Sadly, most Americans don&#x27;t hold themselves responsible for the actions of our duly elected leaders. It&#x27;s how we sleep at night.brb, dropping Dropbox...

So you also never eat ketchup as well, right? What about making sure that you never buy gasoline from a major, evil gas producer? Are all of your clothing options carefully selected and verified as to not benefit from child labor? And, of course, you didn&#x27;t write that message on an Apple product, since they are assembled in what are essentially slave labor camps?

I didn&#x27;t know they were on the board of directors of Dropbox. Very interesting.Yes: a large percentage of the politicians in power today are responsible for the heinous crimes against humanity being committed, even yet daily, in the name of the American people - and YES, you SHOULD hold them accountable, since - as an American - you, yourself, are also responsible for the heinous actions of your nation state.

I think the way that&#x27;s usually handled is to say that George Bush tricked them into it.  George Bush.  Tricked them.

Do you think if John Kerry or Barack Obama joined their board, we would see this level of outrage? I highly doubt it.

&gt; &quot;how is that less responsible for the results?&quot;Devil&#x27;s Advocate: It&#x27;s not. But they didn&#x27;t join Dropbox&#x27;s board, so it&#x27;s irrelevant. It is possible this isn&#x27;t about partisanship, just personal history.Though I have a hard time believing that&#x27;s actually the case.

What evidence do you have that there was fabricated evidence to justify the war? I&#x27;m not saying it wasn&#x27;t faulty, but all the parties has closed door access to all the intelligence to make a decision. Just because we don&#x27;t like the decision retroactively doesn&#x27;t mean it was done on purpose, but rather due to mistakes being made. Not to say that&#x27;s more comforting, just that they are different things.

&gt; Voting for war authority was likely necessary as a bargaining chip against Iraq to get them to comply with inspections.No, authorization for war action is not a &quot;bargaining chip,&quot; it&#x27;s an authorization to go to war for an extended period of time. The president can already invade any country for 60 days without needing Congress&#x27;s blessing: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;War_Powers_Resolution</a>
Obama used that power with Lybia. Of course, you can argue that you can invade a country or attack it for a longer period of time without actually breaching the War Powers Resolution, as Obama did: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16powers.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;06&#x2F;16&#x2F;us&#x2F;politics&#x2F;16powers.html?...</a>
How do you recall or condemn that type of action from a sitting president?

Easy. Voting to give someone the authority to go to war, and actually taking the country to war on faulty or fabricated evidence are in entirely different universes. Voting for war authority was likely necessary as a bargaining chip against Iraq to get them to comply with inspections. That Bush took that as a blank check and skipped further diplomatic processes is entirely on his (and his administration&#x27;s) shoulders.

My argument exactly. Isn&#x27;t Chuck Hagel on the board of PBS, Chevron, Deutsche Bank etc.

If you put together a list of companies that the politicians who voted for the Iraq war were board members of...you&#x27;d be boycotting a lot of companies.

I think there is a difference between telling a lie and believing a lie.

Weren&#x27;t John Kerry and Hillary Clinton arguably equally responsible for any war that Condy supported? The voted for the funds that made it possible, how is that less responsible for the results?

I&#x27;d be on board with this if it weren&#x27;t for the fact that Mega as it exists is a gigantic middle finger in the general direction of the copyright industry.While admirable, that is not conducive to their continued well being.

agreed. perhaps crowdfunded open security is the only way to go.

Well they responded to all criticisms fairly reasonable and also introduced a vulnerability reward program. If you find a flaw you get up to 10000 €.

They didn&#x27;t seem to know how to do cryptography right though.

Well they do have a desktop folder syncing program so it works more like dropbox. They probably don&#x27;t have a lot of the same APIs and more in depth ways to use it. It is just file backup and encryption.

Mega is not a drop-in replacement for dropbox. Unless they drastically changed how they worked since the last time I checked.

I&#x27;d suggest the alternative <a href="http://mega.co.nz" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mega.co.nz</a>

It&#x27;s an American company (Barracuda Inc.)

For me dropbox worked very unreliably on Linux. Copy works much better.

From <a href="https://www.copy.com/about/tos/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.copy.com&#x2F;about&#x2F;tos&#x2F;</a> :We will respond to any notice of alleged copyright infringement if they comply with the law and are properly reported to us through our DMCA process (<a href="https://www.copy.com/about/dmca" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.copy.com&#x2F;about&#x2F;dmca</a>).From <a href="https://www.copy.com/about/privacy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.copy.com&#x2F;about&#x2F;privacy</a> :It may be necessary − by law, legal process, litigation, and&#x2F;or requests from public and governmental authorities within or outside your country of residence − for us to disclose your Personal Information, Non Personal Information, and Private Data Files. We may also disclose information about you if we determine that for purposes of national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance, disclosure is necessary or appropriate.

We have been using <a href="https://copy.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;copy.com</a> without any issue.

I do use Google Drive some, but the overall usability of it is a bit painful.  They have a lot of nice features for sharing folders&#x2F;files with others, but the organization of it&#x27;s web UI is just painful to use at times.

Why are you using Google Drive? Eric Schmidt is a tech adviser to Barack Obama, the same person who selected a &quot;war mongerer&quot; in Joe Biden as his partner.

With the new price point, Google Drive is really attractive

I tried them but they did not offer any kind of access to previous versions of files which was a show stopper for me.

I have been using hubiC in Windows and Linux without issues.They give 25 GB, and respect your privacy (they are based on France).

Ah, the further politicization of everything in America continues unabated.

It&#x27;s closed source and proprietary so it is no solution for me.

I snooped the traffic and it does not seem to send traffic to proxies if you configure it correctly to not do so.I&#x27;ve moved from Dropbox to BTSync for 1Password sync and am comfortable with it. Of course, if an open source alternative comes up, I&#x27;m willing to consider it.There&#x27;s AeroFS, but I hate Java apps so that&#x27;s a non-starter for me.

What&#x27;s the current sentiment regarding the security and privacy of BTSync?

<a href="https://www.sync.com/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sync.com&#x2F;</a>

Its funny I was kind of looking for alternatives for our business, we use it as a poor mans shared NAS across two offices, but with the new Business features (personal and business folders in particular) finally reached a usability threshold for us.Ugh...

I&#x27;d like something a little more privacy-friendly, not that plays &quot;team games&quot; with NSA.<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;world&#x2F;2013&#x2F;jul&#x2F;11&#x2F;microsoft-nsa-c...</a>

Unless you like privacy. Partially nude photos in your private folder on OneDrive can get your whole Microsoft account banned. [1][1] <a href="http://wmpoweruser.com/watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-may-lose-your-microsoft-life/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wmpoweruser.com&#x2F;watch-what-you-store-on-skydriveyou-m...</a>

What I like the most is the integration of OneDrive with Microsoft Office 2013. But Microsoft successfully &quot;force&quot; me to use OneDrive because I bought Surface RT, which the best Windows 8 application for syncing file so far is OneDrive.Nowadays, I rarely use Dropbox anymore if it is not for group projects. I don&#x27;t know why but OneDrive seems unpopular among my friends.

OneDrive is phenomenal. I&#x27;ve been using it for the past year or so and it&#x27;s been a breeze.

