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What I am confused by is what they think will happen to revenue. Step 1: "You can now use dropbox in fewer scenarios than before" Step 2: ??? Step 3: More cust

What I am confused by is what they think will happen to revenue. Step 1: "You can now use dropbox in fewer scenarios than before" Step 2: ??? Step 3: More customers paying more money Dropbox is paid for and used in various places I work and personally because of the Linux support. (Their competitors ignore Linux for some reason.) In my case step 2 is going to be them losing at least $1,000 in annual revenue. And they won't have that the next year either (ie recurring revenue). Nor will they be part of future options for work or personal.

brazzy 8y ago
Step 2: use the 20% developer manpower required to support filesystems used by 2% of the userbase to instead better support the other 98%.
- freehunter 8y ago
  Step 3: $13b company cries over $1000/yr loss of revenue.
  - nitrogen 8y ago
    This type of snarky dismissal gets pretty old.
    - godzillabrennus 8y ago
      Not as old as someone publishing a blog with the title "This is the year of Desktop Linux". Seriously. No company this large can justify supporting a fringe operating system to their investors and shareholders. In a perfect world they would open source what they did to support it so others could pick up the work and integrate it into other products. Oh well.
      - rogerbinns 8y ago
        Of course my example is essentially irrelevant in isolation. But you do should understand that Dropbox is different than their competitors. Dropbox are the only ones who support Linux. Google Drive, Box, OneDrive etc do not support Linux (random partial featured third party clients do not count.) In places (eg tech) where there is a Linux user base (eg the developers, devops etc) then Dropbox was the main realistic solution for the whole company. It is now just a random entry in that list, and there is no compelling reason to chose them over the others. Heck Google and Microsoft become the top choices simply because that is where the user accounts, email, calendars and then docs end up. We don't know just how big this "Linux" group is and it certainly is small (your point). I believe the resulting effect will be larger than Dropbox expected. For example the Windows users I collaborate with do so using Dropbox because I use that for Linux. Dropbox might think they are losing me as one user, but they are also going to lose those Windows users too (they find OneDrive far more convenient as it is already there on Windows and in your Microsoft account). I'd also argue that in aggregate Linux users are more technical and more likely to be influencers. So again that is more future revenue dropbox won't get, unless they get better than their competitors. Recurring revenue is hurt and helped much in the same way as compound interest works. As you add up the missed revenue over the years, it does get to be a big number. And that money likely went to someone else strengthening them. Remember that Dropbox grew essentially by word of mouth. They are going to lose some of that. The open source approach would be nice, but I am skeptical. Why would a developer spend their time helping dropbox (the server side won't be open source), and not something completely open? The Linux clients done as 3rd party projects for their competitors seem to be far less complete and reliable compared to the vendor implementation. TLDR: Dropbox did have a unique selling point in their Linux support. Without it they are indistinguishable from their competitors.
        freehunter 8y ago
        I'm going to make the argument that Dropbox doesn't support Windows, because they don't support FAT32. That's just as true as your argument that they don't support Linux, because they very much do still support Linux.
        8y ago
    - freehunter 8y ago
      What really gets old is seeing: News headline - "Company removes X feature" Hacker News comment - "Company is sure to lose customers over this!" News headline - "Company reports record profits" If Dropbox really wanted to save some money, they'd fire their accountants and just rely on armchair HN comments to tell them how well their financials are doing.

brazzy 8y ago

Step 2: use the 20% developer manpower required to support filesystems used by 2% of the userbase to instead better support the other 98%.

freehunter 8y ago
Step 3: $13b company cries over $1000/yr loss of revenue.
- nitrogen 8y ago
  This type of snarky dismissal gets pretty old.
  - godzillabrennus 8y ago
    Not as old as someone publishing a blog with the title "This is the year of Desktop Linux". Seriously. No company this large can justify supporting a fringe operating system to their investors and shareholders. In a perfect world they would open source what they did to support it so others could pick up the work and integrate it into other products. Oh well.
    - rogerbinns 8y ago
      Of course my example is essentially irrelevant in isolation. But you do should understand that Dropbox is different than their competitors. Dropbox are the only ones who support Linux. Google Drive, Box, OneDrive etc do not support Linux (random partial featured third party clients do not count.) In places (eg tech) where there is a Linux user base (eg the developers, devops etc) then Dropbox was the main realistic solution for the whole company. It is now just a random entry in that list, and there is no compelling reason to chose them over the others. Heck Google and Microsoft become the top choices simply because that is where the user accounts, email, calendars and then docs end up. We don't know just how big this "Linux" group is and it certainly is small (your point). I believe the resulting effect will be larger than Dropbox expected. For example the Windows users I collaborate with do so using Dropbox because I use that for Linux. Dropbox might think they are losing me as one user, but they are also going to lose those Windows users too (they find OneDrive far more convenient as it is already there on Windows and in your Microsoft account). I'd also argue that in aggregate Linux users are more technical and more likely to be influencers. So again that is more future revenue dropbox won't get, unless they get better than their competitors. Recurring revenue is hurt and helped much in the same way as compound interest works. As you add up the missed revenue over the years, it does get to be a big number. And that money likely went to someone else strengthening them. Remember that Dropbox grew essentially by word of mouth. They are going to lose some of that. The open source approach would be nice, but I am skeptical. Why would a developer spend their time helping dropbox (the server side won't be open source), and not something completely open? The Linux clients done as 3rd party projects for their competitors seem to be far less complete and reliable compared to the vendor implementation. TLDR: Dropbox did have a unique selling point in their Linux support. Without it they are indistinguishable from their competitors.
      - freehunter 8y ago
        I'm going to make the argument that Dropbox doesn't support Windows, because they don't support FAT32. That's just as true as your argument that they don't support Linux, because they very much do still support Linux.
        8y ago
  - freehunter 8y ago
    What really gets old is seeing: News headline - "Company removes X feature" Hacker News comment - "Company is sure to lose customers over this!" News headline - "Company reports record profits" If Dropbox really wanted to save some money, they'd fire their accountants and just rely on armchair HN comments to tell them how well their financials are doing.