Even though this is an old discussion, I would still like to add a few
things to it. I'm a systems administrator and I believe most of my kind
would agree with me when I say that installing binaries in a user folder
is bad practice in general. I work in an organization where Dropbox is
used by a lot of people on both Windows and Linux systems, mostly
because it's a convenient way for people to share files with other
people outside of the organisation.

It's really annoying to find that there are still software developers
who think they have the right to work around well established policies
that are there for the stablility, security and managability of computer
systems, with the argument that it's more convenient for unpriveleged
users to be able to update the software on their own. I'm glad to see a
Debian maintainer take action against this and come up with a solution
that works, shame the Dropbox people feel a need to work against him or
at least not cooperate.

I tried to make the same case almost a year ago on
https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=54778 but that was for the
Windows installer of Dropbox. It seems the same goes for the Linux
client. In our organisation we try to keep the crap that gets into the
users' space to a minimum, wether it's their Linux homedirectory or
their Windows profile. That is for the benefit of both our users and our
sysadmins.

I'm actually wondering why Dropbox isn't bundeling their binaries in
their .deb package in the first place. They already have a repository in
place to do this, and that way upgrading is done automatically with the
regular system updates. This would be easier to maintain for everyone,
because in a professional organisation updated should be automated
anyway with no need for intervention from regular users, while at home
the primary user of any machine would be the administrator of that
machine anyway.

In any case, Raphaƫl keep up the good work and I hope the Dropbox people
will be more forthcoming with a solution soon.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/909488

Title:
  nautilus-dropbox forbids dropbox's non-free binaries to replace
  themselves by properly installing dropbox system-wide

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