13 ms·

Owncloud has been forked into Nextcloud

182 points by jwildeboer 10y ago

fapjacks 10y ago
Yeah, no shit! This is no surprise to me whatsoever. Owncloud has been stuck in a rut for a long time! I'm assuming that taking 90% of the top contributors means they'll still be taking along a hefty amount of the politics, but maybe with a fresh outlook this project will become competitive again.
distances 10y ago
It would be interesting to hear a bit more background for this forking. What does Nextcloud try to achieve that was not possible within the ownCloud project? Was this a clash of personalities as one of the ownCloud founders is among those jumping the ship?
- MorrisJobke 10y ago
  http://karlitschek.de/2016/06/nextcloud/ http://karlitschek.de/2016/06/nextcloud/ sheds some light into this.
- LukasReschke 10y ago
  We can't talk about this in detail yet but http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2016/06/nextcloud-is-replacing-owncloud.html http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2016/06/nextcloud-is-replacing... has some more information on what's upcoming. If you can understand German a very good in-depth research article is at http://www.golem.de/news/community-fork-und-neues-unternehmen-nextcloud-ist-der-neustart-fuer-owncloud-1606-121243.html http://www.golem.de/news/community-fork-und-neues-unternehme... Disclaimer: I am one of those folks that left ownCloud for Nextcloud.
  - jwildeboer 10y ago
    I sincerely hope that Nextcould embraces the C4 contract for community building. That would be IMHO the best way to create and grow a community that is truly open and will survive for a long time. http://rfc.zeromq.org/spec:42/C4/ http://rfc.zeromq.org/spec:42/C4/
    - LukasReschke 10y ago
      Fantastic idea! We have started a public discussion about this at https://help.nextcloud.com/t/should-we-adopt-c4/113/1 https://help.nextcloud.com/t/should-we-adopt-c4/113/1. You're more than welcome to join it as well :-)
    - Karunamon 10y ago
      This seems like a great codified set of best practices - but why the prohibition on topic branches? The project SHALL NOT use topic branches for any reason. This is a main tenet of git-flow, and it's hardly uncommon.
      - jwildeboer 10y ago
        The direct explanation is at http://hintjens.com/blog:117#toc47 http://hintjens.com/blog:117#toc47 but you should read the whole post. Or even better the book Social Architecture.
        Karunamon 10y ago
        Excellent link, and thanks, but the branching thing is hardly touched on, other than a quick small paragraph that reads like "it's too hard for people to learn".
- unlinker 10y ago
  http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2016/06/nextcloud-is-replacing-owncloud.html http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2016/06/nextcloud-is-replacing... >'why' is the question everybody has and I hope you understand I don't want to talk too much about that Grow up, maybe, Jos? This sounds to me like the usual and continuous splits inside OSS communities, but Jesus, I do miss the days when you had a detailed explanation as soon as somebody leaked the IRC logs!
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    He's addressed it and said he doesn't want to talk about it. I don't think it's Jos who needs to grow up. If you want to watch trainwrecks go read the celeb gossip mags.
    - adrianlmm 10y ago
      If it is an open source Project developed in the open, I believe we deserve to know why.
  - LionessLover 10y ago
    You don't talk negative about other people, especially if you worked with them for a long time, and especially when it's not a matter of "they hid bodies of people they killed" but mere differences in opinion about how to do business. So no, this dirty laundry should not be aired in public.
    - RubyPinch 10y ago
      On the other hand, that specific thing is the entire reason for the fork existing, its drive and motivation. It could be anything. "We feel own-cloud isn't libre enough", "We don't feel this direction is profitable", "We feel owncloud was too open", "I personally disliked one of the people there any wanted to sink the ship", etc etc (note: I am being a bit tongue in cheek here) If its a reason I agree with, then migration makes sense, if its a reason I don't agree with, then obviously migration might not be a good idea. But no one knows what the driving motivation of nextcloud is! So its a bit more worry-causing then reassuring
- gpvos 10y ago
  Roughly translated from http://www.golem.de/news/community-fork-und-neues-unternehmen-nextcloud-ist-der-neustart-fuer-owncloud-1606-121243.html http://www.golem.de/news/community-fork-und-neues-unternehme... : Jos Poortvliet, Owncloud's former community manager and now responsible for communication at Nextcloud calls it a "new start". Karlitschek and Poortvliet give as reason for the new founding "structural problems" and some "economic decisions" of the Owncloud company, that caused great dissatisfaction. They do not want to give further details. Nextcloud's business model should be focused on long-term viability and sustainability. Apparently the Owncloud company could not offer that in a satisfactory measure.
  - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
    It sounds like they didn't have a viable business model, so they're starting a new company to get rid of any ties the old had. Maybe there's VC money coming in and this is a requirement to be able to be sold later... Who knows? :)
    - fbartels 10y ago
      you mean even more vc, than there was already in the old inc.?
      - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
        Apparently not. I stand corrected! :)
    - evook 10y ago
      Based on what I heared from someone involved, it's actually the opposite. They don't want VC money to come in and loose theirs influence in the decision making.
      - majewsky 10y ago
        I'd guess the same. The new company is a GmbH (German version of a "Ltd." AFAIK), not a stock corporation. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesellschaft_mit_beschränkter_Haftung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesellschaft_mit_beschränkter_...
