OwnCloud Issues Statement Over Today's Nextcloud Fork, OwnCloud Inc Closes Up Shop

[unixfan2001]

So the Owncloud founders sought venture funding, in exchange for preferred stock,thus forming Owncloud Inc
Surprise surprise those investors that dumped millions into the investment want a return and the founders find themselves in constant conflict with shareholders.
Owncloud founder makes a monster profit from the shares deal,no longer likes having to appease those who invested,rounds up his mates, resigns,fork the project,then go about taking customers away from those investors that helped them in the first place,leaving Owncloud Inc to close shop.

This Owncloud founder sounds like a complete asshat.Glad i didnt invest with this loser.

I just shed a tear for all those inexperienced, arrogant, overly greedy venture capitalists.
My thoughts and prayers are with them...

They didn't borrow money from the bank,they sold shares to raise capital and meet growth..A quick google shows the investors(Converge Venture Partners,F-Prime Capital Partners,General Catalyst Partners) are far from short of money.So why was it cut off? More equity investment could mean balance of power changes? Sounds like the "lessons learnt" are from the way the company was structured to begin with which is the founders fault anyway.

And why, pray tell, would anyone invest more money now that OwnCloud is, essentially, no longer "unique"?
That's akin to burning money. Or investing in MySpace when Facebook is around.

[bulletxt]

I feel sorry for the 8 employee.

[torsionbar28]

I just shed a tear for all those inexperienced, arrogant, overly greedy venture capitalists.
My thoughts and prayers are with them...

What makes you think these VC's were inexperienced or arrogant or overly greedy? I haven't seen anything in this ownCloud situation to support your claim.

And why, pray tell, would anyone invest more money now that OwnCloud is, essentially, no longer "unique"?
That's akin to burning money. Or investing in MySpace when Facebook is around.

Isnt this how all Open Source companies operate? Red Hat makes $2 Billion annually in revenue, yet their core software can be had for free in the form of CentOS. If you take the time to learn how the FOSS business model works, you'd understand. The key is service and support. In this situation, it sounds like the ownCloud founder deliberately defrauded these investors, by hatching a plan to leave the company (and its financial obligations) while taking the customer base (revenue stream) with him. He who pays the piper calls the tune. This ownCloud founder took the money, but then later decided he didn't like the tune. This is a most unethical thing, arrogant and overly greedy, as you say.

[Michael_S]

I think we're projecting qualities on the OwnCloud business leadership we don't know they had. I suspect the progression was like this:

1. OwnCloud is a good thing, let's make a business out of providing support for it. (Red Hat business model.)
2. Nobody is willing to pay us for support. Let's make a business out of the so-called freemium model where the base product is free but some of the best parts are proprietary and need a paid license. (MySQL model, because Red Hat model failed.)
3. Our customer base with "freemium" still tiny, and our codebase was just forked and it's exceedingly unlikely anyone will pay us for the premium features or support when the fork exists and many of the fork creators have all of the skills required to re-implement our premium features in open source form. (Insolvency, because MySQL model failed too.)

None of that is necessarily unethical, just a failed business. If the founders were Free Software Foundation style "free software or nothing" fanatics, they would have just gone out of business sooner. I write that as a Free Software Foundation member. I respect Bradley Kuhn and Cory Doctorow immensely, but I think running a profitable software company is incredibly hard and running a profitable free software company is even harder. Red Hat is the gold standard because it's the only billion dollar free software company in history. Their share of the global software market money amounts to being a minnow in the ocean.

[droidhacker]

Nah, that's not what happened. This is a case of fraud.
They took the money, spent it all, and then ditched it and took the profit.

There is a reason why they changed the product's name. Its because the investors own all of owncloud's assets.

These clowns think they pulled a fast one, but I think they will find that they have made themselves *personally* liable to the investors.

[torsionbar28]

our codebase was just forked and it's exceedingly unlikely anyone will pay us for the premium features or support when the fork exists and many of the fork creators have all of the skills

You're conveniently omitting the part where the people responsible for the fork, are the founder and top devs of the company. This was an inside job. These senior insiders *knowingly* devalued ownCloud via the fork, so that they could personally profit from it. That's fraud, plain and simple. In fact, I'll be shocked if there's not a lawsuit because of this.

None of that is necessarily unethical, just a failed business.

When the business fails because the CEO and all the top people deliberately cause it to fail for the express purpose of defrauding the investors, that is very unethical. This business didn't just fail because of some mysterious unforeseen circumstances. It was sabotaged by greedy insiders, and the founder and CEO of the company was the ringleader of this scam.

[FuturePilot]

So what does this mean? Will Owncloud continue to exist and Nextcloud will just be a fork? Like MySQL and MariaDB? Both exist side-by-side. The article isn't exactly clear.

The ownCloud GmbH is not directly affected by this and the growth of the ownCloud Foundation will remain a key priority."

"ownCloud will continue to deliver software and maintenance to our future and existing customer base. Support, consulting and professional services continue to be available."

[MarkG]

My reaction to this whole kerfuffle has been to grab a snap-shot of all sources. I have built/installed/setup from source the server and clients on Linux, and the Android and iOS apps.

This may well have been the wrong thing to do. Perhaps I should "side" with one of the original ownCloud that has served me well for years, or go with the asshats that forked it for many wrong reasons, as pointed out so well in comments above. Personally, I agreed with the MariaDB fork of MySQL and punted MySQL off all my servers in favor of MariaDB.

But, I use ownCloud daily. Two of ownCloud's functions that I care most about are: (1) instantly uploading pics and vids from my Android phone when I'm on the road to my home server, and (2) being able to play music and audiobooks from my home server. I can keep these viable myself, regardless of how this all turns out.

[ElectricPrism]

My reaction to this whole kerfuffle has been to grab a snap-shot of all sources. I have built/installed/setup from source the server and clients on Linux, and the Android and iOS apps.

This may well have been the wrong thing to do. Perhaps I should "side" with one of the original ownCloud that has served me well for years, or go with the asshats that forked it for many wrong reasons, as pointed out so well in comments above. Personally, I agreed with the MariaDB fork of MySQL and punted MySQL off all my servers in favor of MariaDB.

But, I use ownCloud daily. Two of ownCloud's functions that I care most about are: (1) instantly uploading pics and vids from my Android phone when I'm on the road to my home server, and (2) being able to play music and audiobooks from my home server. I can keep these viable myself, regardless of how this all turns out.

I also have 2 ownCloud servers. Only recently did I purchase the app on 3 devices, I would have had 3 more too, and maybe I will depending on how things turn out.

I think it's too early to pick a side, I'll choose which solution to use maybe 6 months to 1 year down the road after both demonstrate their capabilities.

If NextCloud is superior, I'll choose that, if OwnCloud is superior I'll choose that.

The same goes for

OpenOffice vs LibreOffice
MySQL vs MariaDB
ZFS vs OpenZFS

Etc...

I'm very interested in the potential legitimacy about "what wasn't allowed into ownCloud", if the developers of NextCloud don't utilitize it and spin it to a new level I'll be disappointed and choose ownCloud probably.

[MarkG]

I'm very interested in the potential legitimacy about "what wasn't allowed into ownCloud", if the developers of NextCloud don't utilitize it and spin it to a new level I'll be disappointed and choose ownCloud probably.

Very much agree, but I also very much to not want a lot of added function that I'll never use to creep into a "default" installation. My needs are modest, and I prefer to keep my home server's "attack surface" minimized.