I&#x27;ve been happy with <a href="https://aerofs.com/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aerofs.com&#x2F;</a> so far.

&gt; When looking to grow our board, we sought out a leader who could help us expand our global footprint.Hey actually the word footprint can also be understood as garbage.&gt; the impact on the environment of human activity in terms of pollution, damage to ecosystems, and the depletion of natural resources.Then if you read it this way, the sentence sounds actually very appropriate!

<a href="https://www.cubby.com/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cubby.com&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;ve switched to BTsync until a compelling open option appears (hopefully soon).

I like wuala but they are very expensive and have not adjusted their prices at all

You might like Wuala: <a href="http://wuala.com/en/pricing/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wuala.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;pricing&#x2F;</a>

Bitcasa: 1TB&#x2F;$10 - <a href="https://www.bitcasa.com/pricing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bitcasa.com&#x2F;pricing</a>

How do you run owncloud? What about security and updates and all that jazz?

Hmm.. I use owncloud, and the ethics of the sysadmin completely match my own.(although he is a bit of an idiot)

I&#x27;ve been running ownCloud[0] on my server. It has Windows&#x2F;Linux&#x2F;Mac&#x2F;Android&#x2F;iOS clients and has been working very well for me as a drop in Dropbox replacement. In addition to the clients, you can use webDAV to access your files.[0] <a href="http://www.owncloud.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.owncloud.org</a>

It&#x27;s 50% off if you pay yearly, plus 2 months free on top.  $25 for the year, not bad.  Not exactly comparable, but still.

Mediafire also offers 1 TB for $5 (first month is $2.5 or something).<a href="https://www.mediafire.com/upgrade/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mediafire.com&#x2F;upgrade&#x2F;</a>If you want something with strong security and privacy, there&#x27;s <a href="https://spideroak.com/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;spideroak.com&#x2F;</a>

Yeah lets store everything on a service that has already evaporated once before!

MEGA! it&#x27;s end-to-end encrypted and 50GB free! they already have desktop client for windows and will also release for Linux and OSX shortly.

The company I used to work for has one (and can help you build a DropBox for your company).<a href="http://titansgroup.com.br/cloud.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;titansgroup.com.br&#x2F;cloud.php</a>It&#x27;s currently aimed at telcos (América Móvil used it in Latin America) but IIRC they rolled out their own product, at least for internal use.

<a href="http://owncloud.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;owncloud.org</a>

I&#x27;ve been using Spideroak <a href="https://spideroak.com/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;spideroak.com&#x2F;</a>, they push security but only have 2G of free storage and their prices are steeper.But they have a Linux client! Proprietary, but I can never get grive to work right so I use it (hesitantly). Most of my stuff is synced via owncloud, though.

I could honestly care less about Dr. Rice being on the board of directors or not. Is she going to start a program to torture users of Dropbox? If that comes to pass, it may be a cause for concern. Other than that it appears that Dropbox is adding an accomplished and intelligent person to their board. Is who ever made this website, going to run around and try to get Dr. Rice fired from every job she gets? It really does appear that this is a personal vendetta of some sort.However! I do welcome the thought of people looking for alternatives to Dropbox. I consider trusting your information with a propriety company based in the US, to be quite foolish these days. Personally I use Owncloud. It&#x27;s open source. You can run it from your personal server. Owncloud has clients for Linux, Window, MAC, Android and IOS. You can also access your information through any web browser. To put the cherry on top, Owncloud has the capabilities to sync contacts, calendars and bookmarks across your all devices. It&#x27;s a great piece of software and should suit those looking for an alternative.<a href="http://owncloud.org/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;owncloud.org&#x2F;</a>

Are you using it? If so, how&#x27;s it going?

JottaCloud. Based in Norway, so no US involvement.

Heroku alternatives too?<a href="http://www.salesforce.com/company/leadership/board-of-directors/#powell" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.salesforce.com&#x2F;company&#x2F;leadership&#x2F;board-of-direct...</a>

Note that there are potential privacy concerns with Wuala and similar services, as they use de-duplication techniques, meaning if somebody makes a file public, and you have the same copy in storage, they can see these files in your account.It&#x27;s not a serious privacy violation, as it only identifies what are otherwise public files anyway - but if you want complete privacy, including being able to hide what you are uploading, not just the content - then you&#x27;re better with something self-hosted perhaps.

Wuala or SpiderOak.I&#x27;d say Wuala, as SpiderOak&#x27;s mobile application wasn&#x27;t great last time I checked. It only had read capability.

git-annex assistant + hosting at rsync.net? <a href="http://www.rsync.net/products/git-annex-pricing.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rsync.net&#x2F;products&#x2F;git-annex-pricing.html</a>

<a href="http://seafile.com/en/home/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;seafile.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;home&#x2F;</a>Similar to ownCloud, has client support for all the major platforms.For the record, it&#x27;s written by a Chinese company - not that this should matter, but it&#x27;s often rejected because all those Chinese are cyber criminals, y&#x27;know?

When looking to grow our board, we sought out a leader who could help us expand our global footprint.Condoleezza sure left a global footprint in the Middle East alright. Hate do this Dropbox, but time for me to move on.Edit: Suggestions for a Dropbox substitute?

The fb share link has href=&quot;<a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=&lt;url&gt;&quot;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;share.php?u=&lt;url&gt;&quot;</a>. It still functions though, js triggered.

Spider Oak is great, and cares about your privacy. Everything&#x27;s encrypted client-side.

That is currently in the hands of the Obama Administration, not Dropbox.

Really? I see her as someone that can strengthen the ties of NSA and Dropbox.

I think the point the author is trying to make is that you don&#x27;t know what she will do to the quality of the product, but your best guess would be basing her future decisions on her past.That said, I don&#x27;t agree with the author. She may have made bad decisions in politics, but I don&#x27;t see the relevance to a tech company.

Uh we have all killed indirectly. Do you pay taxes?

Maybe you&#x27;re replying to a reasonable person who continued to use Firefox.

&gt; Unless a company is actively hurting people, I&#x27;m going to choose what I use based on the quality of the product, not on a board member&#x27;s pastSeems like it did not work so well with Mozilla recently. And that guy there did not kill anyone either, even indirectly.

sorry bicx but your response is a bit too logical for what we&#x27;re looking for (a new target for the tech community hate mob)

And the only person they could find is one of the politicians behind the Iraq War? Heh.

Unless a company is actively hurting people, I&#x27;m going to choose what I use based on the quality of the product, not on a board member&#x27;s past. Maybe they determined that a hardened political voice would balance them out in the boardroom. Maybe they need someone there to play the devil&#x27;s advocate in an industry that can be extraordinarily narcissistic.

Yeah... or I could continue using Dropbox as I have done for the past couple of years safe in the knowledge that a director&#x27;s political background has little-to-nothing to do with the day-to-day running of a tech company.

its not only dropbox. She is also on board of multiple class-A valley startups including thomas siebel&#x27;s c3 energy 
<a href="http://www.c3energy.com/about-board-of-directors" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.c3energy.com&#x2F;about-board-of-directors</a>

The pictures on drop-dropbox sites are self-explanary and exponentally stronger, than common comments on why tech X shall be avoided I come across every day.That is first time a &quot;stop using tech X&quot; site made me change my opinion.Fully supporting. Those who are searching for alternatives - try out BitTorrent Sync. I have been using it for a while, will pull a plug on Dropbox acc.