- gregmac 10y ago
  There's some telling comments in a thread on their forums[1]: > So, the main thing we wanted is a sustainable company. A company that doesn't go away soon, that isn't forced by a bad funding situation to make stupid decisions, or to limit itself and not work with partners as much as possible. > A similar fork? Well, if Frank and the rest of the engineers lose trust in Nextcloud, we won't have to fork as this time, we will make sure the company won't fully control trademark and code. No more CLA. Trademark in a foundation. So this is the first and last time a fork happens [1] https://help.nextcloud.com/t/will-nextcloud-stay/90/4 https://help.nextcloud.com/t/will-nextcloud-stay/90/4
stp-ip 10y ago
9 of the top 10 contributors in addition to the project founder and the lead security engineer are pushing this effort. Good foundation to fork and support users. Let's hope this brings the transparency, openness and community awareness owncloud/nextcloud always needed.
- mhurron 10y ago
  Why would they when they were (apparently) 90% of OwnCloud in the first place. What stopped them being open in the first place?
  - stp-ip 10y ago
    They were 90% of the top contributors. The company had a lot more sales people. The devs don't control decisions of the company. Only the code and that's why I assume there was this fork.
    - mhurron 10y ago
      Presumably they did control the company when they started. I don't know of a time when this complaint wasn't leveled against OwnCloud.
      - stp-ip 10y ago
        Control can be taken and views/visions can be different. That's the great thing about open source. The community or even other participants can fork and continue their own vision. Projects shouldn't make a habit out of it so.
- LionessLover 10y ago
  Given the amount of negative voices I hear each time OwnCloud is mentioned - and that includes German tech websites where this German company is mentioned more frequently - I don't know why the departure of the original developers should necessarily be a bad thing. The amount of negativity of previous OC users was unusual, too much to put it down with a "you can't satisfy everybody". I'm not even talking about the "OMG they use PHP" comments. I must say does seem to be at least partially the fault of developers, since they likely had much more responsibility than upper-level managers since it was a startup founded by techies for the longest time. So if the company manages to leave some of that baggage behind this may be quite alright. Having worked for another German software-heavy company I must admit I understood all those complaints, because our own products were similar: Pretty good in principle, but way, WAY too little attention to details that matters to customers. With each release the number of really stupid annoying little bugs never seemed to decrease (talking about "my" ex company, I only know OC from forum comments - but OC users' complaints sound like the ones we deservedly got to hear a lot).
phreeza 10y ago
I have been using Seafile for 2 years now and I'm very happy with it.
- embik 10y ago
  While Seafile seems to work, the developers have been kinda sloppy both with licensing[1] and security[2]. The answers on both issues really make me question their integrity and ability to deliver a secure piece of software. [1] https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/issues/666 https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/issues/666 [2] https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/issues/350 https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/issues/350
  - gstuartj 10y ago
    OwnCloud actually has security issues similar to what you cited in the second link. Their security track record isn't spectacular either. https://blog.hboeck.de/archives/880-Pwncloud-bad-crypto-in-the-Owncloud-encryption-module.html https://blog.hboeck.de/archives/880-Pwncloud-bad-crypto-in-t...
    - LukasReschke 10y ago
      I'd like to point you to https://statuscode.ch/2015/09/ownCloud-security-development-over-the-years/ https://statuscode.ch/2015/09/ownCloud-security-development-... and make you aware of https://seacloud.cc/group/3/wiki/security-records.md https://seacloud.cc/group/3/wiki/security-records.md and you should probably consider who reported the last critical vulnerability. Only because a project is serious about actually publishing vulnerability data does not make it necessarily more insecure (or secure).
      - gstuartj 10y ago
        I agree. Just pointing out that the specific problem the above poster mentioned as a reason to choose OwnCloud also is similarly true of OwnCloud. https://blog.hboeck.de/archives/880-Pwncloud-bad-crypto-in-the-Owncloud-encryption-module.html https://blog.hboeck.de/archives/880-Pwncloud-bad-crypto-in-t...
medlazik 10y ago
> You should have full control over your data. We help you achieve that: a safe home for all your data. Secure, under your control and developed in an open, transparent and trustworthy way. We are Nextcloud. Why are we not in full control over our data with ownCloud anymore? What really changed that made the founder and top contributors leave ownCloud?
- amelius 10y ago
  This is a statement about nextcloud, not about owncloud.
  - medlazik 10y ago
    This is a statement for ownCloud customers to join Nextcloud. It's filled with direct comparisons with ownCloud without telling its name. It's worded to make ownCloud customers feel like it's not safe to use ownCloud anymore. But maybe that's my paranoid self misinterpreting it.
    - gdamjan1 10y ago
      I beleive that's a statement about the core value of NextCloud, one that you can perhaps get from the OwnCloud product too, but not beeing a core value of OwnCloud Inc.
      - gpvos 10y ago
        I thought that it was a core value of Owncloud too, so I am curious what went wrong there (apparently, from what this statement implies).
      - gtirloni 10y ago
