> For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
Which is 100% true. And it's also true Dropbox was a great product because it provided this functionality for the vast majority of the population who don't have the time or interest to learn all those tools.
You missed the point. It's usability rather than functionality. I can 100% do all of this but there is no chance I would choose this over OneDrive/Dropbox etc.
Although there are new functionalities from Dropbox -- (easy) online access, apps, preview, on-demand access, (presumably) redundancy on the server etc
i just remembered how FTP server was built-in in Windows, easy to set up, and IPs were public, so yeah, it was easy to share a local folder directly (but you had to know what you're doing anyway, and same for the other person).
> For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863