Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Dropbox vs. Linux

[Nicolás Ortega Froysa]

On Sun, Aug 12, 2018 at 07:46:15PM -0400, Arthur Torrey wrote:
> I will say that I am a bit perplexed by the description of what DropBox is 
> supposedly doing.  My understanding has always been that all the file 
> handling was done by the O/S (Gnu/Linux or other) in a transparent manner - 
> you (a program) requests read/write on a file and the O/S handles it through 
> the file system driver such that it always looks the same to the requester... 
>  If so, how how would DropBox even know what file system you were using, let 
> alone care???

When I heard the news I too was a bit confused. Generally, Dropbox
shouldn't need to support anything. The only interfaces that I believe
Dropbox would have to deal with are those involving file
editing/creation/deletion, which do not change since based on filesystem
because (as you mention) the kernel takes care of that. When I write a
program in C, even if I want to do something ultra specific and
therefore use some of the `sys/' header files, it would still be
universal to every supported Linux filesystem. What is the most
perplexing is that they're not using it as an excuse to drop Linux
entirely (which would actually just mean it's a business decision and
they needed a cheap excuse), but rather they plan to continue support
for ext4, but 'not' anything else. It was pointed out to me that,
perhaps, they are not getting enough GNU/Linux users that are paying for
premium packages, and therefore it may have been a business decision to
attempt to reduce the number of GNU/Linux users.

I would actually be curious to see if, despite what Dropbox says
officially, the software still continued to function on all other Linux
filesystems.

-- 
Nicolás Ortega Froysa
https://themusicinnoise.net/
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