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Comment by kjksf | Hacker News Reader

This is (yet another) "Dropbox replacement" project publicized in HN that grossly misunderstands what Dropbox is, why it's popular and is not a "replacement" in any meaningful way.

Here are just a few characteristics of Dropbox that this project doesn't have:

* cross-platform (windows, mac, linux)

* an easy to setup GUI client that is possible to setup by people who don't necessarily know how to enable inotify in linux kernel or copy autosync.py to location in $PATH

* won't fall over when a merge conflict happens (and a merge conflict will happen and even I, who uses git daily, would be unable to resolve it)

We are good at extrapolating and making connections but in this case extrapolating from "files, sync" to "my linux-only python script is a replacement of Dropbox" is about as valid as extrapolating from "wheels" to "my home made unicycle is a replacement of Toyota Prius".

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At least he's making something. We should foster an atmosphere of encouragement, even if the idea seems silly. Who knows what it could grow into one day?

You might not have intended to be so mean-spirited. I know I've sounded that way in the past. What helped me was to offer some kind of suggestions for improvement along with whatever criticisms I was dishing out. (Rather than just pointing out all of the flaws.)

My suggestion for improvement would be:

"Don't advertise your project as a 'Dropbox Replacement' unless you actually are."

I think he advertised it as a 'Personal Dropbox Replacement' which suggests he probably just made it for himself and is releasing it to everyone if they wish to use it.

This project is open-source, has no domain name of it's own, no fancy video explaining how it works, no bullet-points explaining why people should dump Dropbox and start using his project, and the author doesn't seem intent on making money from it by advertising it as a 'personal Dropbox Replacement'. It's quite evident that only programmers are going to use this product, considering the dependencies and relative complexity of install procedure.

I don't see anything wrong with the way he has advertised his project as a 'Personal Dropbox Replacement'

Same as iPod/iPhone/iPad/Facebook/Twitter/email killer. You can call yourself the iPad killer after you've killed the iPad.

Criticism is a thing that's hard to do right.

If you're too kind, they think you aren't serious or are stupid, and they ignore it.

If you're too mean, people berate you for being mean.

Criticism is extremely valuable to a developer and they should be able to overlook any insults (intended or accidental) and absorb the mean of the criticism.

In this case, the criticism is that the project doesn't work as advertised. It is -not- a 'replacement for Dropbox'. You could probably stretch as far as 'Dropbox-like personal storage system using Git' or some such, but even mentioning Dropbox is iffy, since their whole model is user-friendliness.

These clones demonstrate why Dropbox is such a good idea imo. Good ideas are ones that make people think "that's easy, I could do that in a weekend!" Dropbox is great because it isn't just a really good idea, it's also a fantastic implementation.

The title alone says much about the simplicity of the product. "Dropbox" is more friendly and much easier to remember than the name of "DVCS-Autosync".

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