That was quick and painless.  I was already using gdrive for my work files; downloaded and installed gdrive sync in about 5 minutes, and now I have over 3 times the free space I did with Dropbox.  Thanks, Condy!

That&#x27;s fine until Google gets distracted by something shiny, as they usually do, and kills GDrive.

I have generally been using Google Drive anyway, but after what this person did to my country as well, I am not going to support a company that supports her.Time to move all of my files from Dropbox to GDrive.

No.  It&#x27;s more of a &quot;let&#x27;s hurt their image because we don&#x27;t agree with the political decisions of Condoleezza Rice&quot; at this point.

&gt;Tell Drew Houston: drop Condoleezza Rice or we willSo if they drop Condoleezza Rice you&#x27;ll be fine with their decision making process and keep your dropbox account?

While convenient to paint a picture of everything being messed up and different than previous generations, none of this is at all accurate. The difference is that we lived through the Bush administration, remember it vividly, and many of us disagreed with nearly everything that happened during those 8 years. And it just happened, so it&#x27;s still fresh(ish). As the saying goes, &quot;everything&#x27;s different, everything&#x27;s the same.&quot; I agree those years were really bad; whether they were the worst or whatever is relevant only to someone trying to make a broader point (which I&#x27;m not).Personally, in most cases, I don&#x27;t have a problem with hiring someone based on their merits, despite what their past job was, or even what their political beliefs are (see: Brendan Eich). Apparently Condoleeza Rice is extremely smart, capable, and, as the former Secretary of State, obviously well-connected in the international community.And while you made a pretty good attempt at equating her to Dick Cheney, she&#x27;s just not Dick Cheney.At the end of the day, this is about Dropbox, not the Bush administration, and if Drew Houston has a spine, nothing will change about this situation.

How so? So it&#x27;s ok to be a part of the team that was responsible for killing many men, women, and children and not only not answer for it, but move on to be on company boards where you can be a part of some serious collection of money at some point? Wow, ok. We must be living in different realities because those years that she was part of will be looked at (or already are) as some of the worst - if not the worst - in American history.It&#x27;s sad that none of that crew will ever answer for what they started and did. Granted, there were a lot of people in that chain that should have stood up and said no and not killed anyone. But they didn&#x27;t. And if you or I did any of those things not wearing an army uniform, we&#x27;d be locked up and&#x2F;or on death row.I would never in a million years even acknowledge anyone from that team let alone bring them on the board of my company. We really are in an era where it&#x27;s all about valuations, elevator pitches, and exits. I&#x27;m waiting for some young company to bring Dick Cheney on next.Pick your battles I guess and I will be looking for an alternative that doesn&#x27;t welcome war criminals.

Thanks for the flippant comment. Eich resigned because while talking heads on TV would have you believe otherwise, the gay rights movement is a civil rights movement. By actively donating against it, he was making a strong statement about his leadership qualities that he would actively discourage equal rights for homosexuals.That said, the idea to drop a product over the composition of its leadership is perfectly valid. If Robert Mugabe showed up on the Dropbox board of directors, I imagine a great many people would be nonplussed and Dropbox would have undergo a trial by public that would not end well.A great many people would argue that given Rice&#x27;s track record as a public servant, her personal and professional proclivities, while certainly more nuanced and less egregious than Mugabe, are not great when considering where you should store your data.IMHO, tapping Rice for their board was a terrible decision and speaks more towards Houston trying to pump up the old-school market strength image of Dropbox than a wise strategic move to improve the quality of their service and business.TL;DR, Houston, you fucked up.

Come on everyone, if we work together we can get Condy fired just like we did Brendan Eich!

Kind of wish there was a picture of dead kids warning before I clicked the link.

Even if Rice goes, I&#x27;m not going back. The board has already shown it&#x27;s ugly face.No amount of backtracking will convince me I didn&#x27;t see what just happened.

Does anyone know of a version of <a href="http://theyrule.net" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;theyrule.net</a> with updated data?

It makes it easier that I don&#x27;t really like Dropbox as a product anyway.

Actions have consequences. It&#x27;s perfectly acceptable for individuals to choose to no longer support a product based on its leaderships decisions.

And sell our data to the NSA while they&#x27;re at it?

ITT: people who have no idea what board members do.

Why all this politicization of Rice&#x27;s role? What possible relevance could her actions (or hysterical descriptions of her actions) in the Bush administration have in regards to her role as a board member of Dropbox?Most likely, this is a political appointment to get Dropbox connections in Washington, to sell large contracts into the federal government. And, possibly, to sell into governments abroad where Ms Rice&#x27;s connections may also be of value. (None of which has any relevance to the usefulness of their product to me.)

Well, what happened at Mozilla was certainly &quot;Thoughtcrime&quot; (just happened to be on the unpopular part of the spectrum, if it were 20 years ago nobody would have said anything) but Rice is something different altogether. Her hands are not clean, if you know what I mean.

I require sources to prove your claim of &quot;Her quest for ideological purity&quot;.I already know of the Thought Police claims so I don&#x27;t require those.

Interesting, since Condoleeza Rice seems to be the very definition of Thought Police.  Her quest for ideological purity resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being killed or maimed.

Soooo, putting public pressure on a company that is employing a very controversial politician who is linked to war deaths, mass surveillance and torture is left-wing totalitarianism. Care to explain yourself?

I couldn&#x27;t agree more. We have a very easy task identifying right-wing style totalitarism, but apparently sillicon valley has a blind eye when it&#x27;s coming from its left.

Since when is running a boycott campaign a &quot;quest for ideological purity&quot; or enforcing &quot;thoughtcrime&quot;?  This doesn&#x27;t seem like it&#x27;s about ideology or what sort of things Rice thinks.  It&#x27;s about people being tortured and killed and her part in that.  It&#x27;s about actual crime not thought crime. She should be held accountable for her actions and making her a pariah in various communities is one small way of doing that.

I mean, &quot;actioncrime&quot; is closer to what&#x27;s being alleged here.  So, &quot;crime&quot;.

I was wondering how long this would take. Thoughtcrime is here. The quest for ideological purity is kneecapping our future. Shutting out half of the brainpool because they hold opposing views about disconnected topics is a recipe for societal failure.

Keep those torches lit for everyone in the current administration too, right?  Torture, war, and mass-surveillance continue to this day, 5 years after she stopped being Secretary of State.  In addition, many in the current administration were involved in the Iraq war as well.

I recommend <a href="http://www.wuala.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wuala.com&#x2F;</a>In order to protect your privacy, Wuala encrypts the data on your computer before it is uploaded.

Anyone know of a Dropbox equivalent based in Europe?

