Open source, open standard, end-to-end transmission, and the server only does peer-matching (and you manage your own server if you're truly paranoid).
I've had success with OwnCloud as an opensource replacement for Dropbox. Buy a VPS from DigitalOcean or RamNode, and you get a more libre and cheaper Dropbox that you can control at all levels.
However. The privacy level is around the same as on Dropbox. Your hosting company can read your files. And the average Joe probably does a worse job securing his VPS then Dropbox does at securing theirs.
OwnCloud is really aimed at small companies or tech users. Average Joe can't really set up his own OwnCloud instance. Way too technical.
One downside of BTS is that for most consumer internet connections download is much faster than upload. Once you get your file to dropbox you can download it on all your other devices at your much faster download rate.
I guess you didn't read the part of the article about over-the-LAN syncing.
So he goes from dropbox to 3 different paid services (bts, crash plan, iPhoto) and only compares the price to one of them and says he is saving a lot of money and hassle?