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

[GreatEmerald]

Well. This is quite the development. I don't know what to think of it, really.

I have an ownCloud installation. It's really nice for my needs (serving site downloads, file sharing, galleries, file backups), but it also has some real unfortunate bugs: it doesn't rotate images correctly based on their EXIF tags, and thumbnail generation (opening image for the first time) takes a real long time. The whole thing also used to be slow when external sync with Dropbox is enabled, though it looks like it was fixed in the last ownCloud 9 point release.

Video conferencing is an interesting idea, so far the sites I've used for it haven't been as good as I had hoped. Having it on my own server is interesting (but I'm not sure how many resources it would take).

That said, so far I can't tell whether or not Nextcloud will fix any of those issues. Waiting indeed seems like the best choice right now. However... How do I know how long to wait? I guess I can test it from time to time by making a new test subdomain, though that's rather annoying to do.

But yes, overall it seems to be a canonical MySQL/OpenOffice split case, especially with the whole ownCloud CLA thing. I just hope it won't turn out to be a FFmpeg split case instead.

[elvenbone]

Also an ownCloud user here.

Having been involved in fixing three bugs, the promises made by Nextcloud to reduce the merging delays of contributions/fixes are really mouth-watering.
I believe they will win the community over if they can achieve that.
If not, there is not much reason not to stay with ownCloud.

I'm rather happy with the status quo in terms of reliability and stability of OC9 compared to version 8 (which was much worse than OC7 in my experience).
What I fear is that any upcoming security issues will not be solved, now that both parties are focused on winning community and customers over with features more obvious than security.
I wonder, how do commercial users (i.e. the customers paying for ownCloud support) think about the recent events and what side will they tend to?

P.S. Just found that interview on YouTube:

[unixfan2001]

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.


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.

So what exactly is your game in this? Do you just like committing to defamation or do you actually know anything the rest of us don't? Somehow you sound like a kid who just assumes things without proper evidence.

And btw. In case you don't know, the CEO of a company (any larger enterprise) usually doesn't hold unlimited powers. For all we know, he didn't jump but was pushed by the shareholders and the rest of the board of directors.

[torsionbar28]

So what exactly is your game in this? Do you just like committing to defamation or do you actually know anything the rest of us don't? Somehow you sound like a kid who just assumes things without proper evidence.

Sorry son, please review all the posts in this thread, and you'll find I'm discussing only publicly available facts, and viewing them as a whole. In your posts on the other hand, you're ignoring known facts, and making improbable assumptions.

My game in this is the same as every open source entrepreneur's game. And anything related to open source looks a whole lot less attractive to that group of VC's because of an act of greed by a few individuals.

And btw. In case you don't know, the CEO of a company (any larger enterprise) usually doesn't hold unlimited powers. For all we know, he didn't jump but was pushed by the shareholders and the rest of the board of directors.

The shareholders and the board all voted to commit corporate suicide? Yeah, right, that's funny. Yet again son, you're reaching for conclusions that the facts simply don't support.

[unixfan2001]

Sorry son, please review all the posts in this thread, and you'll find I'm discussing only publicly available facts, and viewing them as a whole. In your posts on the other hand, you're ignoring known facts, and making improbable assumptions.

My game in this is the same as every open source entrepreneur's game. And anything related to open source looks a whole lot less attractive to that group of VC's because of an act of greed by a few individuals.


The shareholders and the board all voted to commit corporate suicide? Yeah, right, that's funny. Yet again son, you're reaching for conclusions that the facts simply don't support.

What facts, pray tell? You don't state facts. You came to a biased conclusion, based on your own personal narrative.
No, the board didn't choose to commit corporate suicide. It was a result of THEIR greed. THEY chose to alienate the community and the developers chose to walk. Easy as that.

As an "open source entrepreneur" (what stack are you working on, exactly?) you should know the inherent value of being transparent to prospective customers and the community as a whole.

[DDF420]

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

Say what?? The founders could of dumped their own money into the company,instead got venture capital from get go.Banks usually wont help you for at least 2 years on a newly formed company. Private investors are needed. The founders obviously didn't have the equity to start the way they wanted thus General Catalyst involvement from the beginning.Without that investment owncloudInc may of never left the starting gate.

So lets see
open source project claims more than 350,000 users
December 14, 2011 - OwnCloud announces that it has formed Owncloud Inc founded by former SUSE/Novell executive Markus Rex (CEO and CTO), and Frank Karlitschek, founder of the ownCloud project.

Funding deal is struck with Boston-based General Catalyst and so begins the opening of a US headquarters in Boston. Terms of the funding were never disclosed.

2012 owncloud seeks second seed round of venture capital. General capital happy to oblige with a stated 2.5mill
OwnCloud said it plans to use the money for continued expansion of its 70+ partner strong channel, and also to “aggressively expand” its “large” enterprise and education customer base and support service providers who implement file sync and share based on ownCloud. The commercially supported version now has more than 100 customers and resellers for the offering.General Catalyst Managing Director Larry Bohn joins the board of directors.

2013 Owncloud needs more money again and raised $4.4 million out of a proposed $7 million. General catalyst again on the scene with a few other undisclosed players.

2014 ownCloud, Inc. announced it has closed a $6.3 million series A funding round, led by Devonshire Investors and existing investor General Catalyst Partners and joined by customers and existing angel investors.


John Raguin, managing director, Devonshire, joins the board where he previously served as a board advisor.

Owncloud Inc Claimes customers including CERN, the European lab for nuclear research; Meritus Health, and the Albert Einstein School of Medicine.

Now i doesn't sound like Markus or Frank own to much of Owncloud Inc anymore,no wonder they want out, just receiving that salary .General Catalyst surely now the majority share holder. To walk away and start again, shows they must have very litte shares left to worry about.Also if they were still majority share holders, they would have control,with no need to run off crying and start the same thing again.

[unixfan2001]

DDF420

That timeline pretty much seems to pinpoint the exact time and place the trouble started. It's when General Catalyst and Devonshire key players joined the board and pushed for the changes they thought would woo in more enterprise customers.

They failed and, in return, alienated their own developers and the community built around the platform. It's time they owned up to their errors, not blame the previous leadership.

Founding a community centric foundation mere days before your key developers leave (with their figurative bags most certainly already being packed weeks or months in advance) doesn't exactly spell leadership skills or basic competence either.

PS: It's not like the CEO left on his own. He took most of the key developers with him. That alone disproves your silly narrative about the CEO being a "sore loser". Sore losers usually can't convince loyal employees to switch allegiance.

[drSeehas]

...
OpenOffice vs LibreOffice
MySQL vs MariaDB
ZFS vs OpenZFS
...

On which GNU/Linux distibution do you have a choice between ZFS and OpenZFS?

[torsionbar28]

What facts, pray tell? You don't state facts. You came to a biased conclusion, based on your own personal narrative.

I came to an educated conclusion based on my years of experience with open source projects, and with starting and running small businesses. And based on this recent blog post by an owncloud insider, it looks like I was right on the money, while you had your head in the sand:

http://carlaschroder.com/nextcloud-is-dirty-deal/

No, the board didn't choose to commit corporate suicide. It was a result of THEIR greed. THEY chose to alienate the community and the developers chose to walk. Easy as that.

It was good old fashioned greed alright, greed on the part of the NextCloud founders. These NextClowns have done us all a great disservice.