        I think that's implied from the tagline "OwnCloud A safe home for all your data". And the Features page saying "Access, Sync and Share Your Data, Under Your Control!" https://owncloud.org/features/ https://owncloud.org/features/
- 10y ago
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alexggordon 10y ago
Let me tell you an anecdote about Owncloud. Once upon a time, I hosted an Owncloud instance for my family. I had a raid 5 system setup on an old Xserve with around 10 TB of usable space. I was really into learning about encryption at the time, so I figured it would be cool to encrypt all my families files on the server. I made sure that all my family members were properly educated about not forgetting their password, and then enabled the Encryption App[0] by following a tutorial. Everything went smoothly for about 6 months until I was updating Owncloud with a minor version upgrade, and then BAM; nobody (myself included) could decrypt any data on the server. I posted around about it, trying to figure it, ripped apart the source code to the point where I found that manually decrypting the data was resulting in gibberish. All my backups were the encrypted data, so those didn't really help either. I still don't know what happened to this day, but I've been eternally wary of personal fileservers ever since. [0] https://owncloud.org/blog/how-owncloud-uses-encryption-to-protect-your-data/ https://owncloud.org/blog/how-owncloud-uses-encryption-to-pr...
- antx 10y ago
  Well, sorry about your loss. Then again, please understand that NO, you didn't have a backup. What you had was a single copy (probably a simple rsync, am I right?)... that is worth nothing in case of corruption or voluntary mischief. Learn from your mistakes. Either use a solution that has a retention policy, or don't do backups at all.
  - onli 10y ago
    That is not the lesson here. It is that a backup should not backup the encrypted data, but the unencrypted data, and have its own encryption. A simple rsync based bashscript can be fine for that, though I'd use borg.
    - jjnoakes 10y ago
      How do you decrypt the data if it was encrypted client-side by multiple keys?
mnutt 10y ago
I'm curious to hear if Nextcloud is going to be rewriting the iOS mobile client from scratch, since it's GPL and Owncloud owns the copyrights so is the only one who can relicense for Apple.
- jancborchardt 10y ago
  Most likely this is what needs to happen sooner or later. For now the existing iOS app can be used of course since it can connect to any ownCloud/Nextcloud server. Or any WebDAV app, for that matter cause we support open standards. We will make sure though that this problem does not arise again since there will be a Nextcloud foundation which is in full control of the copyrights. Disclaimer: I am the former designer of ownCloud and moved on to Nextcloud.
ausjke 10y ago
After read the announcement I still can not figure out the reason to fork? I tried owncloud and found it uses a lot memory and then gave up on that.
hn234234 10y ago
Having contributed a tiny bit to ownCloud, I enjoyed working with the people that now left to start Nextcloud. I think they were the more technical minded people on the team at ownCloud, compared to the sales persons of which there seem to be an awful lot. Good luck!
- jancborchardt 10y ago
  Thank you, very cool to hear! :) You are of course very welcome to contribute again – just check https://github.com/nextcloud https://github.com/nextcloud or join us in IRC #nextcloud or #nextcloud-dev (freenode).
aespinoza 10y ago
This article sounds like someone in OwnCloud wanted to build a box and not a platform: http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2016/06/nextcloud-is-replacing-owncloud.html http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2016/06/nextcloud-is-replacing... Maybe NextCLoud is skunkworks: http://mashable.com/2016/05/08/silicon-valley-recap-skunkworks/#YtS2jwIrKsq1 http://mashable.com/2016/05/08/silicon-valley-recap-skunkwor...
IgorPartola 10y ago
I like how OwnCloud was characterized on Bad Voltage (paraphrasing here): "It's as if someone a few years ago wrote down their definition of cloud and sent it back in time to 1996. Then a bunch of PHP developers in 1996 implemented it knowing nothing about what they were doing and then sent the code back to present day." That's not to say I don't appreciate the fact that ownCloud exists, but I find it much harder to use, and the fact that it's written in PHP makes me not want to dig into it to fix.
- creeble 10y ago
  Indeed I've been waiting for something like Owncloud for Django or Flask or something Pythonesque for a while. I'd join in if there were a better Pythonista to start it than myself.
  - mnutt 10y ago
    I actually wish that Owncloud would focus on file syncing and not on apps. Their app API feels like the wrong level of abstraction, more like you're building wordpress plugins than actual apps. I appreciate that it makes it easy for devs to get started, but can result in some terrible security holes and messy APIs. Something like Sandstorm is a much better way to separate apps and content and prevent security issues. Owncloud's syncing clients for mac/win/linux are descended from mirall and are pretty good. I used Owncloud server for a while then built myself a lightweight replacement in node that uses the same sync API. (webdav)
    - IgorPartola 10y ago
      I have been hearing good things about SyncThing, though it lacks an iOS client.
  - mxuribe 10y ago
    Have you tried Seafile? (https://www.seafile.com/en/home/ https://www.seafile.com/en/home/) I have not installed it, but I believe its python-based.
adrianlmm 10y ago
I implemented Owncloud in my workplace, but we had one problem that made us uninstall it and create our own solution in Dart, the problem was that when you share a file it doesn't preserve the file path extructure and that was very important for us.
- botw 10y ago
  extructure? why is that important?
  - adrianlmm 10y ago
    *structure, becuase every folder has meaning, if they share the document "law_2016.pdf" that is in the folder "/Enterprise_1/documents/laws/info" the folder structure has information about the context of the file in this case, they now is a document of law of the Enterprise 1.
