Also to note, Dropbox was likely inspired by the open source Unison file-synchronization tool. So they have to handle all of the shortcomings and caveats that U

Also to note, Dropbox was likely inspired by the open source Unison file-synchronization tool. So they have to handle all of the shortcomings and caveats that Unison does not handle out of the box: Caveats: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download/releases/stable/unison-manual.html#caveats https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download/releases... Symbolic links: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download/releases/stable/unison-manual.html#symlinks https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download/releases... Permissions: https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download/releases/stable/unison-manual.html#perms https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download/releases... Cross platform issues (unsupported characters across operating systems and file systems): https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download/releases/stable/unison-manual.html#crossplatform https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/download/releases... Edit: Inspired by the the Unison Spec (published on 2004) which may be why we have conflict files etc. when using Dropbox http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/papers/unisonspec.pdf http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/papers/unisonspec.pdf