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You're paying for a service that auto syncs your data across multiple devices efficiently and keeps versioned backups of everything. The fact that they currently use s3 for storage is an implementation detail.

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So basically it's the same as rsync and a little scripting, but without commands and scriptability? I don't use Dropbox so I'm curious. I'd like to know if they're offering something to paying customers that S3 does not, apart from their particular combination of python and rsync. If we just focus on storage is Dropbox more expensive? If yes, by how much? I think this is a valid question.

If you just focus on storage, yes, Dropbox is more expensive.

But this is kind of like saying iOS is just an expensive closed variant of FreeBSD.

Since I'm not drawing a salary from Dropbox's marketing division, I'm not going to go in depth here but I'll just say that Dropbox can be used easily and efficiently by normal people who have never seen a command line. Whereas your home brew python+rsync scripts can only be used by nerds like us.

It would be interesting to see how your homegrown sync solution works on various operating systems (desktop + mobile) and offers a web-based UI to do the same on the go.

Maybe you discover the sarcasm in my comment. ;)

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