wrong, but one day that will lead to the loss of some important changes. It's hard to merge every type of document, but atleast give me the best info, or a list of conflicts: who created it, when the versions were each last edited, file sizes, etc. Often a user will edit an old copy of the file and wreak havoc. Finally, dropbox syncs _everytime_ I view an Office document. Must be Word's fault, but it's annoying.

Thankfully, if you ever blow away something important, Dropbox gives you an undo. (Create a file, let it sync, delete it, then go check their website.)

True, however in a fast moving environment, that's only of little consolation if I have to look back 10 days and 20 versions to find the missing content. It becomes a trade off: do I do the work again or aim for the perfect merge. Unfortunately, the first often wins.

... Use Google docs.

True, but the formatting options aren't very good. I know, I'm picky, but it just doesn't cut it. It works, but isn't perfect.

Do deleted revisions count against your quota?

No, deleted files don't count. http://www.dropbox.com/help/14

No, though deleted files/revisions are purged after 30 days unless you have a paid account.

While I don't agree with you that version control doesn't work well for Word, Excel, etc, I'd say the problem there is the format isn't built for version control.

VC works great for source code because it's all line based with (either by convention or required by the grammar) one statement per line. Diffing is pretty trivial in these cases and meaningful.

Binary formats are a whole different ballgame. Even XML-based formats are problematic. My view is that XML documents require a VCS built specifically for diffing that kind of data as line based will run a lot of false positives with white-space.

As another commentor said: you can always get your stuff back with Dropbox. I'm not sure how much better you can do than this without actually changing the program that created the data.

True, perfect merging doesn't exist. I just think that replacing one file with two files that have different names isn't the best solution to letting me deal with the problem.

Well, obviously we want some copy (hopefully, the best copy) of the file to be available at its original name without having to use a Dropbox client or visit the Dropbox website. So I guess what you're looking for is an additional interface (website or client) which would allow easy choosing or even diffing following a conflict? I'd certainly support that, as I've had to diff myself in the past.

From what I've been told, Office docs are made up of objects accessible via an API. So theoretically one could build a version control tool that works effectively for Office docs.

Theoretically.

There are .NET interop assemblies[1], for working with Office documents, and they require Office to be installed to work. Outside of that, you're stuck rolling your own Office-document-parser.

There is a built-in "track changes" mechanism, though I don't know if all Office types handle it. Word does, at least. Though that's pretty basic.

[1]: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsto/dd183191.aspx

Dropbox syncs every time you view an Office document because Office creates hidden lock files every time you open something in not-read-only mode. It's synchronizing the lock file, which is designed precisely to prevent conflicts.

I'd like a local-conflict view, yes. They do actually exist on your machine (in a hidden folder inside your Dropbox folder), Dropbox downloads all conflicts all the time. I ran across this behavior when I caused a conflict in my work TrueCrypt file - pulling a gig took a while. But the web interface is almost entirely useless for comparing such a file, or any file metadata conflicts, because you need to open it to examine the contents.

Dropbox is one of those companies I gladly hand over $10/month to.

Invaluable for backup, let alone for storage.

Hmm... so you can publicly share your mp3s and videos? Haven't we heard of this before (mp3.com)... I wonder how they'll deal with "infringement" cases from the media cartel?

As a current dropbox user, I'm a bit concerned about this functionality (since by default public means public but unlisted, it can still be shared). Hope these guys did a bit of homework here.

You can already publicly share files in Dropbox, even with those who don’t have a Dropbox account. They have to be in your “Public” folder (if you don’t have one you can create one).

Here is a link to a file in my public Dropbox folder: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/Dropbox.txt

I have never actually seen anyone share Dropbox links to pirated content. I don’t know why that is (pirates seem to use all other services which allow you to upload files) but as far as I can see, Dropbox has no big problems with piracy.

I have had my Public Folder disabled twice after sharing few non-copyrighted music sets to reddit's underground. I don't think they really care about copyright, since I did in fact have copyrighted music in my Dropbox as well that I shared only to friends, but rather by monitoring bandwidth. Dropbox isn't saying out loud what exact number is, but I figure it could be around somewhere 10GB of traffic per month per user.

