Earlier quoted context omitted.
And also how people on HN sometimes have trouble putting themselves in the shoes of others. The 2nd top comment is a perfect example: > 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.
One learns a lot in 8 years, it turns out. To be fair, I was making an argument that it was trivial to replicate, and it was... Ubuntu, Google, Microsoft, and several others did just that. Kudos to Dropbox for their unanticipated (by me, anyway) staying power.
I didn't mean to call you out personally. I think we've all made that mistake before. My point was more that even if something is technically replicable, there is value in making it super easy for the non-technical user.