5 ms·

This doesn't seem any worse than Chrome continually updating itself.

by cdransf 10y ago

threeseed 10y ago
Or Office, Creative Suite or dozens of other major applications.
- samastur 10y ago
  Microsoft Office does not autoupdate. It notifies you of an update, but you have to confirm the transfer and installation. At least that's how it works on my Mac.
  - cprecioso 10y ago
    On Windows, it updates through Windows Update (which you can moderately control) or through their own App-V/Click-To-Run thing, that updates transparently
  - acdha 10y ago
    That's because they don't have a robust self-update feature for the Microsoft Updater app. They added an automatic update mode and it appears to be on by default now, which is probably good given the number of exploits Office has had over the years.
- Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
  Adobe software is a notorious offender for intrusive background updater processes. It's not exactly something to aspire to.
eps 10y ago
Both of them doing that in mandatory fashion is unacceptable. I might be OK with running this bit of their code on my computer, but it's not an open bar for dropping anything executable onto my machine at will.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jhasse 10y ago
  > Both of them doing that in mandatory fashion is unacceptable. Don't install their apps then. There are lots of alternatives out there.
  - danieldk 10y ago
    So, what is a good alternative to Dropbox that supports LAN sync, block-level uploads [1], revisions, and that most of my colleagues, friends and friends have or can set up? If you actually look at the competition, most of them do not have LAN sync or block sync (OneDrive, Google Drive), they do not have proper support for revisions (Resilio Sync), or are hard to set up for most people (Syncthing). [1] So that if I change a small piece of a large file, it does not upload the complete file again.
    - OskarS 10y ago
      There is probably no product with the exact feature set of Dropbox. But if you want to take the principled stand, you'll have to live with that. You can't be all "refuse closed-source autoupdating software, it is evil! Richard Stallman was right all along!" and then complain about you not getting the features that those products offer. That's the price you pay for your principles.
    - aroch 10y ago
      Seafile works pretty well, they install a client a lot like the Dropbox client and sync away. And it is even mostly open source seafile.com https://github.com/haiwen/seafile https://github.com/haiwen/seafile
      - jhasse 10y ago
        Why only "mostly"?
libeclipse 10y ago
In chrome you have the option to disable the auto update feature - an option that is noticeably missing here.
- derefr 10y ago
  Chrome is a program that has standalone functionality where the program would still do useful work without updating. The Dropbox sync service, on the other hand, is literally just the client half of Dropbox's own proprietary backend. If Dropbox makes an ABI-incompatible change to their sync protocol on the server side, the non-updated client will just break until you update. Wanting to disable updates to such a service, would be like wanting to load the old version of a webapp SPA whenever you visit the site. What's the point? It's not going to (have been designed to) work that way.
  - libeclipse 10y ago
    Auto-updates != No updates
  - saurik 10y ago
    Websites are sandboxed sufficiently that they aren't supposed to be able to do anything crazy to my computer or access any of my data as new versions come out: the same is not true of Dropbox. I don't want some system automatically upgrading the code running on my computer. I want to be able to download new code for my computer and choose to install it. This means that if there's a bug introduced by the new software in my workflow, I have at least some chance in hell of knowing what caused the issue: "oh yeah, I just upgraded Dropbox"; when Dropbox just upgrades itself, one day my computer just starts being unstable, and I'm essentially screwed. This is markedly different (and worse) than Chrome updating itself, as Chrome doesn't inject itself into other random processes or extend the functionality of other parts of my computer: if Chrome upgrades itself into something broken, I will almost certainly be able to notice when I start by closing everything that I'm running, one by one. Software that automatically upgrades itself is also subject to targeted attacks: maybe one day I, and only I, get targeted with a new version of Dropbox, maybe not even being sent to me by Dropbox (due to some MITM-able flaw in their upgrade system) that is actually spyware. When I manually download new software on my schedule, particularly if I'm downloading it manually with a web browser, especially so if I download it once "anonymously" and reuse the download on all of my computers, I can feel a lot safer that I'm not being targetted. This is just so so so fundamentally different than a new version of a web site :/.
marssaxman 10y ago
Well, that's pretty bad already, and one of the reasons I'm not interested in using Chrome, but no, it doesn't seem any worse.

