Here's a question (that probably only Dropbox themselves can answer, until this change comes down the pipe)--the email said this:
> After July 31, we will no longer create Public folders in any new Dropbox accounts.
Now, I've deleted my Public folder before, and it seems that recreating a folder named Public in the Dropbox root and restarting the sync daemon was all that was needed to convert it back into "the" Public folder.
So, for those new users, will this change mean that "the folder named Public will no longer have special-cased semantics, unless a flag is set on your account saying you're grandfathered into the old behavior", or does this change mean "we'll leave in the code that makes the Public folder work the way it does--but just not generate one for new users when setting up their dropbox, so they must explicitly create it themselves?" It seems to me that the latter is the most simple/elegant option, technically, and the one I'd go for if I was a Dropbox engineer and hadn't specifically been told to make it impossible for people to use Public folders from now on.
From what's been said in the forums and implied in that email they sent to API users, they're leaving the functionality in and just no longer creating the folder on install.
My question is: How long is that functionality going to stick around for legacy users after it's been hidden by default?
> After July 31, we will no longer create Public folders in any new Dropbox accounts.
Now, I've deleted my Public folder before, and it seems that recreating a folder named Public in the Dropbox root and restarting the sync daemon was all that was needed to convert it back into "the" Public folder.
So, for those new users, will this change mean that "the folder named Public will no longer have special-cased semantics, unless a flag is set on your account saying you're grandfathered into the old behavior", or does this change mean "we'll leave in the code that makes the Public folder work the way it does--but just not generate one for new users when setting up their dropbox, so they must explicitly create it themselves?" It seems to me that the latter is the most simple/elegant option, technically, and the one I'd go for if I was a Dropbox engineer and hadn't specifically been told to make it impossible for people to use Public folders from now on.