She&#x27;s an independent board member. She does not have the ability, in practice, to do anything other than vote on compensation and various other corporate policies.And if all it takes to get dropbox execs to turn over data is fiscal threats from a board member who is a former government employee, then they were going to give up long before Condi shows up on the board.EDIT: and I just want to be clear. If you just don&#x27;t like the idea of having someone who was involved with the war in Iraq&#x2F;Afghanistan on the board of a company, you&#x27;re entitled to your opinion (though I think it&#x27;s pretty hard to be secretary of state or any other position of power in the govenrment without being involved in something evil).But I find the idea that somehow Condi&#x27;s presence on the board an indicator that they&#x27;ll disclose my data to the government borderline ludicrous.

To me, this looks like it may have been directly inspired by the Eich case. The whole premise is a little nonsensical. How will kicking her off the board change anything, when the shareholders (or whoever) who appointed her will remain? No time to answer questions like that when there is demagogy to do. It is a personal vendetta in a very similar vein as the Mozilla incident, even if the justifications may be better this time around.

To me, this feels totally different from the Eich case. His political beliefs has nothing to do with Mozilla&#x27;s product. However, giving someone who approves of wiretaps an important position in a company that people trust with their data, seems like an unbelievably bad idea.It&#x27;s not just about whether someone in the company has an opinion I find despicable, it&#x27;s about whether my own data is still safe.

I feel this is different. With Mozilla I don&#x27;t think the guys personal opinion (right or wrong) would affect his job. In this case it&#x27;s different. You&#x27;re trusting Dropbox with your data and on their board is a woman who was a senior member of an administration that created PRISM. This could effect the product is serious negative ways.

Wait .. are war-criminals now an oppressed minority? Not that i&#x27;m convinced she is a war-criminal, but it&#x27;s not an easily refutable position, is it?.On the other hand. It stands to reason Dropbox wants a well connected politician on their board, so they can lobby against the NSA style policies that are negatively affecting their international sales.&gt;One individual or group, finally crawling out of being persecuted, deciding to persecute another is just plain disgusting.And this is just disingenious. This was not the case with the Mozilla guy, nor is this the case here. For starters: gays are still being persecuted in many US and international jurisdictions. That war, and it is a war for civil rights, is still ongoing. Secondly, it&#x27;s not a group that is being targetted but specific individuals because of their complicity in what is essentially a hate-crime they just got away with. That&#x27;s like arguing we shouldn&#x27;t perscute&#x2F;target nazi-collaborators in the middle of WWII. (although one can argue perscuting collaborators after the war, wasn&#x27;t the moral high ground either)But, on a more meta level. I think the tech sector is getting more into politics, because the politics are getting more into the tech sector. Consider the NSA, net-neutrality, DMCA or all the twitter powered revolutions. I mean, the internet is essentially fueling a proccess of globalisation and democratisation, that has a lot of political implications.We can no longer pretend technology isn&#x27;t a political weapon of change, because the powers that be, are getting more and more aware of this.

I don&#x27;t get this kind of stuff. I&#x27;m sure it&#x27;s based on good intentions, but this will just lead to MORE nepotism and less transparency because the price of negative press is that much greater.It feels similar to the hit on the Mozilla guy, which really rubbed me the wrong way. For all I know he clubs baby seals in his free time, but nobody bothered to investigate the truth until it was too late.One individual or group, finally crawling out of being persecuted, deciding to persecute another is just plain disgusting.

&gt;&gt;There are SO many people involved with private companies that are so much more partisan and support with no hesitation so many terrible things that if you want to go down this rabbit hole, you&#x27;re going to be down there for a while my friends.What do think we do then if we find that a decision-maker in a company is highly partisan and maybe bad for privacy?

Before this I could at least pretend they didn&#x27;t play ball with the NSA, I knew it was self deception but I&#x27;m also very lazy. Now they might as well hang a &quot;Friend of NSA&quot; sign in front of their building.
I downgraded my Pro account.

It&#x27;s not about partisanship, it&#x27;s about whether your data is safe. Of course maybe data can never be safe in the hands of a US company, but I put significantly less trust in a company that hires someone who supported all the violations by various secret services, than in one that fights those violations.

Unfortunately there&#x27;s no division as to where politics is allowed to interfere. From Wikipedia[1]:Politics is the process observed in all human (and many non-human) group interactions by which groups make decisions, including activism on behalf of specific issues or causes.[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_%28disambiguation%29" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Politics_%28disambiguation%29</a>

You can shut your eyes and pretend that they&#x27;re separate, but that doesn&#x27;t make it true. One&#x27;s political and ethical views deeply influence how they act, particular towards others.EDIT: This is a general point, not an opinion on the current issue.

Disclaimer: I&#x27;m pretty orthodox Catholic and thus firmly disagree with most software programmers on topics that are often discussed here. But I don&#x27;t boycott emacs just because the authors are atheists (I actually use emacs full time for work now). And I don&#x27;t boycott software whose maintainers are pro-choice or whatever else. Boycotting software because of political or religious differences isn&#x27;t going to help software, it&#x27;s only going to further unnecessary dissension instead of fostering understanding and personal change.

The personal attachment that comes with using a good brand in this field isn&#x27;t trivial, and it should be expected that users project their sensibilities on the brand. Being politically neutral in the view of its users should have been a priority for DP, regardless of which powerful gatekeepers to world markets are on Rice&#x27;s speed dial.

Can&#x27;t we just keep software and politics separate? Do we really need to divide ourselves in yet another area because of differences of opinion?

This is rapidly turning very ugly, and I can&#x27;t stand it. Is being &quot;anti-gay&quot; or &quot;pro-war&quot; or even just &quot;republican&quot; the new Communism? The new witchcraft?

You have to pick your battles unless you&#x27;re prepared to live as a hermit beyond the edge of civilization. We have plenty of choices in cloud storage, browsers, and fast food. With some things, like voting in a two party system and buying gas, you&#x27;re choosing the less awful of the viable choices. Choosing in most cases is a matter of triage, not preference.

Open Source, not non-profits. I&#x27;d have to think about the non-profit thing, but Open Source is a very particular thing - you&#x27;re asking the public to work for you for FREE. People at Mozilla make good money, non-profit just means they don&#x27;t have shareholders, and yet we work for them FOR FREE. And we like to! We have no problem doing it and we shouldn&#x27;t - but yes, it does mean we get to hold them to our standard, whether that be higher or whatever.

I believe that people are far more invested in non-profits to which they donate money, as opposed to companies whose products they merely purchase. I do not find it at all surprising that a person who wrote a check to Mozilla (possibly one of a handful of donations to non-profits they made that year) would feel more invested in Mozilla&#x27;s actions than, say, someone who eats a lot of Nabisco Graham Crackers. Even when the money spent on their consumption of graham crackers over the same year period may exceed the amount of the Mozilla donation.

This sounds like holding non-profits to higher standards than corporates. That seems a strange and grossly unfair thing to do, ultimately counterproductive to the very purpose of non-profits.Of course, when it comes to their core values you have to hold non-profits to high standards - e.g. Mozilla on the open web.But when it comes to things unrelated to their mission... Why should they be any more perfect than a for-profit corporation!I like people holding organizations to high standards, its fantastic. But please, hold all of them to high standards - both for-profits and non-profits.

There&#x27;s a big level of difference (in my mind) of being partisan and being in the crew that set the wheels in motion.