This doesn't seem any worse than Chrome continually updating itself.

by cdransf 10y ago

This doesn't seem any worse than Chrome continually updating itself.

threeseed 10y ago

Or Office, Creative Suite or dozens of other major applications.

samastur 10y ago
Microsoft Office does not autoupdate. It notifies you of an update, but you have to confirm the transfer and installation. At least that's how it works on my Mac.
- cprecioso 10y ago
  On Windows, it updates through Windows Update (which you can moderately control) or through their own App-V/Click-To-Run thing, that updates transparently
- acdha 10y ago
  That's because they don't have a robust self-update feature for the Microsoft Updater app. They added an automatic update mode and it appears to be on by default now, which is probably good given the number of exploits Office has had over the years.
Doctor_Fegg 10y ago
Adobe software is a notorious offender for intrusive background updater processes. It's not exactly something to aspire to.

eps 10y ago

Both of them doing that in mandatory fashion is unacceptable. I might be OK with running this bit of their code on my computer, but it's not an open bar for dropping anything executable onto my machine at will.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jhasse 10y ago
> Both of them doing that in mandatory fashion is unacceptable. Don't install their apps then. There are lots of alternatives out there.
- danieldk 10y ago
  So, what is a good alternative to Dropbox that supports LAN sync, block-level uploads [1], revisions, and that most of my colleagues, friends and friends have or can set up? If you actually look at the competition, most of them do not have LAN sync or block sync (OneDrive, Google Drive), they do not have proper support for revisions (Resilio Sync), or are hard to set up for most people (Syncthing). [1] So that if I change a small piece of a large file, it does not upload the complete file again.
  - OskarS 10y ago
    There is probably no product with the exact feature set of Dropbox. But if you want to take the principled stand, you'll have to live with that. You can't be all "refuse closed-source autoupdating software, it is evil! Richard Stallman was right all along!" and then complain about you not getting the features that those products offer. That's the price you pay for your principles.
  - aroch 10y ago
    Seafile works pretty well, they install a client a lot like the Dropbox client and sync away. And it is even mostly open source seafile.com https://github.com/haiwen/seafile https://github.com/haiwen/seafile
    - jhasse 10y ago
      Why only "mostly"?

libeclipse 10y ago

In chrome you have the option to disable the auto update feature - an option that is noticeably missing here.

derefr 10y ago
Chrome is a program that has standalone functionality where the program would still do useful work without updating. The Dropbox sync service, on the other hand, is literally just the client half of Dropbox's own proprietary backend. If Dropbox makes an ABI-incompatible change to their sync protocol on the server side, the non-updated client will just break until you update. Wanting to disable updates to such a service, would be like wanting to load the old version of a webapp SPA whenever you visit the site. What's the point? It's not going to (have been designed to) work that way.
- libeclipse 10y ago
  Auto-updates != No updates
- saurik 10y ago
  Websites are sandboxed sufficiently that they aren't supposed to be able to do anything crazy to my computer or access any of my data as new versions come out: the same is not true of Dropbox. I don't want some system automatically upgrading the code running on my computer. I want to be able to download new code for my computer and choose to install it. This means that if there's a bug introduced by the new software in my workflow, I have at least some chance in hell of knowing what caused the issue: "oh yeah, I just upgraded Dropbox"; when Dropbox just upgrades itself, one day my computer just starts being unstable, and I'm essentially screwed. This is markedly different (and worse) than Chrome updating itself, as Chrome doesn't inject itself into other random processes or extend the functionality of other parts of my computer: if Chrome upgrades itself into something broken, I will almost certainly be able to notice when I start by closing everything that I'm running, one by one. Software that automatically upgrades itself is also subject to targeted attacks: maybe one day I, and only I, get targeted with a new version of Dropbox, maybe not even being sent to me by Dropbox (due to some MITM-able flaw in their upgrade system) that is actually spyware. When I manually download new software on my schedule, particularly if I'm downloading it manually with a web browser, especially so if I download it once "anonymously" and reuse the download on all of my computers, I can feel a lot safer that I'm not being targetted. This is just so so so fundamentally different than a new version of a web site :/.

marssaxman 10y ago

Well, that's pretty bad already, and one of the reasons I'm not interested in using Chrome, but no, it doesn't seem any worse.