My guess is that the governance and decision-making of owncloud inc, coupled with commercial debt/obligations they chose to take on, made it impossible to becom

My guess is that the governance and decision-making of owncloud inc, coupled with commercial debt/obligations they chose to take on, made it impossible to become commercially successful. Once the writing is on the wall for the main devs, why stick around? You can spin the code out to an unencumbered corporation (nextcloud), leave the debt behind you (owncloud), and start with a clean slate and new governance model. That could be close or far from the truth, but one thing is clear: the 8 devs who left couldn't see a path to solvency (technical and financial) that was reachable. The most likely reasons for this are either economic realities, or inadequate political capital. I hope they do better in their new positions.