Talk:Dropbox

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Dropbox article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Notability

I wrote a stub article that was flagged for speedy deletion within 60 seconds of entry. I immediately went back to put a {{hangon}} note at the top, but it was already deleted. I still have the text and I have written a more complete entry. However, before I post an expanded version of the article, I want to make sure it doesn't receive the same speedy deletion treatment. The article should survive the speedy deletion criteria for the following reasons:

The entry was not an advertisement. The content was informational. I am in no way connected with the company.
The entry is necessary to clear up confusion between Dropbox the storage service and Dropbox the rock band. The page for the band currently has a link to Dropbox (storage provider) but there was no article.
The article is noteworthy, and similar storage providers such as Mozy or XDrive have pages.

Peter (talk) 19:09, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like sound reasoning to me. If you recreate the page, there shouldn't be a problem. In the future, consider writing the page locally, for example in your word processor, so that it has a bit more content, then publishing it, to avoid confusion like this in the future. Thanks for your contributions! Happy editing! Pip (talk) 05:33, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Pip. Peter (talk) 03:16, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deletionism is a plague. This is why I don't submit new articles to Wikipedia. Get rid of those control freaks.--87.162.10.120 (talk) 11:00, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fo real. 128.208.95.191 (talk) 22:37, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

License

I updated the license label in according to the COPYING file found in the source package of DropBox. user:vuln —Preceding undated comment added 04:25, 17 April 2009 (UTC).[reply]

I would not say that Dropbox is GNU-complient. The website says: "dropboxd is a per-user closed-source daemon process that makes sure your $HOME/Dropbox directory is properly synchronized with your other computers and our secure backend. nautilus-dropbox is a GPL'd Nautilus plugin that connects to dropboxd (via a pair of Unix domain sockets) and presents a GUI based on the information dropboxd provides." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.99.21.83 (talk) 14:29, 19 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dropbox is licensed under GPL v3 on both client and server, as it use GPL v3 libraries.

Limitations

On the current article it's written: "The major limitation of the Dropbox system is that only files in the Dropbox folder are backed up and synced.".... how is that a limitation? that's the way the program it's supposed to work. You have a box.. you drop files in it.. and they go into the internet... so the fact that the program does what it's supposed to do is a limitation?

And you can actually get around that with some googling, just did. :) http://lifehacker.com/5154698/sync-files-and-folders-outside-your-my-dropbox-folder 85.225.146.44 (talk) 23:24, 29 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But that doesnt work on Windows since you cant make symlinks... Luka666 (talk) 21:33, 6 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The limitation is that you can't back up program data, since the program itself more often than not chooses where to store the files for you. So, that makes backing up things like email, and application preferences impossible without something like the previously mentioned symbolic links. Also, Luka666, you can make symlinks on Windows; it's actually the first example in that Lifehacker article. Anunnakki (talk) 22:24, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

But the program is not supposed to work as a backup service. It's a storage service on the cloud. I don't understand you should say the program has a limitation about something that is not supposed to be a feature from it. Hey... Dropbox as a limitation because it can't make me breakfast!

History and alternatives

I really don't think we need to keep expanding that list of alternatives. There really don't need to be more than one or two examples. I'm not even sure "alternatives" should be a part of that section. For readers that are curious about alternatives to Dropbox, the link to the list of backup services is at the bottom of the page. If there are no objections, I'll remove the "alternatives" part of that section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anunnakki (talk • contribs) 22:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Correct. I would have performed the same action. Them From Space 21:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Security

I don't understand what "Zero-knowledge proof encryption" means. The phrase only gets 3 hits on Google and they all come from this article, which makes me think that this is just nonsense. Please explain better what this is supposed to say. -- LM 2010-01-12 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.173.130.126 (talk) 14:11, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Did you click on it and read the article? That worked pretty well for me. If there were any concern over the inclusion of it in this article, I would say it's the lack of a solid reference. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Anunnakki (talk) 03:39, 13 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]