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Nextcloud

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Nextcloud
Developer(s)Nextcloud GmbH.,[1] Community
Repository
Written inPHP, JavaScript
Operating systemServer: Linux
Clients: Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, iOS
TypeOnline storage, data synchronization
LicenceAGPLv3
Websitenextcloud.com

Nextcloud is functionally very similar to the widely used Dropbox, with the primary functional difference being that Nextcloud is free and open-source, and thereby allowing anyone to install and operate it without charge on a private server. In contrast to proprietary services like Dropbox, the open architecture allows adding additional functionality to the server in form of so-called applications.

Nextcloud is an actively maintained fork of ownCloud.

Overview

Nextcloud Box

In September 2016, Nextcloud, in cooperation with Western Digital Labs and Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu), released the Nextcloud Box. It had been announced at the Nextcloud conference in 2016 by Jane Silber, CEO of Canonical and Frank Karlitschek.[2]

The Nextcloud box is based around a Raspberry Pi, and runs Ubuntu Core with Snappy; it is intended to serve as a reference device for other vendors.[3]

Architecture

In order for desktop machines to synchronize files with their Nextcloud server, desktop clients are available for PCs running Windows, OS X, FreeBSD or Linux. Mobile clients exist for iOS and Android devices. Files and other data (such as calendars, contacts or bookmarks) can also be accessed, managed, and uploaded using a web browser without any additional software. Any updates to the file system are pushed to all computers and mobile devices connected to a user's account.

The Nextcloud server is written in the PHP and JavaScript scripting languages. For remote access, it employs sabre/dav, an open-source WebDAV server.[4] Nextcloud is designed to work with several database management systems, including SQLite, MariaDB, MySQL, Oracle Database, and PostgreSQL.[5]

Features

Nextcloud files are stored in conventional directory structures, and can be accessed via WebDAV if necessary. User files are encrypted both at rest and during transit. Nextcloud can synchronise with local clients running Windows (Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8), OS X (10.6 or later), or various Linux distributions.

Nextcloud users can manage calendars (CalDAV), contacts (CardDAV) scheduled tasks and streaming media (Ampache) from within the platform.

From the administration perspective, Nextcloud permits user and group administration (via OpenID or LDAP). Content can be shared by defining granular read/write permissions between users and/or groups. Alternatively, Nextcloud users can create public URLs when sharing files. Logging of file-related actions as well as disallowing access based on file access rules is also available.[6]

Furthermore, users can interact with the browser-based text editor, bookmarking service, URL shortening suite, gallery, RSS feed reader and document viewer tools from within Nextcloud. For additional extensibility, Nextcloud can be augmented with "one-click" applications and connection to Dropbox, Google Drive and Amazon S3.

History of the fork

Frank Karlitschek, a KDE software developer, announced the development of ownCloud in January 2010, in order to provide a free software replacement to proprietary storage service providers.[7] The company "ownCloud Inc." was founded in 2011 and raised over $10 million in venture capital.[8]

In the year 2011 the first maintenance update "1.2" of ownCloud was released, it contained additional work by Arthur Schiwon, Jan-Christoph Borchardt, Jakob Sack and Robin Appelman.[9] Later those persons publicly sympathized with Nextcloud on the Nextcloud conference 2016.

Attendees of the very first ownCloud Meetup meet at the Nextcloud Conf 2016

ownCloud Inc. is offering the software under a so-called open core business model, providing paying customers with closed source functionalities and a proprietary license.[10]

In April 2016 Karlitschek and most core contributors left ownCloud Inc.[11] These included many of ownCloud's top staff according to sources near to the ownCloud community. [12]

The fork was preceded by a blog post of Karlitschek, asking questions such as "Who owns the community? Who owns ownCloud itself? And what matters more, short term money or long term responsibility and growth?" [11] There have been no official statements about the reason for the fork, but among the most believable speculations is internal bickering about the value of community vs. quarterly commercial results.[13]

On June 2, within 12 hours of the announcement of the fork, the American entity "ownCloud Inc." announced that it is shutting down with immediate effect, stating that "[…] main lenders in the US have cancelled our credit. Following American law, we are forced to close the doors of ownCloud, Inc. with immediate effect and terminate the contracts of 8 employees.". ownCloud Inc. accused Karlitschek of poaching developers, while Nextcloud developers such as Arthur Schiwon stated that he "decided to quit because not everything in the ownCloud Inc. company world evolved as I imagined".[8]

Despite the fork's young age, the amount of Nextcloud contributions quickly overtook ownClouds numbers as can be seen by GitHub statistics.[14][15] It has been compared multiple times with the fork of OpenOffice, where engineers left the project to form LibreOffice.[8]

Differences to ownCloud

While Nextcloud is a fork of the ownCloud project, there are some important differences. While ownCloud offers an open-source community edition, they also offer a proprietary Enterprise Edition with additional features and support subscriptions.

In comparison, Nextcloud is completely open source. Karlitschek said in an interview: "The most important difference of Nextcloud compared to other solutions is its complete openness. We don’t require a contributor license agreement from contributors or partners," Karlitschek said. "There will be no closed source code, and all the planning and development happens in the open. The Nextcloud team worked together for many years and is, in fact, the team that has built the technology in the first place".[16]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Official Company Website".
  2. ^ "Nextcloud Box – a private cloud and IoT solution for home users – from Nextcloud, Canonical and WDLabs Box". Nextcloud. 16 September 2016. Retrieved 22 September 2016.
  3. ^ Swapnil Bhartiya (16 September 2016). "Everything you need to know about Nextcloud Box". CIO.com. Retrieved 22 September 2016.
  4. ^ "ownCloud and sabre/dav". owncloud.org. Retrieved 22 September 2016.
  5. ^ "Database Configuration - OwnCloud 7 Server Administration Manual 7.0 documentation".
  6. ^ "File Access Control – A firewall for your private files in Nextcloud". 25 August 2016. Retrieved 22 September 2016.
  7. ^ Carla Schroder (9 October 2012). "How To Synchronize Dropbox and ownCloud on Linux". Linux.com. Retrieved 22 September 2016.
  8. ^ a b c Swapnil Bhartiya (6 June 2016). "What we can learn from ownCloud's collapse". CIO.com. Retrieved 22 September 2016.
  9. ^ Arthur Schiwon (21 April 2011). "First ownCloud Sprint". KDE. Retrieved 22 September 2016.
  10. ^ Sam Dean (18 August 2016). "From ownCloud to Nextcloud: A Proven Cloud Innovator Launches a Promising New Platform". Linux.com. Retrieved 22 September 2016.
  11. ^ a b Frank Karlitschek (27 April 2016). "big changes: I am leaving ownCloud, Inc. today". blog. Retrieved 22 September 2016.
  12. ^ Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (2 June 2016). "OwnCloud founder forks popular open-source cloud". ZDNET. Retrieved 22 September 2016.
  13. ^ Jack Wallen (11 June 2016). "Speculations on why ownCloud's founder forked its popular product into Nextcloud". TechRepublic. Retrieved 22 September 2016.
  14. ^ "ownCloud Server commit statistics". GitHub. 22 September 2016. Retrieved 22 September 2016.
  15. ^ "Nextcloud Server commit statistics". GitHub. 22 September 2016. Retrieved 22 September 2016.
  16. ^ Dawn Foster (13 July 2016). "NextCloud Revives ownCloud's Open Source Cloud Storage Software". THE NEW STACK. Retrieved 22 September 2016.
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