This is the logical conclusion after the Mozilla farce. Every new hire will be vetted for correct political affiliates, or the ISJP (Internet Social Justice Police) will do their McCarthyism thing.We live in interesting times!

You have a point. One can say that Condi Rice&#x27;s lies as the National Security Advisor led to 100,000+ civilian deaths in Iraq.Yet some people see it worse that Eich, the inventor of Javascript which arguably powers the modern web, was the CEO of Mozilla.It&#x27;s an interesting rationalization process.

You might have the opinion that universal health care is bad for this country. I would disagree with you, but that would be your personal opinion and I couldn&#x27;t fault you for it, whatever I may think of you privately.But if you believe all colored people should be enslaved and donate money towards making it happen, then we all should fault you because that&#x27;s not an acceptable opinion, it&#x27;s bigotry. Similarly, stripping gay men and women of their civil liberties is bigotry that should not be tolerated.Rice&#x27;s actions have also resulted in harming our civil liberties and I don&#x27;t support her, but I can&#x27;t fault Drew Houston for wanting her on their Board. Anybody who has the chance to add somebody as powerful and well-connected as Rice to their Board would be stupid not to. She is there to advise, not lead. I don&#x27;t believe her presence on the Board will make Dropbox any more or less trustworthy with our data than before. If Dropbox is going to leak our private data now, then that&#x27;s a company that would&#x27;ve done so without Rice as well.

&gt;&gt; &quot;Dropping Mozilla because Eich is anti-gay-marriage made sense to me because Mozilla is the beacon of open source. Mozilla belongs to us in a very personal way, many of us have contributed code to Firefox personally.&quot;I feel the opposite. Eich&#x27;s opinion (which I don&#x27;t agree with) was unlikely to impact his work. Rice was part of the administration that created PRISM. I don&#x27;t want her anywhere near a company I&#x27;m supposed to trust with all my files.

That people will leverage this to at least bring some sort of accountability, I completely applaud.

I&#x27;m not very passionate about either the Eich situation or this new Dropbox issue, but I have to say that this feels much more &quot;political&quot; and relevant than with Mozilla. Eich privately opposed gay marriage, but the public disclosure threatened to hurt the foundation&#x27;s image and his effectiveness. Rice was a unabashed supporter and post 2006, an architect of the Iraq War.It would be closer to Mozilla hiring Mike Huckabee or similar as CEO.

I had precisely the opposite view. I felt that Eich&#x27;s politics weren&#x27;t aligned with my beliefs but were personal and legal. Condi is in a whole other league - having to help prosecute an illegal war and intentionally mislead our citizenry.

&gt; The leap from open source to pro-gay sounds like a complete non sequitur to me. What is the reasoning there?Your characterization of it being a &quot;leap to pro-gay&quot; is a bit much. Supporters of Prop 8 are actively trying to deny other Americans rights, many people find this offensive, regardless of the grounds for denial. It echoes racial, gender and age discrimination of the past -- things that many find to be un-American. The fact that the people affected happen to be gay is secondary for many who opposed Prop 8. No American should be legislated as a second class citizen.Open Source is about open access, both to contribute and use. Prop 8 was trying to deny people access to government, rights and benefits. These attitudes are in direct opposition.Beyond the ideological friction, you are dividing the community of users and contributors -- people who support gay rights and marriage equality somehow feel like they are supporting somebody who is trying to change society by denying people rights.Mozilla isn&#x27;t driven by profit, it&#x27;s driven by the goodwill of its users and contributors. Mr. Eich was well aware of the sensitive nature of people&#x27;s attitudes towards his contribution -- he&#x27;s tried for years to make it a non-issue, but it has kept following him.It&#x27;s not that Open Source is &quot;pro-gay rights&quot;, it&#x27;s that it is pro-open access and equality. Mr. Eich&#x27;s contribution shows contempt for this ideal at some level. It appears that many had issue with this.Additionally, Google, Mozilla&#x27;s largest financial contributor, is a company that has actively taken a strongly anti-Prop 8 stance. Having the leader of the Mozilla Foundation be openly in opposition to Google&#x27;s stance brings questions about if this will ultimately affect Mozilla&#x27;s funding.Mr. Eich&#x27;s technical leadership and history with Mozilla probably qualifies him as a very competent leader for the organization, however the political realities of Mozilla&#x27;s relationship with Google and the open source community&#x27;s ideals creates doubt about the realities of his ability to manage these important relationships between Google, users and contributors.

Thanks for that Tordvalds&#x27; gem.As I can see now here in HN, a lot of people idealize the idea of Open Source to mean the stereotype of the current zeitgeist good side, when it does not.

Dropping Mozilla because Eich is anti-gay-marriage made sense to me because Mozilla is the beacon of open source.The leap from open source to pro-gay sounds like a complete non sequitur to me. What is the reasoning there?I like the way Torvalds put it.For example, the GPLv2 in no way limits your use of the software. If you&#x27;re a mad scientist, you can use GPLv2&#x27;d software for your evil plans to take over the world (&quot;Sharks with lasers on their heads!!&quot;), and the GPLv2 just says that you have to give source code back. And that&#x27;s OK by me. I like sharks with lasers. I just want the mad scientists of the world to pay me back in kind. I made source code available to them, they have to make their changes to it available to me. After that, they can fry me with their shark-mounted lasers all they want.Open source means just that.

It strikes me as the opposite.Eich&#x27;s politics weren&#x27;t all that important. There was a minor issue of whether it would cause trouble for Mozilla&#x27;s gay employees (or employees who just felt strongly about it) and a big public relations problem, but the technical functioning of the company wouldn&#x27;t be affected.With Dropbox and Rice, I think there&#x27;s a decent chance (not huge, but decent) that she&#x27;s sitting down and giving everybody pointers for how they can most efficiently and effectively cooperate with the NSA. She&#x27;s out of the administration but people like this never truly leave.

From the side it looks like Dropping Mozilla because Eich, made sense to you because it was issue you cared about, and dead people in Iraq? well they are far away and probably didn&#x27;t think like you anyway.Same with contributing code to Firefox: of course my small patch for the bug affecting me personally looks like a big deal, but if i look at a big picture, my contribution isn&#x27;t even comparable to what Brendan Eich did.I don&#x27;t say that dropping dropbox is a good thing, but i don&#x27;t see how one can think logically that harassment of Eich was something for greater good, and this is a non-issue.Unfortunately emotion is a strong thing, much stronger than logic.

I think the Rice as a board member issue is a totally different concern, directly related to the delivery of the service.Rice is a former National Security Advisor, and is looped into the political structure. So now, when the three letter agency of your choosing needs to have a frank conversation with someone at Dropbox, Condi will be a trusted conduit.

I wish there was a massive push to drop it, though...

Because that&#x27;s just unfeasible. Removing him as CEO is one thing, we can&#x27;t even get another language on the web anymore as it is.

Eich also created JavaScript and I don&#x27;t see a massive push to drop it everywhere.  I think these sort of things are an outrage-economy with no serious or lasting effect.

Agreed. I think the Mozilla case was different due to the nature of the role, the nature of the company and how the person involved handled the whole situation.

Why do you think that it is &quot;ridiculous&quot; for people to be upset that a strong supporter of warrant-less wiretapping and PRISM is now a board member at the place they store their data?

