HUGE news: Nextcloud future of ownCloud!
-
I think most people are assuming at this point, but everyone is guessing, that the ownCloud product is dead. Their US branch has already shut down (which is why they are not responding here, everyone involved that we knew was fired) and all of the main contributors have left. Now that the announcement is out, chances are all the other contributors will leave, too. Why would anyone contribute to the old, poorly supported ownCloud when NextCloud has the momentum, investors and supposedly was founded to be supportive of the open source community?
While there is a chance for ownCloud to turn things around, it seems unlikely. NextCloud has the technology and the financing and the open source people. Just like how LibreOffice forked OpenOffice and by the time OpenOffice figured out that they had to donate the project to Apache, it was too late and the market had already given up on them. That's likely exactly what will happen here in the next few weeks.
-
@scottalanmiller said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
the OCF is for the OC code, not the NC code.
This I did understand - but who's going to be supporting that now? Of course the answer is oCF - but how do they pay the bills?
-
@Dashrender said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
@scottalanmiller said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
the OCF is for the OC code, not the NC code.
This I did understand - but who's going to be supporting that now? Of course the answer is oCF - but how do they pay the bills?
From their paying customers, same as always. Or from investors. Or not at all. Does it matter? ownCloud seems likely to be dead, what's the concern around the support and why bring it up in this thread about NextCloud?
From the sounds of it, no one is going to support it, and that's a good thing. You don't want any support going to ownCloud if NextCloud does a good job because it will just water down the two products.
-
So the open source project is dead? this is now a pay only product?
Or does NextCloud have to have an open source version because it's forked from open source code?
and if that's that case, why was this move needed? How does creating a new company, and forking the code allow the investors/NextCloud the ability to do things that they couldn't do before?
-
@Dashrender said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
So the open source project is dead? this is now a pay only product?
That's not possible. ownCloud is dead, it was forked to NextCloud. NextCloud is very much alive. And obviously it is open source. That's the miracle of open source, it can't go away.
The old open source project is dead, that's good. We want it dead so that the new open source project can thrive with the former's code and developers.
-
@Dashrender said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
Or does NextCloud have to have an open source version because it's forked from open source code?
Exactly. You can't go grab Linux, fork it and close it making it your own. The licensing guarantees that it stays open.
-
@Dashrender said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
and if that's that case, why was this move needed? How does creating a new company, and forking the code allow the investors/NextCloud the ability to do things that they couldn't do before?
Control. NextCloud now has the power to brand, market, sell and support a product while having control over the community and code. ownCloud had this before and, the accusation is, were bad stewards of it not treating the open source product and contributors well. So those contributors took their code, started their own project and have left ownCloud to their own devices to figure out what they want to do with themselves.
-
Here is an example... if you want to make your own operating system and want to do something differently than Linux can do or will do, you are free to do that. Just fork Linux and start your own project. You can't just "change Linux" because your changes have to be approved by Linus. But if you have your own fork, DashOS, you can make and approve any changes that you want!
-
If you are interested in the specific license in use here, here it is: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html
-
Sure I understand that - but how did those devs take ownCloud? didn't the ownCloud people own/control it? So fine, they left - wouldn't they also have to fork it to make something they controlled?
And if they left because they felt that management of ownCloud wasn't being good stewarts, why would we think this new company, presumably run by the same management, would be any better stewarts?
-
@Dashrender said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
Sure I understand that - but how did those devs take ownCloud?
They didn't. They forked it. NextCloud is a new product.
-
@Dashrender said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
didn't the ownCloud people own/control it? So fine, they left - wouldn't they also have to fork it to make something they controlled?
ownCloud still controls it. Just nobody likely cares about it. ownCloud just doesn't matter anymore (we think.)
-
@Dashrender said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
And if they left because they felt that management of ownCloud wasn't being good stewarts, why would we think this new company, presumably run by the same management, would be any better stewarts?
Presumably run by the same management? It's explicitly not run by the same management! That's the whole point. The people concerned about the stewardship were not managers and left. Now they are the managers of NextCloud. We assume that they will be better stewards because they are the very people who left over stewardship.
Why would you presume that employees leaving managers behind because they didn't like the managers would then hire the managers that they didn't like to come and manage them again? that makes no sense.
-
@scottalanmiller said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
@Dashrender said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
didn't the ownCloud people own/control it? So fine, they left - wouldn't they also have to fork it to make something they controlled?
ownCloud still controls it. Just nobody likely cares about it. ownCloud just doesn't matter anymore (we think.)
Who forked it? Karlitschek forked it - and he was the old CEO of OwnCloud and now the new CEO of NextCloud. so what changed?
Since the developers of the ownCloud quit ownCloud, why did Karlitschek need to make a new company? make a fork?
yeah more hate for JB - I don't know what the heck is going on.
-
@Dashrender said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
Who forked it? Karlitschek forked it - and he was the old CEO of OwnCloud and now the new CEO of NextCloud. so what changed?
Yes, but he wasn't the old CEO. He was a developer. So EVERYTHING has changed. The old CEO was just fired.
-
@Dashrender said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
Since the developers of the ownCloud quit ownCloud, why did Karlitschek need to make a new company? make a fork?
"The developers" and Karlitschek here are interchangeable. Karlitschek and the other developers left the old CEO and management behind. They had to fork because they were not in the management of the company. So they had no control.
-
Ug.. so many titles, so much confusion..
I'm fixed now thought.
in the old company of ownCloud, Karlitschek was a developer (the inventor of ownCloud, maybe?)
that dev (and others) quit and started a new company.
Now Karlitschek (a dev) is now at NextCloud with a fork of ownCloud, called NextCloud where they are moving things forward.
Karlitschek has a positive outlook with open source and will hopefully continue to support the open source community.
-
He was the founder. What ever else he was in the company matters only for perspective.
What was his position prior to quitting?
-
@JaredBusch said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
He was the founder. What ever else he was in the company matters only for perspective.
What was his position prior to quitting?
He was A founder, I don't think that he was the only one. But he did not maintain control of the company towards the end. He might have for a while, but eventually he lost it or gave it up or never had it. I've worked with startups, including NTG and Change.org, where the founders (at least some of them) were never in any type of management position. Change's founder is purely an engineer and a great one, but that's it. No management role whatsoever. NTG's @AndyW was never any form of manager, just an engineer. Same situation. It's not uncommon. Pertino had the same.
-
@scottalanmiller said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
@JaredBusch said in HUGE news: Nextcloud replacing ownCloud!:
He was the founder. What ever else he was in the company matters only for perspective.
What was his position prior to quitting?
He was A founder, I don't think that he was the only one.
That is not how he presented it during the Nextcloud Q&A yesterday. He originally announced ownCloud at a KDE event in 2010.
https://dot.kde.org/2010/01/21/camp-kde-2010-continues-more-talks
The third needed building block is a technology to make storage, access, revision control and sharing of documents really easy. Frank announced the ownCloud project which is a personal cloud storage solution to manage all you personal data. ownCloud will use the AGPL license so everybody can install his/her own cloud storage on a server, desktop and anywhere else. Everybody has control over his/her own data but is still able to access it from all devices, have revision control, automated backups, sharing with others and data encryption.
His position at ownCloud, Inc was CTO.