known 10y ago
Reminds me of http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/Documentation/virtual/uml/UserModeLinux-HOWTO.txt http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/Documentation/virtual/u...
smnscu 10y ago
Seems like the code will be here: https://github.com/nextcloud/server https://github.com/nextcloud/server (right now there's only an empty readme, committed 9h ago)
educar 10y ago
I feel sad for ownCloud and Nextcloud. ownCloud has a brand and this fork dilutes it. It will be on everyone's mind especially since the founder has left to create a competitor. For Nextcloud, unless they can explicitly state why this fork exists, it's hard to side with them. What kind of ideological differences are we talking about? Sure, you don't need to throw around personal accusations or finger point but it would help to know what motivated this. On a related note, this is a risk which many platform companies take. If you opensource your project completely, then anyone can fork it and take it ahead if the forker is a big or well known person. I think we got really lucky with iojs and node.
- thomnottom 10y ago
  It seems to me that these things happen somewhat regularly in the open source community, because it was built upon that concept.
- jancborchardt 10y ago
  It’s not a »risk which was taken«. ownCloud started out as a pure open source project and the company was formed later. Having it under a free software license / open source is exactly so that the community can step in when there is a problem with the company. Disclaimer: I am one of the people who left ownCloud for Nextcloud. Also one of the first contributors to the project when it was still very young, and the company didn’t exist yet.
  - educar 10y ago
    Yes, the risk was taken when the company was formed. I didn't mean that it was taken after the company was formed. I am a long time ownCloud use. iirc, it was even announced on planetkde first.
toggle 10y ago
I used OwnCloud for a while and never had any problems with it, but it seemed like overkill for my use. I didn't have multiple users and I wasn't using it to share files with anyone -- just syncing files between my own devices. I started using Sandstorm[0] for my personal server, and there's an app for it called Davros[1], which implements the OwnCloud protocol. It doesn't really do a good job of advertising that fact (not even mentioned in its description), but you can use the OwnCloud clients with Davros. It's been satisfying my file-syncing needs with no problems. Just be aware that it lacks versioning. I'm excited to see what's coming for NextCloud, though. [0] https://sandstorm.io https://sandstorm.io [1] https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/8aspz4sfjnp8u89000mh2v1xrdyx97ytn8hq71mdzv4p4d8n0n3h https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/8aspz4sfjnp8u89000mh2v1xrdyx97...
- tinix 10y ago
  It's not an "owncloud protocol"... It's called WebDAV and it's a web standard[0], like HTTP. [0]https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4918 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4918 There are literally 100s and 100s of these tools... Nothing is special about OwnCloud, or Sandstorm, in this case, to support interoperability. It's pretty obvious, IMO, that it supports WebDAV since "dav" is right there in the name.
  - kentonv 10y ago
    To be fair, in order to work with the ownCloud client, Davros had to implement a few ownCloud-specific extensions. But basically, yes, it's WebDAV.
deleted 10y ago
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NuSkooler 10y ago
I've been using ownCloud for quite some time now with a handful of users and many clients across Windows, Android, Linux, and OS X without any issues. This is running in a FreeBSD jail. I too wish it wasn't written in PHP as I'd be inclined to add features, but I haven't had any of the issues mentioned in this thread. What is the reasoning behind this new fork again?
Renner1 10y ago
A year ago I reviewed most of the popular "Self-hosted 'Cloud'" packages and found they all had pretty ugly history (security vulnerabilities in particular) and the technologies used didn't inspire confidence in the developers (when data security and integrity are on the table, PHP developers wouldn't be my first choice, nor any choice). Are there any decent tools out there today or is it still the same situation?
- LukasReschke 10y ago
  Good questions! Note, that I'm affilated with Nextcloud so obviously a bit biased. Only because a project is very transparent about security vulnerabilities does not necessarily mean it's inherently insecure. In fact, at ownCloud we found all critical vulnerabilities ourself and also run a successful bug bounty program. (for Nextcloud we are also considering one) Check https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11821854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11821854 for more insights.
dang 10y ago
There's a related post at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11825815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11825815.
jwildeboer 10y ago
Boom. #Owncloud shutters after #Nextcloud announces itself. VC panic galore? Open wins! https://owncloud.com/owncloud-statement-concerning-formation-nextcloud-frank-karlitschek/ https://owncloud.com/owncloud-statement-concerning-formation...
ichaib 10y ago
As an Open source project, how should you handle such a situation?
g1dv5ek8ctfymm0 10y ago
Owncloud is NOT a backup solution, it is a remote access/sharing solution. At least one client syncing to an account on the Owncloud server should have an incremental backup solution. My personal setup is that my OSX clients backup to a Time Machine. Easy peasy. If I have a server-side failure, I keep motoring on, albeit without remote access/sharing until I get the server fixed. If I have a client-side failure, I can restore to a prior moment in time off the Time Machine or sync to a new client off of Owncloud depending on the nature of the failure.

