Thank you for that info, @sam. I was not familiar previously with how file uploads were stored. So it seems that, by default, file uploads are stored on the same server that is running discourse–in which case I understand how large uploads might be an issue. And I get how you are working to support direct uploads to S3 in the future.
What if you configure things now to send file uploads to S3, like described here?
Would that provide the same advantage now as what you are planning to release in the future as an automatic feature, and allow discourse to support large file uploads (and downloads)?