If Sparkleshare develops some momentum, you could easily see third-parties compete to offer Sparkleshare storage as a service, in a similar manner to how Dropbox works today.
But you'd only introduce more variables for the enduser. All of a sudden you'd have to decide which third-party service to sign up for, and many of them might just be a guy in a basement running the service to pay for college tuition. You'd have to check up on this before you know for sure.
The complete setup procedure for dropbox is as follows:
1) Navigate to dropbox.com
2) click download
3) doubleclick the file when you're done downloading
This is very hard to compete with in terms of ease of use. No strange choices to make, no weird preferences to fill out, no problems. It just works.
Sure, but dropbox themselves aren't exactly a blue chip corporation with a long-established reputation. There's no need for additional third-party configuration, either: $X.com could easily host a custom build of SparkleShare configured for their site. Hence, the straightforward installation process you describe could work equally well with s/dropbox/$foo/g.
> All of a sudden you'd have to decide which third-party service to sign up for, and many of them might just be a guy in a basement running the service to pay for college tuition. You'd have to check up on this before you know for sure.
Isn't this the same for everything? What you seem to be advocating is that we centralize everything so that no one has to think or research when making purchases.
> This is very hard to compete with in terms of ease of use. No strange choices to make, no weird preferences to fill out, no problems. It just works.
But you have to decide to use DropBox in the first place. The crux of your argument seems to be that DropBox is easy because they are the only choice.
Using that logic, one could make the case that the entire Internet should run off of a single email provider with branded client software.
Basically my point is that, however you cut it, this service introduces complexity because you have to set up a server.
What makes dropbox so successful is the utter simplicity of something that used to be hard. The internet is littered with companies that have tried to solve this problem but didn't gain traction because it didn't just work. Dropbox is (to my knowledge) the first service of its kind that you install and forget. The thing that most people forget on HN is that 95% of the population don't even know what a server is - and they don't care.
The thing is, sadly, that open source has a pretty dismal track record of creating software that is easy and intuitive to use. There are many reasons for this. One is that open source software tends to be targeted towards developers instead of end users. Another is that it's often design by committee and mailing lists.
I'm not saying that this project doesn't have merit, or that it wont work. I'm just saying that they'll never be able to target my mom.
Exactly, right now dropbox is 9.95/month for 2Gig and frankly overpriced. I would love to have that right now at 1.99/month. Maybe unreasonable... but I like competition.
Uninformed question...I assume dropbox syncs machines via their server (ie: all data is synched up to their server first, then back down?) Or does it do peer to peer? (and if so, $9.95/50GB seems really expensive.) While less reliable, this would save them tons of bandwidth, and while it wouldn't work for some people, for me it would be perfect as I always have at least one machine that is on the net that would suffice for my master.
They sync directly to other machines over LAN and also send the files to their servers.
Bandwidth is saved through other means. The files are split up into chunks for which they compare hashes. If a chunk has already been uploaded to their servers by ANY Dropbox user it won't get reuploaded again.
This is especially effective for media sharing, because lots of people will download the same torrents and put them in their Dropbox folders to watch somewhere else.
Comments
If Sparkleshare develops some momentum, you could easily see third-parties compete to offer Sparkleshare storage as a service, in a similar manner to how Dropbox works today.
You could.
But you'd only introduce more variables for the enduser. All of a sudden you'd have to decide which third-party service to sign up for, and many of them might just be a guy in a basement running the service to pay for college tuition. You'd have to check up on this before you know for sure.
The complete setup procedure for dropbox is as follows:
1) Navigate to dropbox.com
2) click download
3) doubleclick the file when you're done downloading
This is very hard to compete with in terms of ease of use. No strange choices to make, no weird preferences to fill out, no problems. It just works.
Sure, but dropbox themselves aren't exactly a blue chip corporation with a long-established reputation. There's no need for additional third-party configuration, either: $X.com could easily host a custom build of SparkleShare configured for their site. Hence, the straightforward installation process you describe could work equally well with s/dropbox/$foo/g.
It is a Y Combinator backed company, and has some reputation.
> All of a sudden you'd have to decide which third-party service to sign up for, and many of them might just be a guy in a basement running the service to pay for college tuition. You'd have to check up on this before you know for sure.
Isn't this the same for everything? What you seem to be advocating is that we centralize everything so that no one has to think or research when making purchases.
> This is very hard to compete with in terms of ease of use. No strange choices to make, no weird preferences to fill out, no problems. It just works.
But you have to decide to use DropBox in the first place. The crux of your argument seems to be that DropBox is easy because they are the only choice.
Using that logic, one could make the case that the entire Internet should run off of a single email provider with branded client software.
Basically my point is that, however you cut it, this service introduces complexity because you have to set up a server.
What makes dropbox so successful is the utter simplicity of something that used to be hard. The internet is littered with companies that have tried to solve this problem but didn't gain traction because it didn't just work. Dropbox is (to my knowledge) the first service of its kind that you install and forget. The thing that most people forget on HN is that 95% of the population don't even know what a server is - and they don't care.
The thing is, sadly, that open source has a pretty dismal track record of creating software that is easy and intuitive to use. There are many reasons for this. One is that open source software tends to be targeted towards developers instead of end users. Another is that it's often design by committee and mailing lists.
I'm not saying that this project doesn't have merit, or that it wont work. I'm just saying that they'll never be able to target my mom.
Exactly, right now dropbox is 9.95/month for 2Gig and frankly overpriced. I would love to have that right now at 1.99/month. Maybe unreasonable... but I like competition.
Well, $9.95/month for 50GB, but I agree that some competition would be welcome.
$9.95/month for 50GB seems a bit steep to me.
Uninformed question...I assume dropbox syncs machines via their server (ie: all data is synched up to their server first, then back down?) Or does it do peer to peer? (and if so, $9.95/50GB seems really expensive.) While less reliable, this would save them tons of bandwidth, and while it wouldn't work for some people, for me it would be perfect as I always have at least one machine that is on the net that would suffice for my master.
They do both.
They sync directly to other machines over LAN and also send the files to their servers. Bandwidth is saved through other means. The files are split up into chunks for which they compare hashes. If a chunk has already been uploaded to their servers by ANY Dropbox user it won't get reuploaded again. This is especially effective for media sharing, because lots of people will download the same torrents and put them in their Dropbox folders to watch somewhere else.
Downvoted because dropbox is a y-combinator spawn, or we don't like competition?
How would you like 2G for free? Because that's actually the deal with Dropbox. No charge unless you want >2G.
I meant 50 gig - the paid account.