182 points by jwildeboer 10y ago

Yeah, no shit! This is no surprise to me whatsoever. Owncloud has been stuck in a rut for a long time! I'm assuming that taking 90% of the top contributors means they'll still be taking along a hefty amount of the politics, but maybe with a fresh outlook this project will become competitive again.

distances 10y ago

It would be interesting to hear a bit more background for this forking. What does Nextcloud try to achieve that was not possible within the ownCloud project? Was this a clash of personalities as one of the ownCloud founders is among those jumping the ship?

MorrisJobke 10y ago
http://karlitschek.de/2016/06/nextcloud/ http://karlitschek.de/2016/06/nextcloud/ sheds some light into this.
LukasReschke 10y ago
We can't talk about this in detail yet but http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2016/06/nextcloud-is-replacing-owncloud.html http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2016/06/nextcloud-is-replacing... has some more information on what's upcoming. If you can understand German a very good in-depth research article is at http://www.golem.de/news/community-fork-und-neues-unternehmen-nextcloud-ist-der-neustart-fuer-owncloud-1606-121243.html http://www.golem.de/news/community-fork-und-neues-unternehme... Disclaimer: I am one of those folks that left ownCloud for Nextcloud.
- jwildeboer 10y ago
  I sincerely hope that Nextcould embraces the C4 contract for community building. That would be IMHO the best way to create and grow a community that is truly open and will survive for a long time. http://rfc.zeromq.org/spec:42/C4/ http://rfc.zeromq.org/spec:42/C4/
  - LukasReschke 10y ago
    Fantastic idea! We have started a public discussion about this at https://help.nextcloud.com/t/should-we-adopt-c4/113/1 https://help.nextcloud.com/t/should-we-adopt-c4/113/1. You're more than welcome to join it as well :-)
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    This seems like a great codified set of best practices - but why the prohibition on topic branches? The project SHALL NOT use topic branches for any reason. This is a main tenet of git-flow, and it's hardly uncommon.
    - jwildeboer 10y ago
      The direct explanation is at http://hintjens.com/blog:117#toc47 http://hintjens.com/blog:117#toc47 but you should read the whole post. Or even better the book Social Architecture.
      - Karunamon 10y ago
        Excellent link, and thanks, but the branching thing is hardly touched on, other than a quick small paragraph that reads like "it's too hard for people to learn".
unlinker 10y ago
http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2016/06/nextcloud-is-replacing-owncloud.html http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2016/06/nextcloud-is-replacing... >'why' is the question everybody has and I hope you understand I don't want to talk too much about that Grow up, maybe, Jos? This sounds to me like the usual and continuous splits inside OSS communities, but Jesus, I do miss the days when you had a detailed explanation as soon as somebody leaked the IRC logs!
- mattmanser 10y ago
  He's addressed it and said he doesn't want to talk about it. I don't think it's Jos who needs to grow up. If you want to watch trainwrecks go read the celeb gossip mags.
  - adrianlmm 10y ago
    If it is an open source Project developed in the open, I believe we deserve to know why.
- LionessLover 10y ago
  You don't talk negative about other people, especially if you worked with them for a long time, and especially when it's not a matter of "they hid bodies of people they killed" but mere differences in opinion about how to do business. So no, this dirty laundry should not be aired in public.
  - RubyPinch 10y ago
    On the other hand, that specific thing is the entire reason for the fork existing, its drive and motivation. It could be anything. "We feel own-cloud isn't libre enough", "We don't feel this direction is profitable", "We feel owncloud was too open", "I personally disliked one of the people there any wanted to sink the ship", etc etc (note: I am being a bit tongue in cheek here) If its a reason I agree with, then migration makes sense, if its a reason I don't agree with, then obviously migration might not be a good idea. But no one knows what the driving motivation of nextcloud is! So its a bit more worry-causing then reassuring
gpvos 10y ago
Roughly translated from http://www.golem.de/news/community-fork-und-neues-unternehmen-nextcloud-ist-der-neustart-fuer-owncloud-1606-121243.html http://www.golem.de/news/community-fork-und-neues-unternehme... : Jos Poortvliet, Owncloud's former community manager and now responsible for communication at Nextcloud calls it a "new start". Karlitschek and Poortvliet give as reason for the new founding "structural problems" and some "economic decisions" of the Owncloud company, that caused great dissatisfaction. They do not want to give further details. Nextcloud's business model should be focused on long-term viability and sustainability. Apparently the Owncloud company could not offer that in a satisfactory measure.
- NetStrikeForce 10y ago
  It sounds like they didn't have a viable business model, so they're starting a new company to get rid of any ties the old had. Maybe there's VC money coming in and this is a requirement to be able to be sold later... Who knows? :)
  - fbartels 10y ago
    you mean even more vc, than there was already in the old inc.?
    - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
      Apparently not. I stand corrected! :)
  - evook 10y ago
    Based on what I heared from someone involved, it's actually the opposite. They don't want VC money to come in and loose theirs influence in the decision making.
    - majewsky 10y ago
      I'd guess the same. The new company is a GmbH (German version of a "Ltd." AFAIK), not a stock corporation. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesellschaft_mit_beschränkter_Haftung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesellschaft_mit_beschränkter_...
gregmac 10y ago
There's some telling comments in a thread on their forums[1]: > So, the main thing we wanted is a sustainable company. A company that doesn't go away soon, that isn't forced by a bad funding situation to make stupid decisions, or to limit itself and not work with partners as much as possible. > A similar fork? Well, if Frank and the rest of the engineers lose trust in Nextcloud, we won't have to fork as this time, we will make sure the company won't fully control trademark and code. No more CLA. Trademark in a foundation. So this is the first and last time a fork happens [1] https://help.nextcloud.com/t/will-nextcloud-stay/90/4 https://help.nextcloud.com/t/will-nextcloud-stay/90/4