Dropping Mozilla because Eich is anti-gay-marriage made sense to me because Mozilla is the beacon of open source. Mozilla belongs to us in a very personal way, many of us have contributed code to Firefox personally.But Condi Rice joining a completely private Dropbox as a board member - this is a non-issue. I&#x27;m as strongly anti-Bush administration and anti-war in general (especially the Iraq War - good grief) as anyone you could hope to meet, but this is ridiculously naive and short sighted to think that Condi being involved with Dropbox is something to get excited about. There are SO many people involved with private companies that are so much more partisan and support with no hesitation so many terrible things that if you want to go down this rabbit hole, you&#x27;re going to be down there for a while my friends.Edit: that Condi Rice is a &quot;privacy&quot; concern - ok. Fine. I think that&#x27;s ridiculous but you know what - nothing is particularly ridiculous when it comes to privacy anymore. So I will accept that argument.

A lot of people here seem to have absolutely no issue with saying &quot;I have no problem with the ethical ramifications of a company&#x27;s actions or choice of representatives or the beneficiaries of a company&#x27;s wealth that my support helps grow&quot;. I can&#x27;t tell if you&#x27;re sociopathic or just utterly clueless. Not taking a &#x27;moral stand&#x27; isn&#x27;t business -- it&#x27;s taking a moral stand of not caring. Culpability can stem from inaction as well.

This is why my company&#x27;s board is 100% cyborgs.

Business leaders&#x27; politics have always been an issue, and people arrange boycotts all the time because of them (left, right, and center).  It&#x27;s called political speech, and it&#x27;s actually a good thing.  Heck, it even cuts both ways - for example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has definitely changed my opinion of the Microsoft founder, and in a good way.

I&#x27;m sure that bringing Brendan Eich&#x27;s politics into question when he moved into CEO position has made this a more popular trend.

drop everything, after all you have the NSA - silly

Dropbox certainly has lost some peoples trust.What makes any of the other companies more trustworthy though? Has someone personally interviewed all the employees, performed a security audit of their system, and determined they are legit?Seems like a false sense of security.

&gt; You must be absolutely certain about every issueWhen was the last time you were absolutely certain about something? Are you always absolutely certain in your day to day life, let alone in the shoes of someone like Rice?

You have to tag this with &#x2F;sarcasm. Some may downvote you thinking you are serious.

Sorry, but tempered reasoning like this is not acceptable in the maximalist society we have today. You must be absolutely certain about every issue and realize that those who disagree are evil, intentionally so, full-stop.

H) Or, you start something like the PNAC and bide your time..

Let&#x27;s see, is that better or worse than a drone strike?I guess President Obama is trying to keep you alive so it&#x27;s okay if he takes out a few miscreant citizens with drone strikes, right?(And this is why these discussions belong somewhere else, not on Hacker News)

The bush admin asserted that it could detain anyone without a trial and torture them. You know, they were trying to do good. We should just let that slide.

There is now ample evidence showing that WMD claims were simply a casus belli for a war that had been desired for some time for other reasons.

What does this have to do with D.C.&#x27;s point?

(C) Saddam Hussein had irrefutably demonstrated that he was willing to use weapons of mass destruction in pursuit of his ambitions: he had used chemical weapons both on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians (and let&#x27;s not forget his brutal conquest of Kuwait);And who let him have those weapons and told him to go ahead and use them against the Iranians? He looks lovely in that photo embracing Donald Rumsfeld... So by this standard, many members of the US government had also shown willingness to use weapons of mass destruction. If this disqualified Hussein as a legitimate world leader, then why was Rumsfeld allowed in government?

&gt; it was unclear to what extent Hussein had made any progress on building -- or buying -- nuclear weapons;It was very clear that he hadn&#x27;t, the US government (just like the chemical weapons) chose to ignore their own intelligence because it didn&#x27;t suit their purpose.<a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_rpt/iraq-wmd-intell_chapter2-b.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.globalsecurity.org&#x2F;intell&#x2F;library&#x2F;congress&#x2F;2004_r...</a>&gt; On March 1, 2002, INR published an intelligence assessment, Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely.The Senate did an entire hearing on pre-war intelligence, you really should read it:<a href="http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=298775" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.intelligence.senate.gov&#x2F;press&#x2F;record.cfm?id=29877...</a>If you prefer something that you can sit and watch, see BBC Panorama&#x27;s &quot;The Spies who Fooled the World&quot; - it is both interesting and frightening, especially the part where the single person who was the US source used in Powell&#x27;s UN brief tells the interviewer he made everything up:<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3K9twuuU7g" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=p3K9twuuU7g</a>

Without wading into the morass of litigating the Iraq war, which would be stupid, because we are converging on bipartisan consensus that it was a debacle: two wrongs don&#x27;t make a right, and &quot;the US government&quot; over the course of two decades isn&#x27;t a single coherent unified force.

&gt; Saddam Hussein had irrefutably demonstrated that he was willing to use weapons of mass destruction in pursuit of his ambitions: he had used chemical weapons both on Iraqi Kurds and on IraniansWith -- lest it be forgotten -- the full support and backing of the US government while he was actually doing it. Heck, when it first became public knowledge and world outrage started, the US rushed Donald Rumsfeld out to (1) demonstrate to the rest of the world that they should shut up and that the US stood side-by-side with Iraq, and (2) reassure Iraq that US support for their actions would continue.

&gt; Nuclear weapons are hard to buildTrue, but I said &quot;building -- or buying&quot; nuclear weapons. See generally <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan#North_Korea.2C_Iran_and_Libya" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Abdul_Qadeer_Khan#North_Korea.2...</a>&gt; Even if Iraq had managed to obtain nuclear weapons, they had no way to deliver them anywhere.The possibility of a nuclear weapon concealed in a container aboard a cargo ship was a non-trivial concern back then. See also <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuke" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Suitcase_nuke</a>.Remember that Saddam Hussein was not exactly a model of transparency.

There are some severe problems with your point. Specifically:(A) We know what information was available at the time and they clearly did not make the best decision they could. There was a consistent focus on information that supported the desired outcome and away from information that didn&#x27;t.(B) Good intentions and $5 will buy you a coffee at Starbucks. Hitler genuinely wanted to do a good job.(C) Irrelevant. If our national leaders cannot think rationally years after a tragedy then they are unfit to be leaders and should resign. It&#x27;s especially irrelevant given that Iraq had nothing to do with 9&#x2F;11.(D) No disagreement there.(E) Nonsense. Nuclear weapons are hard to build. It was blindingly obvious to anyone who was paying the least bit attention that Iraq had made no real progress on obtaining nuclear weapons. There was an outside possibility that, if left unchecked, Iraq might be able to build nuclear weapons a decade or two down the line, but even that was unlikely. It certainly wasn&#x27;t an urgent problem that required a massive rush to invade the country.(F) The downside of a false positive on that issue was also considerable. You can&#x27;t just look at the negatives of one side and say &quot;better safe than sorry&quot; when the negatives on the other side are equally large. The invasion killed a huge number of people and went a good way toward bankrupting this country. Compare that against... what? Even if Iraq had managed to obtain nuclear weapons, they had no way to deliver them anywhere.(G) It was obvious to a lot of people before the invasion that it was a crock of shit and that it would cost a huge amount of money and lives for no good reason. Those people were all correct. The implication that this is pure hindsight is completely wrong.

