It's Looking Like Debian 9.0 Stretch Won't Support OwnCloud

[phoronix]

Phoronix: It's Looking Like Debian 9.0 Stretch Won't Support OwnCloud

It's looking incredibly likely that ownCloud, the popular open-source project for easily setting up your own private cloud for file storage, will not be available as Debian packages with next year's 9.0 Stretch release...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...retch-OwnCloud

[xeekei]

Looks like we're gonna have to look into other server distros in my home.

[anda_skoa]

This is likely the classic problem of conflict of interest between the commercial entity and the commuity.

Owncloud Inc sells service contracts that allow customers to run Owncloud as a reliable part of their infrastructure, being able to get bug fixes without risking upgrades.

If that would be available in the free edition, which gets packaged by either Owncloud's community or distributions, then the additional value shrinks to guaranteed response times, 24/7 support, etc.

That puts reliable upgrade into opposition to Owncloud Inc's business interests and the independent contributors of the Owncloud community might not have the resources to push this on their own.

Cheers,
_

[boltronics]

What a frustrating mentality ownCloud seems to have in this case. It seems the ownCloud developers want to be able to update their app whenever they feel like, as opposed to whenever a new distro release is cut.

The problem is that people who use the Debian stable packages want that long term stability. They don't want libraries installed multiple times cluttering up their system, making library fixes more difficult to deal with and bloating packages by bundling everything together. They want their packages to have ideally been tested for months, not thrown together at the last minute and shipped with issues (which happened numerous times last year from my experience).

What I don't get is why so many web developers think they are so special that admins, package maintainers and other stakeholders should submit to their will, simply because they are developing a web application? It seems at times that they just don't have a clue, and instead of getting one, prefer to simply make trouble for everyone else "because all my cool web dev friends do it this way" or whatever the excuse is, so everyone else must be wrong. The nonsense has to stop.

[Pajn]

What I don't get is why so many web developers think they are so special that admins, package maintainers and other stakeholders should submit to their will, simply because they are developing a web application? It seems at times that they just don't have a clue, and instead of getting one, prefer to simply make trouble for everyone else "because all my cool web dev friends do it this way" or whatever the excuse is, so everyone else must be wrong. The nonsense has to stop.

Web developers does not think so, PHP developers does. Please don't mix PHP developers with serious web developers.

[Ericg]

What a frustrating mentality ownCloud seems to have in this case. It seems the ownCloud developers want to be able to update their app whenever they feel like, as opposed to whenever a new distro release is cut.

Not quite. OwnCloud explicitly does not support skipping versions during upgrades. If you are on version 8.0 and want to upgrade to the latest 9.0, you need to do 8.0->8.1->8.2->9.0. Debian, unfortunately, wants to let people go from 7.0 (or earlier) straight to 9.0, which is an explicitly unsupported usecase. Debian also lags behind on security updates, and strips out the bundled libraries that ownCloud makes modifications to and are bundling for a reason, thus introducing new bugs and problems. The ownCloud developers find this situation to be unacceptable, as do the Debian developers.

Now that ownCloud 9.0 is out, and the updater portion of it was completely rewritten, things may get better in the future. But that won't help the existing users on Debian until the NEXT Debian release.

What I don't get is why so many web developers think they are so special that admins, package maintainers and other stakeholders should submit to their will, simply because they are developing a web application.

Web applications are the very peak of "Release early, release often." That is completely antithetical to Debian, in every way shape and form. THEY are the purest example of why some believe that distributions cause more problems than they fix. Now is that true? Eh, maybe, maybe not. Frankly that's an entirely different discussion.

[anda_skoa]

What I don't get is why so many web developers think they are so special that admins, package maintainers and other stakeholders should submit to their will, simply because they are developing a web application? It seems at times that they just don't have a clue, and instead of getting one, prefer to simply make trouble for everyone else "because all my cool web dev friends do it this way" or whatever the excuse is, so everyone else must be wrong. The nonsense has to stop.

I don't think it is specific to web applications, but that we see it disproportionally often there because they fall more easily for venture captial trap early in their development.

Most applications start as a prototype, gather a small number of highly enthusiastic and usually technically inclined users.
The prototype is then extended with their feedback until its architectural and design limitations make that really painful.
At this point the application is either rewritten or substantially refactored, which it either surives and becomes a real product or it doesn't and is abandoned.

Web apps, usually due to their high buzz word compatibility, often fall for the VC money shower before becoming a viable product base, so it becomes a perpetual prototype.
VC money dictates that more and more features that increase the immediate appeal are added, no matter whether things like maintainability or reliability suffer.

A non-VC backed, or dare I say corrupted, development would strongly focus on keeping its current user base and building on top of that, VC-backed development will often sacrifiies existing user groups for new larger user groups.

Cheers,
_

[anda_skoa]

Not quite. OwnCloud explicitly does not support skipping versions during upgrades. If you are on version 8.0 and want to upgrade to the latest 9.0, you need to do 8.0->8.1->8.2->9.0.

Do you know if it is really that bad or is the problem skipping major versions?

Not being able to skip minor versions during upgrades sounds pretty unacceptable to me.

Cheers,
_

[Ericg]

Do you know if it is really that bad or is the problem skipping major versions?

Not being able to skip minor versions during upgrades sounds pretty unacceptable to me.

Cheers,
_

ownCloud's x.y.z versioning scheme breaks down to: x = architectural changes. y = major versions within the same architecture. z = point releases / minor versions.

As per: https://doc.owncloud.org/server/8.0/...e/upgrade.html

"Skipping major (8.1/8.2) versions are not supported."

[anda_skoa]

ownCloud's x.y.z versioning scheme breaks down to: x = architectural changes. y = major versions within the same architecture. z = point releases / minor versions.

Ah, ok, that is not as bad it sounded then.

I guess it then comes down how often they release a major version.
If they do it once a year then skipping one would amount to not updating for two years, which would probably too long for most software.

But if they were on a 1 to 3 month cycle then the expectation to be able to skip at least every second major version would be reasonable IMHO.

Cheers,
_