stp-ip 10y ago

9 of the top 10 contributors in addition to the project founder and the lead security engineer are pushing this effort. Good foundation to fork and support users. Let's hope this brings the transparency, openness and community awareness owncloud/nextcloud always needed.

mhurron 10y ago
Why would they when they were (apparently) 90% of OwnCloud in the first place. What stopped them being open in the first place?
- stp-ip 10y ago
  They were 90% of the top contributors. The company had a lot more sales people. The devs don't control decisions of the company. Only the code and that's why I assume there was this fork.
  - mhurron 10y ago
    Presumably they did control the company when they started. I don't know of a time when this complaint wasn't leveled against OwnCloud.
    - stp-ip 10y ago
      Control can be taken and views/visions can be different. That's the great thing about open source. The community or even other participants can fork and continue their own vision. Projects shouldn't make a habit out of it so.
LionessLover 10y ago
Given the amount of negative voices I hear each time OwnCloud is mentioned - and that includes German tech websites where this German company is mentioned more frequently - I don't know why the departure of the original developers should necessarily be a bad thing. The amount of negativity of previous OC users was unusual, too much to put it down with a "you can't satisfy everybody". I'm not even talking about the "OMG they use PHP" comments. I must say does seem to be at least partially the fault of developers, since they likely had much more responsibility than upper-level managers since it was a startup founded by techies for the longest time. So if the company manages to leave some of that baggage behind this may be quite alright. Having worked for another German software-heavy company I must admit I understood all those complaints, because our own products were similar: Pretty good in principle, but way, WAY too little attention to details that matters to customers. With each release the number of really stupid annoying little bugs never seemed to decrease (talking about "my" ex company, I only know OC from forum comments - but OC users' complaints sound like the ones we deservedly got to hear a lot).

phreeza 10y ago

I have been using Seafile for 2 years now and I'm very happy with it.

embik 10y ago
While Seafile seems to work, the developers have been kinda sloppy both with licensing[1] and security[2]. The answers on both issues really make me question their integrity and ability to deliver a secure piece of software. [1] https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/issues/666 https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/issues/666 [2] https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/issues/350 https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/issues/350
- gstuartj 10y ago
  OwnCloud actually has security issues similar to what you cited in the second link. Their security track record isn't spectacular either. https://blog.hboeck.de/archives/880-Pwncloud-bad-crypto-in-the-Owncloud-encryption-module.html https://blog.hboeck.de/archives/880-Pwncloud-bad-crypto-in-t...
  - LukasReschke 10y ago
    I'd like to point you to https://statuscode.ch/2015/09/ownCloud-security-development-over-the-years/ https://statuscode.ch/2015/09/ownCloud-security-development-... and make you aware of https://seacloud.cc/group/3/wiki/security-records.md https://seacloud.cc/group/3/wiki/security-records.md and you should probably consider who reported the last critical vulnerability. Only because a project is serious about actually publishing vulnerability data does not make it necessarily more insecure (or secure).
    - gstuartj 10y ago
      I agree. Just pointing out that the specific problem the above poster mentioned as a reason to choose OwnCloud also is similarly true of OwnCloud. https://blog.hboeck.de/archives/880-Pwncloud-bad-crypto-in-the-Owncloud-encryption-module.html https://blog.hboeck.de/archives/880-Pwncloud-bad-crypto-in-t...

medlazik 10y ago

> You should have full control over your data. We help you achieve that: a safe home for all your data. Secure, under your control and developed in an open, transparent and trustworthy way. We are Nextcloud. Why are we not in full control over our data with ownCloud anymore? What really changed that made the founder and top contributors leave ownCloud?

amelius 10y ago
This is a statement about nextcloud, not about owncloud.
- medlazik 10y ago
  This is a statement for ownCloud customers to join Nextcloud. It's filled with direct comparisons with ownCloud without telling its name. It's worded to make ownCloud customers feel like it's not safe to use ownCloud anymore. But maybe that's my paranoid self misinterpreting it.
  - gdamjan1 10y ago
    I beleive that's a statement about the core value of NextCloud, one that you can perhaps get from the OwnCloud product too, but not beeing a core value of OwnCloud Inc.
    - gpvos 10y ago
      I thought that it was a core value of Owncloud too, so I am curious what went wrong there (apparently, from what this statement implies).
    - gtirloni 10y ago
      I think that's implied from the tagline "OwnCloud A safe home for all your data". And the Features page saying "Access, Sync and Share Your Data, Under Your Control!" https://owncloud.org/features/ https://owncloud.org/features/
10y ago

