I totally respect OnlyOffice decision about limited connections, whether it be for commercial or performance reasons, but imho it should have never been bundled with NC. Distributing it as a separate app should suffice.
Therefore I think the discussion about limitations should be continued at whatever forum OnlyOffice has, but the issue of bundling it with NC is relevant here. Which also is what the title of this thread is, if I interpret it correctly?
3 Likes
Trouble is, the OnlyOffice forum is a ghost town, and I expect discussing it over there would not be very fruitful.
Now that it’s a default part of the new Nextcloud Hub, I think it’s fair game to discuss it over here, where there’s a much better chance of finding folks with a similar view.
As you say, they have the right to choose their monetization strategy. It’s just that some of us choose to stick to truly opensource projects, which Nextcloud has always been. In some ways, I think it makes more sense to discuss it here.
2 Likes
I share your view, but for me the discussion should be about whether it should be bundled, not how to overcome the limitation. The option to use it was already there, although not as seamlessly as now.
I’d hate to see Nextcloud falling into the same pit as ownCloud did, and loose the respect of the F(L)OSS community.
I stopped as an ownCloud community developer for that reason.
5 Likes
Yes, I think where perhaps I differ, is that while I respect their right to choose their strategy, if they want to make deliberately limited opensource software, then we also have the right to take that source and see if we can make it better, for our purposes.
The way I see it, they can use that model, but they can’t have their cake and eat it, as it were. You can’t have benefits of claiming to be opensource, but also the control of a proprietary model. So, I think it’s fine for us to see if we can modify it for our requirements.
9 Likes
Your arguments are valid. I hope for an official response from the “head office”, but…
Here is the request for allowing Admins to modify max number of connections in OnlyOffice on Hub. Please give it a “Thumbs Up” emoticon reaction on github.
5 Likes
Wait, this is working ?? 
But to be clear, it’s the new thing, the OnlyOffice app in Nextcloud18 right ?
Yes, it’s the new Nextcloud fork that seems to have re-implemented some parts in PHP, including the hardcoded restriction. Without needing to compile PHP, it’s easy to modify and test.
So in terms of performance, we might be comparing apples and oranges with regard to the original Onlyoffice community edition, but it’s a good start.
I see this was immediately closed with the comment:
This is enforced/requested by OnlyOffice as far as I know
So, that makes the situation pretty clear!
5 Likes
I see there has been a response on github that continues to be problematic, with this disingenuous line about “fundamental limitations that will cause issues when used at scale.”
And, of course, that those concerned about the software-freedom aspect are entitled and don’t want hardworking devs to get paid.
2 Likes
@quentingrap
Yes, this is only for the new onlyoffice documentserver included in nextcloud 18, which is written in php. It works for me and seems to be pretty efficient as well. I only tested opening 30 text documents though, so it would be interesting, if someone would tests it with more data and more interactions. It definetly didn’t feel any slower with 30+ open connections.
I think if you enjoy the product it’s worth supporting the company maintaning it, but I agree with what Semjel wrote in this post: OnlyOffice Community Edition without 20 connections limitation
1 Like
As an old skeptic who has seen the shenanigans that can go on inside companies, I would just sound a note of caution – I’d like to see how this all shakes out over the coming months before getting my users accustomed to this functionality.
OnlyOffice plainly use the opencore model (functionality restricted to proprietary versions), and I think this attempt to portray the Community version as fundamentally less capable than the paid version (when in fact it is identical, bar a couple of hardcoded limiting values) is clearly less than forthright. But even if it were true, it would still be a case of opencore.
Nextcloud was explicitly against the opencore model since the beginning, but in recent times (and not just in this issue) I’ve begun to detect a drift away from that mindset, and I’m not too impressed with some of the PR tactics. I’ll be taking a wait-and-see-approach for a while. I do wonder if they’ve locked Frank in a cupboard, drunk the corporate Koolaid, and staged a coup. 
3 Likes
THIS!
… is exactly the best you can do. Otherwise you would become too frustrated!
2 Likes
Thanks. Will try again…
I thought it should work standalone (and without SSL certs)… before connecting to NextCloud.
All three processes run without errors (without any messages), in 3 separate SSH windows.
Should it also work on 18.04 LTS?
Everything working as expected on 16.04 LTS…
Standalone (non-docker) OnlyOffice server, serving two Nextcloud 18 servers.
The connector app is really strict re: valid SSL certs for both servers (and it’s probably a good thing)
Next step - how to automatically launch all three services after OnlyOffice server reboot.
And try it on 18.04 LTS
1 Like
Good afternoon! I managed to run on Ubuntu 18.04, already ready onlyoffice, which I downloaded here https://autoize.com/download-onlyoffice-document-server/
But I also ran into the problem of how to run in the background, all the processes necessary for the onlyoffice server to work. If you find a solution, please share).
Thanks.
1 Like
I just installed Nextcloud 18 on a Debian Linux Server.
I can detect no PHP OnlyOffice server on there under /var/www/nextcloud. Where will it be?
I ticked the box marked
Connect to demo ONLYOFFICE Document Server
This is a public test server, please do not use it for private sensitive data. The server will be available during a 30-day period.
and I can edit OnlyOffice documents. Has the PHP version of Nextcloud been discontinued, or is the “public test server” thing a lie, or what?
You have to install the “Community Document Server” app and disable the public test server. The test server is only for testing. When you have installed the document server the files I mentioned in my previous post are in nextcloud/apps/documentserver_community/ .
Seems to me that Nextcloud are plain wrong when they say that OO is bundled with NC18. What they actually mean is that the Document Connection App called Only Office is bundled - exactly the same app as was available in 17 and if you upgrade 17->18 it is still there as an app to install. The only change with NC18 vanilla install is that you get the option to include the connection app when installing, rather than having to find it in Apps afterwards. Blah.
There is no document server bundled so if you just install NC expecting to find OO included you are going to be disappointed.
There seem to be two things you can then do - install the Community Document Server (which at the moment is failing to install from the admin interface for me with curl timeouts).
This uses make to extract core stuff from the OO github to do the heavy lifting, but the licence restriction is moved to a PHP file where it can be edited as above.
The other alternative is to download OO from github, edit the licence restriction and recompile if you can find some working instructions as to how to do that…possibly here
or there is a version that @autoize has precompiled here
Which leaves me with two questions and a local problem:
- What is the new connection limit in the @autoize compiled version?
- What features are missing from the “Community Document Server” edition?
(and my local problem is that the whole shebang seems to demand SSL connections which since I’m installing for private use on a local network behind a firewall is an unnecessary hassle - but that’s just me)