Hi Bob, again great question, below is our team's response, attached as a Product Note as well. We welcome your and everyone's feedback:

Product Note: Native Files versus File References 10/16/14

Version 1.0

Customer Question:

I am curious as to how the changes to the files platform will impact content libraries. Specifically how will this change the creation of content packs as well as the content delivery link? Also, since you can link files to Office 365 and Google Drive, does this mean that you can use files stored at those locations to create content packs and use the content delivery links for customers?

Salesforce Response:

The short answer is that the goal of our Files Unification initiative is to give Chatter Files and Content Libraries the same set of features including the ability to create Content Packs as well as Content Deliveries. In the Winter ‘15 release, we enabled the Content Deliveries API for both Chatter Files and Content Libraries. In the near-term however, for Office 365 and Google Drive docs, it will not be possible to create Content Packs nor Content Deliveries.

Regarding our Files Unification vision, the longer answer is that Salesforce was “born cloud” and we believe cloud-based file creation and coauthoring will become increasingly useful features. Microsoft Office 365 and Google Docs for Work both offer cloud-based file creation and coauthoring.

We are also seeing increasing demand from customers to bring all their files into the flow of business, including popular file types such as doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, pdf, mp3, wmv, avi, mpg, wav, tiff, jpg, png, etc.

Our goal is to make it easy to bring any file into the flow of business. For files that live outside of Salesforce, e.g. files in Office 365, we create a “File Reference” via Files Connect (GA Winter ‘15). Our north star is for this File Reference to behave exactly the same way as a “Native File” does in Salesforce.

Currently, Native Files and File References both have the same features (as of Winter ‘15):

Share to Persons

Share to Groups

Share to Records

Download File

Follow File

Reportable

Searchable (including Federated Search)

Full text search (for the external file referenced by the Reference File)

Role-based permissions

Collaborator/Viewer permissions

Edit File Name and File Description

Files appear in recommended “Files People Also Viewed”

As part of Files Unification, our goal is for Native Files and File References to both inherit the following features (Roadmap):

Available with Chatter Off (File References are based on the Chatter File)

Organize files in folders and sub-folders on Groups, Libraries and Records

Subscribe to file (“Follow” and “Subscribe” concepts will likely be unified)

Publish file to Library

Validation rules

Faceted search

Tagging

Metadata

Custom fields

Preview file

Comment on file (aka “Feed on file”)

Positive and negative ratings (“thumbs up” and “thumbs down” voting)

However, File References will likely not inherit the following Native Files features in the near-term:

Content Deliveries

Content Packs

Sync to desktop (aka “Files Sync”)

Follow file

Bringing both Native Files and File References into the flow of business is an industry first and will be a huge win for our customers. We welcome your feedback and look forward to continuing to making progress towards this vision in every release.

All of the above is Safe Harbor of course.