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alexggordon 10y ago

Let me tell you an anecdote about Owncloud. Once upon a time, I hosted an Owncloud instance for my family. I had a raid 5 system setup on an old Xserve with around 10 TB of usable space. I was really into learning about encryption at the time, so I figured it would be cool to encrypt all my families files on the server. I made sure that all my family members were properly educated about not forgetting their password, and then enabled the Encryption App[0] by following a tutorial. Everything went smoothly for about 6 months until I was updating Owncloud with a minor version upgrade, and then BAM; nobody (myself included) could decrypt any data on the server. I posted around about it, trying to figure it, ripped apart the source code to the point where I found that manually decrypting the data was resulting in gibberish. All my backups were the encrypted data, so those didn't really help either. I still don't know what happened to this day, but I've been eternally wary of personal fileservers ever since. [0] https://owncloud.org/blog/how-owncloud-uses-encryption-to-protect-your-data/ https://owncloud.org/blog/how-owncloud-uses-encryption-to-pr...

antx 10y ago
Well, sorry about your loss. Then again, please understand that NO, you didn't have a backup. What you had was a single copy (probably a simple rsync, am I right?)... that is worth nothing in case of corruption or voluntary mischief. Learn from your mistakes. Either use a solution that has a retention policy, or don't do backups at all.
- onli 10y ago
  That is not the lesson here. It is that a backup should not backup the encrypted data, but the unencrypted data, and have its own encryption. A simple rsync based bashscript can be fine for that, though I'd use borg.
  - jjnoakes 10y ago
    How do you decrypt the data if it was encrypted client-side by multiple keys?

mnutt 10y ago

I'm curious to hear if Nextcloud is going to be rewriting the iOS mobile client from scratch, since it's GPL and Owncloud owns the copyrights so is the only one who can relicense for Apple.

jancborchardt 10y ago
Most likely this is what needs to happen sooner or later. For now the existing iOS app can be used of course since it can connect to any ownCloud/Nextcloud server. Or any WebDAV app, for that matter cause we support open standards. We will make sure though that this problem does not arise again since there will be a Nextcloud foundation which is in full control of the copyrights. Disclaimer: I am the former designer of ownCloud and moved on to Nextcloud.

ausjke 10y ago

After read the announcement I still can not figure out the reason to fork? I tried owncloud and found it uses a lot memory and then gave up on that.

hn234234 10y ago

Having contributed a tiny bit to ownCloud, I enjoyed working with the people that now left to start Nextcloud. I think they were the more technical minded people on the team at ownCloud, compared to the sales persons of which there seem to be an awful lot. Good luck!

jancborchardt 10y ago
Thank you, very cool to hear! :) You are of course very welcome to contribute again – just check https://github.com/nextcloud https://github.com/nextcloud or join us in IRC #nextcloud or #nextcloud-dev (freenode).

aespinoza 10y ago

This article sounds like someone in OwnCloud wanted to build a box and not a platform: http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2016/06/nextcloud-is-replacing-owncloud.html http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2016/06/nextcloud-is-replacing... Maybe NextCLoud is skunkworks: http://mashable.com/2016/05/08/silicon-valley-recap-skunkworks/#YtS2jwIrKsq1 http://mashable.com/2016/05/08/silicon-valley-recap-skunkwor...

IgorPartola 10y ago

I like how OwnCloud was characterized on Bad Voltage (paraphrasing here): "It's as if someone a few years ago wrote down their definition of cloud and sent it back in time to 1996. Then a bunch of PHP developers in 1996 implemented it knowing nothing about what they were doing and then sent the code back to present day." That's not to say I don't appreciate the fact that ownCloud exists, but I find it much harder to use, and the fact that it's written in PHP makes me not want to dig into it to fix.

creeble 10y ago
Indeed I've been waiting for something like Owncloud for Django or Flask or something Pythonesque for a while. I'd join in if there were a better Pythonista to start it than myself.
- mnutt 10y ago
  I actually wish that Owncloud would focus on file syncing and not on apps. Their app API feels like the wrong level of abstraction, more like you're building wordpress plugins than actual apps. I appreciate that it makes it easy for devs to get started, but can result in some terrible security holes and messy APIs. Something like Sandstorm is a much better way to separate apps and content and prevent security issues. Owncloud's syncing clients for mac/win/linux are descended from mirall and are pretty good. I used Owncloud server for a while then built myself a lightweight replacement in node that uses the same sync API. (webdav)
  - IgorPartola 10y ago
    I have been hearing good things about SyncThing, though it lacks an iOS client.
- mxuribe 10y ago
  Have you tried Seafile? (https://www.seafile.com/en/home/ https://www.seafile.com/en/home/) I have not installed it, but I believe its python-based.

adrianlmm 10y ago

I implemented Owncloud in my workplace, but we had one problem that made us uninstall it and create our own solution in Dart, the problem was that when you share a file it doesn't preserve the file path extructure and that was very important for us.