&gt; (and let&#x27;s not forget his brutal conquest of Kuwait)Oh! Fun with loaded words.Between 300 and 1,000 Kuwaiti civilians were killed during the invasion and occupation.I&#x27;m not one fo defend Mr Hussein&#x27;s record, but that&#x27;s pretty gentle as invasions go. The Russian bombardments of Grozny killed around 30,000 civilians; in one barrage on one day in October 1999 alone 120 were killed. Now that is brutal.

Hindsight is always good, but this neglects that there was a strong point of view before the invasion of Iraq that it was a mistake. It simply wasn&#x27;t a popular one in the US. But if you look internationally, there were a lot of people who stuck their necks out and said &quot;don&#x27;t do this, the evidence isn&#x27;t very good.&quot; There were people in the US who did the same thing (notably Feingold).The tragedy of US politics is that we don&#x27;t seem to hold people who made the worst foreign policy call in several decades accountable. Unreconsidered support for the Iraq war should just categorically disqualify one for a position either within national politics or as a commentator on them. Yet it doesn&#x27;t. These people are either cynical liars, easy-to-dupe rubes, cynical spinsters that can&#x27;t be trusted to say what they think, or vacillating receptacles. Perhaps several categories apply to some. The point is, any of these characteristics should be disqualifying for national leadership.

&gt; (C) in late 2002 and early 2003, memories of 9&#x2F;11 were still raw;So invading a completely unrelated country and killing and tourtoring its inhabitants is OK?You have a very peculiar idea of &quot;anti-war as the next guy&quot;.

I&#x27;m as anti-war as the next guy; we military veterans tend to be more so than most, and I&#x27;ve gotten even more so as I&#x27;ve gotten older. Still, there are those who appreciate that:(A) political leaders aren&#x27;t supermen and -women. Like all of us, they have to make the best decisions they can with the limited information available to them at the time;(A1) [ADDED:] the signal-to-noise ratio can be problematic; the available bits of information are often of varying quality and sometimes are flatly contradictory --- a major part of the leadership challenge is figuring out what the hell is really going on;(B) most political leaders genuinely want to do a good job, even if that&#x27;s mixed in with a larger- or smaller dollop of self-interest (as is the case with most of us);(C) in late 2002 and early 2003, memories of 9&#x2F;11 were still raw;(D) Saddam Hussein had irrefutably demonstrated that he was willing to use weapons of mass destruction in pursuit of his ambitions: he had used chemical weapons both on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians (and let&#x27;s not forget his brutal conquest of Kuwait);(E) it was unclear to what extent Hussein had made any progress on building -- or buying -- nuclear weapons;(F) the downside of a false negative on that issue was considerable; and(G) hindsight is 20-20, and there are always Monday-morning quarterbacks around who are certain they could have done better.

That escalated quickly! This is a pretty strong digital political attacks to be lobbied against a tech company.  I&#x27;m curious to see what response Dropbox will have.

Oh boy, yet another idiotic witch hunt. I&#x27;m sure the author uses only software written exclusively by people with purest intentions.

Is it a human right to approve torture, work towards starting a war and helping installing mass surveillance? I might have missed the U.N. meeting protecting those &quot;rights&quot;.

Well I thought it would take longer for activists to start targeting companies in the wake of the Mozilla issue. I am actually surprised to see this happen so quickly. Its good to know that I am free to excersize my rights unless I want a job in the tech sector in which case I am required to conform to the social worldview of a selection of internet activists.

What about her past makes you think she would have this position?

- Because by joining the board she has a fiduciary duty to protect the interests of the company, especially when those conflict with others including her personal interest.- Because if CEO had to hire someone to help them do that, a former secretary of state would be one of the best choices (albeit Hillary might be a bit busy).

&gt;&gt; advise on security matters and help keep the NSA out of my filesWhat about her past makes you think she would have this position? I&#x27;d argue if the options are &quot;Help protect your data from the NSA&quot; or &quot;Hand over your data to the NSA&quot; that she would be much more in favor of giving your data to the NSA.

A board member does not decide on features or dig into your account to look for your political preferences. I can think of a dozen reasons why they would have invited her and all of them would be good for the company and good for users:- advise on security matters 
and help keep the NSA out of my files.- get government business for Dropbox thus maybe reducing bureaucracy for citizens and small business owners alike in this country and others.- help the company navigate Washington in a lot of waysMy imagination is poor on the subject, but I think if a company gets a politically savvy partner who was chief diplomat in the most powerful country in the world for a while it is for the benefit of the company and it&#x27;s users.

&gt; How Many of you Voted for Bush Sr?What does Bush Sr. have to do with this?

Okay lets describe this with satire..How Many of you Voted for Bush Sr? If you did you are just as guilty as dropbox..Oh please...

The word is protest. It&#x27;s a valid and useful form of speech. Not everyone wanted him out of a job. I don&#x27;t even think that was the majority opinion. I only wanted to know that the new CEO&#x27;s values lined up with the values of the company if I was going to continue using and supporting the company&#x27;s products.

I feel that at this point we might to coin the verb &quot;to eich&quot;, meaning &quot;to shitstorm a company into forcing a high-ranking manager to resign&quot;.

And the current, Democratic, administration hasn&#x27;t exactly rolled back many of these changes, right?  My point isn&#x27;t to criticize the Obama administration, but rather ask: if Hillary Clinton was asked to serve on the board of $your_favorite_service, would you consider dropping that service?

The current administration asserted that it has the right to assassinate anyone it wants, American citizen or not, outside of a battlefield, without any oversight or due process.

I agree this was bad. I disagree that it was uniquely bad. I strongly feel that it&#x27;s a red herring.Perhaps I&#x27;m wrong, but Americans seem have become easier to whip into a tribal-political rage recently. That in itself is dangerous. It makes the country more susceptible to populism.To me, this immediately registers as a visible hint at problems in the system which are never eliminated but need to be constantly challenged to keep them to a tolerable level.It&#x27;s a sign that there is a market where political capital and influence is being acquired, traded and sold. It implies crony capitalism, corruption, class entrenchment. If your reaction is &#x27;Look a Republican! Charge!&#x27; then you bury the other stuff. The real, genuine, scary problems with the system, not a party and not an old administration.

Compared to the Obama administration&#x27;s assertion that it can kill any American it wants without trial? Here&#x27;s are reports on this policy from two traditionally liberal news organizations (the conservative ones are equally damning):1. <a href="http://www.salon.com/2010/04/07/assassinations_2/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.salon.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;04&#x2F;07&#x2F;assassinations_2&#x2F;</a>2. <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/09/obama-assassinates-us-citizen" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.motherjones.com&#x2F;kevin-drum&#x2F;2011&#x2F;09&#x2F;obama-assassin...</a>Don&#x27;t get me wrong, I believe the Bush administration was horrific. But the Obama administration has turned out to be equally immoral, and in some cases (spying and assassinations) even more so.