That might be what makes it unattractive for pirates. I think filehosters pirates use don’t have that kind of bandwidth limitation. (If 10GB is the cap, a 600MB movie could only be downloaded about 17 times.)

I think that hosters like Rapidshare have an upload quota but no bandwidth limit. Bandwidth is limited for downloaders, not uploaders. (It’s impossible to download much without paying but an uploaded file will not become inaccessible because too many people download it.)

Rapidshare obviously makes money with piracy so they cleverly encourage it without overstepping legal boundaries. Dropbox is a very different company, I don’t think it would be good for them to be seen as a tool used be pirates which is why the cleverly discourage it.

They do say it in text if one looks....

https://www.dropbox.com/help/45

The answer is on the terms page:

You will only upload, post, submit or otherwise transmit data and/or files: (i) that you have the lawful right to use, copy, distribute, transmit, or display; or (ii) that does not infringe the intellectual property rights or violate the privacy rights of any third party. Dropbox has adopted and implemented a policy that permits the deletion of files that violate this policy, and that permits the termination in appropriate circumstances of the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe or are believed to be or are charged with repeatedly infringing the rights of copyright holders.

I really like Dropbox - the ubiquity and ease of use are great.

There's one annoying hangup tho, and this is what so far has kept me from paying for a great service I would otherwise immediately sign up for a paid account:

When you share a file/folder in your Dropbox with someone the space used counts against BOTH your quota AND the other person's quota.

This means that even if I am paying $10/month for a 50GB account, if I share a folder that has 2GB of data with a coworker or friend that only has a free account, that share immediately fills their entire quota.

Dropbox's only answer to this problem is that you should sign up for "Dropbox for teams." This is $795/year for 5 users with a shared quota. Not really an acceptable solution in my opinion.

On the other hand, if sharing didn't count towards both parties' quotas, then you could just create an army of sockpuppets, each of whom shares their 2GB folders with you. I understand that the Dropbox people don't want to make it that easy.

I'd say Dropbox can be fun for quite unusal reason - their software. Custom-built CPython with encrypted .pyc files (some of them are free software, so there's a known-plaintext) and without any useful introspection modules left. Aren't this fun?

Disclaimer: Regrettably, Dropbox TOS forbids reverse-engineering, so I didn't dare to violate them. ;) (Even though local laws here, in Russia permit some limited reverse-engineering for some conditions.)

Dropbox works in china partially. Even though it is blocked, you just need to connect to the VPN shortly, and even if you disconnect, after that it works fine.

    Share any folder or file in your Dropbox without having to 
    move it to the Public folder. So you can just right-click 
    on a file to share it.

Hmmm, I have to say, this concerns me. It seems to open up security vulnerabilities that are currently not present. I'm sure they'll do a fine job implementing it, but this makes me wary and watchful for the security of my files.

Well, it gives careless users more rope to hang themselves, but I'm not sure it changes anything in principle. The Linux version at least works by running a binary that they ship you, which runs with your uid and communicates with their servers. Short of building from source yourself (if you can get the source!), you already have to trust them to ship code which looks at only the stuff that they're supposed to be looking at, and not to be rifling through your firefox history on the side.

It's not dropbox I'm worried about, so much as the fact that a system that has the ability to make public any file at the owners direction, could be potentially exploited to make public any file without the owners direction.

Are non-public files now accessible to third parties who have the correct url? Is there code that maps encoded url's to every file in my dropbox? If so, this is a security vulnerability that is not present currently.

Non-shared files are inaccessible to anyone who isn't logged into that Dropbox account... if it's not shared by the user, it's not accessible.

Did they add yet that new feature where the software is actually updated when they release a new version? As opposed to manual update, or wait 6 months until the autoupdater decides it's time to wake up.

The desktop clients update themselves regularly and have for some time.

Dropbox is the best thing I have ever come across. It has saved my life so many times on term papers and keeps all of my school work safe. Never will a "dog eat my homework" happen again...although I suppose that the excuse does come in handy sometime... :)

+1 I love Dropbox and use it for everything. Refuse to store anything precious exclusively on my laptop.

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