For a Linux user, you can 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
What I find interesting that many think before dropbox the only other option was FTP, while in fact there were other cloud based storage providers with good integration on the desktop such as virtual disk drive on Windows, even in late 90s. Dropbox won with PR/marketing I believe. Can anyone list what differentiated them compared to exiting solutions, besides marketing?
Even if you could get the above working yourself, good luck trying to get someone else to so you can collaborate on a project.
Developers often dismiss ‘marketing’ as though it is just a fluffy icon or slick website, but how a product is positioned (in Dropbox case for ease of use and the fact that the project is engineered to ‘feel like a folder’) is absolutely marketing and critical to its success.
I meant there were (and still are?) consumer products with simple installers (next > next) which were integrated on Windows as an extra disk - no need to create it manually. Syncing was just that - drag & drop to that disk/folder.