The bush administration asserted that it could detain anyone without a trial and torture them. This is not equivalent to any average administration as you implied.

&gt; How different might the World be had Gore been seated as President in 2001 after winning the election?

Umm, I think you&#x27;re the one who doesn&#x27;t know American politics.&quot;We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.&quot; -- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002&quot;Iraq&#x27;s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.&quot; -- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

I know right? It&#x27;s like you have to have your head in the sand to not see the differences between the Bush and Obama administrations. I made a list a while back to give people an idea of the real differences between them.-Likes beer and sports: both Obama and Bush-Spends money the US doesn&#x27;t have: both-Directs Taxpayers&#x27; Money to Special Interests: both-Supports Irresponsible Deficits: both-Grants Taxpayer-Funded Corporate Bailouts: bothDisregards the Constitution via:-Guantanamo Bay Detentions: both-The Patriot Act: bothFails to React to Domestic Disasters such as:-Hurricane Katrina: only Bush-Nashville Floods: only ObamaSupports NATO-led Killings in:-Kosovo: only Bush-Afghanistan: both-Libya: only Obama-Liberia: both-Pakistan: both-Supports US Occupation of Iraq: both

&gt; In truth I don&#x27;t really see big enough (non cosmetic) differences between the parties or administrations to justify the partisanship you guys seem to have.Then you don&#x27;t know American politics.How different might the country be had Gore been seated as President in 2001 after winning the election?

IMO, it&#x27;s a fools game trying to figure out what exactly Rice &amp; dropbox are getting from eachother. In the absence of knowledge, it&#x27;s easy to just jump to a conclusion that it has something to do with one&#x27;s pet issues. On HN that&#x27;s probably NSA&#x2F;privacy DMCA&#x2F;copyright stuff, etc. In reality it could be to do with anything. Think of all the powerful people she has access to. It could be nonspecific.I think we can be pretty sure that she&#x27;s not on the board to give engineering advice though.

Knowingly I will not support a company that works with politician who are known to support and subvert privacy of individuals<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Google_China</a>If people want open-access to technology around the world, do you really think a 28 year old founder is going to get a fair deal from Vladimir Putin or the Chinese Government&#x2F;? The US Potus has a hard enough time (with all his staffers) dealing with the complexities of internatinal relations. The same goes elsewhere... So, one can show up un-prepared or not show up...again no easy answeers.(also) <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;googleblog.blogspot.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;01&#x2F;new-approach-to-china...</a>

Agreed and this begs the question where does Dropbox sits with surveillance thing because US govt. makes it clear that non-americans are fair game.So as a non-american I am asking - will Ms. Rice work to protect data that we trust Dropbox with or when Dropbox is asked to turn over our data (of non-americans) will she advise Dropbox board to play along and not give a damn about our data.Knowingly I will not support a company that works with politician who are known to support and subvert privacy of individuals.

&gt; In truth I don&#x27;t really see big enough (non cosmetic) differences between the parties or administrations to justify the partisanship you guys seem to have.Right at the beginning of the page: &quot;This is not an issue of partisanship&quot; and then it launches into detailed points about Rice as an individual.

What would you suggest to improve the situation?

&gt;While there is often little difference in foreign policy, their approach to social issues is vastly different.I think that this is a fiction put forth by the parties to inspire their more extreme members, but is false when you consider where the two parties fall on a full political spectrum. Take for example a couple of the most divisive social issues today:Same Sex Marriage: Clinton signed DOMA 15 years ago, Obama was against SSM 3 years ago, and I would be surprised if the 2024 (or even 2020) republican presidential candidate wasn&#x27;t OK with SSM. I would guess those numbers to be similar in opinion polls, meaning that Republican voters&#x27; opinions on SSM probably lag those of Democrats by about 10 years or so. It&#x27;s hard for me to get behind the idea that one party is evil and worthy of divestment when the &#x27;preferred&#x27; party only came around in the last 5 years.Health care: One party wants a huge single payer system for the old and the poor, employer provided coverage for most others, and a highly privatized and mandatory system for the rest. The other party wants a huge single payer system for the old and the poor, employer provided coverage for most others, and a highly privatized and optional system for the rest. Who wants single payer for all? Who wants to abolish medicare?

While there is often little difference in foreign policy, their approach to social issues is vastly different. You probably don&#x27;t pay any attention to this though. It does however ultimately affect you, since such a powerful but broken country could wield incredible damage abroad.However even in foreign policy matters, there would have been different results with respect to the Iraq war. The invasion was a quick and massive pivot away from the more justifiable war in Afghanistan. Given that Saddam Hussein tried to have Bush jr.&#x27;s father killed, that leaving Hussein in power was possibly some unfinished business of that same father, that Cheney&#x27;s pet company Haliburton made ridiculous profits on government war contracts, and that it was a Republican sub-faction of neo-cons who were so desperate to invade, I think there&#x27;s a good case for there being a big difference between the parties. Not to mention the key personal opinions among top Republican admin officials seemed to drive the use of &quot;enhanced interrogation&quot;.

I don&#x27;t really see a big difference between whatever political parties exist in whatever country you&#x27;re in.To go through a few places the two parties in the US differ substantially - voting rights, civil rights, healthcare, minimum wage, immigration, unemployment benefits, unionization, SNAP.You know, small stuff.

What he is saying that ANY high level ex-politician will have the same issues.  You can probably dig up similar dirt on Al Gore and boycott his seat on the apple board for example.  In my foggy childhood memory, I remember a few wars, PGP &amp; Clipper chip fiascos and so on when he was VP in the 90s.

&gt; Every ranking official of any country (or company) owns a big share of that country&#x27;s sins and there are no &quot;clean&quot; administrations.This sounds a lot like apogolism. These war crimes are VERY far removed from the standards of contemporary western civilized countries.Obama administration continuing many of the evil policies doesn&#x27;t make it any more acceptable, taking this as &quot;the new normal&quot; would be apathy bordering on nihilism.From a broader POV, this line of reasoning exemplifies the syndrome &quot;perfect is the enemy of good&quot; (also known as the Nirvana fallacy, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Nirvana_fallacy</a>).

I&#x27;m not American, so this is a little removed for me. In truth I don&#x27;t really see big enough (non cosmetic) differences between the parties or administrations to justify the partisanship you guys seem to have.What bother me here is not Condoleezza Rice specifically. Every ranking official of any country (or company) owns a big share of that country&#x27;s sins and there are no &quot;clean&quot; administrations. Complicity is the price of admission and they all pay.What does bother me is what this is a symptom of. Lets be honest about why board members are selected. Ex politicians wield political and corporate influence and a board seat is a way of renting that influence. At best its an elite club, at worst it&#x27;s outright corruption but its always on that scale.I guess that if pressed they would say that they bring experience and competence. That&#x27;s as nonsensical as a large corporation justifying their political donations as an innocent, democratic expression of political preference. It&#x27;s hard to say with a straight face.Having ex politicians on a board is such a public display of stink. It&#x27;s like when a politician who spends his entire life as a &quot;civil servant&quot; is obviously and publicly living a billionaire lifestyle with yhahts, mansions &amp; private jets. They don&#x27;t even bother to launder that dirty money. It&#x27;s just displayed filth and all.

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