> You are right: Dropbox's behavior with regard to symlinks is fundamentally wrong.
What's even worse, is that no matter how hard I try, I am not able to convince most people of how wrong this is--even those who claim to be and should be computer savy. E.g., on support forums for other sync services, users are typically clamoring for Dropbox-style syncing of symlinks, and they will not be convinced otherwise, in spite of all reason. And despite 30 years of hard-earned experience with symlinks that irrefutably demonstrates that transparent syncing of symlinks is nothing but badness.
Yeah but the real problem, the ones users are trying to solve is the limits on having to move everything into one sync folder. Transparent symlinks are the cheap fix for them so that they can keep their files where they want and still have them sync. The better solution would be to just allow any folder(s) to be synced but none of the major cloud sync providers seem to want to enable that.
> The better solution would be to just allow any folder(s) to be synced but none of the major cloud sync providers seem to want to enable that.
This correct solution is precisely what BitTorrent Sync provides. So that's all the more reason to be thankful that a seemingly excellent sync solution has finally arrived.
Have a look at https://www.cubby.com/. It syncs existing folders you want to, and per synced folder you can decide to use their cloud or sync directly.
What's even worse, is that no matter how hard I try, I am not able to convince most people of how wrong this is--even those who claim to be and should be computer savy. E.g., on support forums for other sync services, users are typically clamoring for Dropbox-style syncing of symlinks, and they will not be convinced otherwise, in spite of all reason. And despite 30 years of hard-earned experience with symlinks that irrefutably demonstrates that transparent syncing of symlinks is nothing but badness.
But thank goodness that BitTorrent got it right!