botw 10y ago
extructure? why is that important?
- adrianlmm 10y ago
  *structure, becuase every folder has meaning, if they share the document "law_2016.pdf" that is in the folder "/Enterprise_1/documents/laws/info" the folder structure has information about the context of the file in this case, they now is a document of law of the Enterprise 1.

known 10y ago

Reminds me of http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/Documentation/virtual/uml/UserModeLinux-HOWTO.txt http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/Documentation/virtual/u...

smnscu 10y ago

Seems like the code will be here: https://github.com/nextcloud/server https://github.com/nextcloud/server (right now there's only an empty readme, committed 9h ago)

educar 10y ago

I feel sad for ownCloud and Nextcloud. ownCloud has a brand and this fork dilutes it. It will be on everyone's mind especially since the founder has left to create a competitor. For Nextcloud, unless they can explicitly state why this fork exists, it's hard to side with them. What kind of ideological differences are we talking about? Sure, you don't need to throw around personal accusations or finger point but it would help to know what motivated this. On a related note, this is a risk which many platform companies take. If you opensource your project completely, then anyone can fork it and take it ahead if the forker is a big or well known person. I think we got really lucky with iojs and node.

thomnottom 10y ago
It seems to me that these things happen somewhat regularly in the open source community, because it was built upon that concept.
jancborchardt 10y ago
It’s not a »risk which was taken«. ownCloud started out as a pure open source project and the company was formed later. Having it under a free software license / open source is exactly so that the community can step in when there is a problem with the company. Disclaimer: I am one of the people who left ownCloud for Nextcloud. Also one of the first contributors to the project when it was still very young, and the company didn’t exist yet.
- educar 10y ago
  Yes, the risk was taken when the company was formed. I didn't mean that it was taken after the company was formed. I am a long time ownCloud use. iirc, it was even announced on planetkde first.

toggle 10y ago

I used OwnCloud for a while and never had any problems with it, but it seemed like overkill for my use. I didn't have multiple users and I wasn't using it to share files with anyone -- just syncing files between my own devices. I started using Sandstorm[0] for my personal server, and there's an app for it called Davros[1], which implements the OwnCloud protocol. It doesn't really do a good job of advertising that fact (not even mentioned in its description), but you can use the OwnCloud clients with Davros. It's been satisfying my file-syncing needs with no problems. Just be aware that it lacks versioning. I'm excited to see what's coming for NextCloud, though. [0] https://sandstorm.io https://sandstorm.io [1] https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/8aspz4sfjnp8u89000mh2v1xrdyx97ytn8hq71mdzv4p4d8n0n3h https://apps.sandstorm.io/app/8aspz4sfjnp8u89000mh2v1xrdyx97...

tinix 10y ago
It's not an "owncloud protocol"... It's called WebDAV and it's a web standard[0], like HTTP. [0]https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4918 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4918 There are literally 100s and 100s of these tools... Nothing is special about OwnCloud, or Sandstorm, in this case, to support interoperability. It's pretty obvious, IMO, that it supports WebDAV since "dav" is right there in the name.
- kentonv 10y ago
  To be fair, in order to work with the ownCloud client, Davros had to implement a few ownCloud-specific extensions. But basically, yes, it's WebDAV.

deleted 10y ago

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NuSkooler 10y ago

I've been using ownCloud for quite some time now with a handful of users and many clients across Windows, Android, Linux, and OS X without any issues. This is running in a FreeBSD jail. I too wish it wasn't written in PHP as I'd be inclined to add features, but I haven't had any of the issues mentioned in this thread. What is the reasoning behind this new fork again?

Renner1 10y ago

A year ago I reviewed most of the popular "Self-hosted 'Cloud'" packages and found they all had pretty ugly history (security vulnerabilities in particular) and the technologies used didn't inspire confidence in the developers (when data security and integrity are on the table, PHP developers wouldn't be my first choice, nor any choice). Are there any decent tools out there today or is it still the same situation?

LukasReschke 10y ago
Good questions! Note, that I'm affilated with Nextcloud so obviously a bit biased. Only because a project is very transparent about security vulnerabilities does not necessarily mean it's inherently insecure. In fact, at ownCloud we found all critical vulnerabilities ourself and also run a successful bug bounty program. (for Nextcloud we are also considering one) Check https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11821854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11821854 for more insights.

dang 10y ago

There's a related post at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11825815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11825815.

jwildeboer 10y ago

Boom. #Owncloud shutters after #Nextcloud announces itself. VC panic galore? Open wins! https://owncloud.com/owncloud-statement-concerning-formation-nextcloud-frank-karlitschek/ https://owncloud.com/owncloud-statement-concerning-formation...

ichaib 10y ago

As an Open source project, how should you handle such a situation?

g1dv5ek8ctfymm0 10y ago

Owncloud is NOT a backup solution, it is a remote access/sharing solution. At least one client syncing to an account on the Owncloud server should have an incremental backup solution. My personal setup is that my OSX clients backup to a Time Machine. Easy peasy. If I have a server-side failure, I keep motoring on, albeit without remote access/sharing until I get the server fixed. If I have a client-side failure, I can restore to a prior moment in time off the Time Machine or sync to a new client off of Owncloud depending on the nature of the failure.