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I (sadly) agree. Dropbox is such a great idea, and like many great ideas, it's ridiculously simple. As I see it, there are four key ingredients: delta transfer,
by hyperbovine 16y ago
I (sadly) agree. Dropbox is such a great idea, and like many great ideas, it's ridiculously simple. As I see it, there are four key ingredients: delta transfer, cross platform filesystem notification, the web UI, and the code needed to wire it all together.
The first is open source (librsync) and the third is pretty much a garden-variety hierarchical, AJAX-enabled database browser. You'd have to surmise that companies like Google or Amazon, with so much in-house talent, would be much better off writing the proprietary, closed-source portions from scratch than paying a hefty premium for them on the open market.
- portman 16y agoOver the last 5 years, I've used FolderShare, Live Sync, Live Mesh, and Dropbox. The first three were made by Microsoft, and they all had significant data corruption issues where from time to time files would simply disappear. I've never had that happen with Dropbox. So Microsoft has made three attempts to do what Dropbox does and has still not succeeded. I think there's more to it than what you're proposing. Specifically, I think you're missing key ingredient #5, file conflict resolution.
- rbarooah 16y agoFolderShare wasn't made by microsoft - it was built by ByteTaxi, the people behind the legendary AudioGalaxy using the same engine. It was the dropbox of its day. The issues began after Microsoft purchased and then neglected it.