After all, it was once totally conceivable that a multi-million dollar company would be founded on the basis of, basically, a device driver.

We're still doing that sort of thing, its not a new phenomenon that some crack in the design/methods/ethics of a technology vendor is exploited by some un-controllable third-party. Gone are the days when Microsoft, by way of example, would have waged war and just built-in local- and remote- peer discovery, rsync++, etc. in response to this daring challenger to the hegemony.

I guess, I really do sort of miss that. Dropbox really sucks. I only use it because my friends do.