@Reiner_Nippes
The raw numbers may be sobering, but donāt trust statistics you havenāt falsified yourselfā¦
There may be duplicates, issues that are already resolved but not closed and so onā¦maybe it lacks just someone who does some issue tracker maintenance, maybe itās really that bad as the numbers say.
@Semjel
TL;DR: There more than just āblackā and āwhiteā regarding āopen-sourceā.
Your point may be valid from an ethical point of view and iām definetely not that happy with some decisions as wellā¦but i think itās about one thing that almost every open source project that grew past ājust for fun/learning/cause i can do itā to āneed to make a living out of itā: If even āmid-sized enterprise organisationā expect to get everything āfor freeā, how would Nextcloud GmbH who provides a core team of developers for the project keep things going?
Iām not sure if a project of this size would exist without one (or more) companys backing it in regard of ressources and devs.
Iām contributing to some open source projects myself - just for the fun of it - and i like to see open-source as an idealistic approach too, but the reasons i can do this is that i spend only a small amount of me spare time for it and i have a paid job to earn a living.
OnlyOffice is not crippleware per se. It is fully open source to the core and can be used without limitations when recompiling. What it is lacking is end user documentation and support for ARM servers. And I agree that the company behind isnāt very supportive of non enterprise customers.
But the tech itself is great and there is a lot of possibility for it to become a more community driven project. Might at some point a Owncloud/OpenOffice like fork be necessary? Maybe yes, but so far I think not, as the company behind OnlyOffice has not actively sabotaged any open source efforts.
Oh and with the new 0.1.2 update the new Community Document server now seems to work fine with the 18.0.0-Apache Docker image.
There are a lot of great ideas with these new features, but I see many current problems are completely neglected.
@tflidd I agree with you. I often wonder what happens to those announcements after the media hype. Take the projects for example. There is no real way to manage those and not even some kind of documentation how to add support for projects (collections codewise) to apps. Iām using Nextcloud as Dropbox replacement but still some basic file synchronization features are missing or not working
nextcloud/server on github has 2160 open issues and 2021 with no:assignee
nextcloud/desktop on github has 768 open issues and 699 with no:assignee
As @anon99283430 already said. Itās not that easy You can use the labels to filter the data.
is:open is:issue label:bug: 1163 open is:open is:issue label:enhancement : 885 open
is:open is:issue label:"1. to develop" label:bug: 191 open and confirmed bugs is:open is:issue label:"1. to develop" label:enhancement: 420 open and accepted enhancement.
ā1. to developā means a issue is reproducible or a enhancement is acceptable. A bug/enhancement is not planned at this stage.
Just some general remarks about issues on GitHub: Iām doing a lot of housekeeping but itās hard. People often ignore the issue template, refuse to provide additional information or they donāt respond anymore. Also those search thing seems to be ā¦
We probably need a better way to handle issues or enhancements on GitHub. It make sense to keep the app code into different repositories but for issues/enhacements itās hard not to lose track.
Thatās just the last weeks and only nextcloud/server ā¦
At some point people started to write hate emails to me because I closed their issue / rejected the enhancement request. I removed my primary email and name from GitHub because of that.
Please remember this post if the next time someone complains about the number of open issues on GitHub. Thanks
If it is a configuration issue, it belongs to the forum here (unless we canāt debug any further because we donāt know enough of the code and/or have no more detailed documentation).
For new features, this is difficult. There are some easy and fast to implement, this belongs in github. The larger ones we should check if it will be realized in some future or is just in the backlogs of ideas. Iām not sure if there are more suitable systems to manage these.
Well, in this case, Iām talking about a mid-sized non-profit, in which I was responsible for selecting opensource solutions. But even if this were a business, in the debate about opensource software and paid restrictions Iām not too moved by the argument that implies a problem with people that "expect to get everything for freeā. Iād say thatās just the fallacy of poisoning the well, by criticizing the position of the user rather than the feature-restriction of ostensibly opensource software.
I definitely donāt accept the idea that itās the only way to fund a major opensource project, because many others survive through different strategies. I use opensource software in my worklife and for hobbies, and none of it employs the crippleware model. Debian, Firefox, Libreoffice, Resourcespace, Tikiwiki, Blender, Krita, Kedenlive, Godot - it goes on and on. Some generate income by selling hosted versions, professional-level support and maintenance, and so on.
With regard to OnlyOffice Community Edition being fully opensource, I think that raises another question. Since the Nextcloud integrated version is a custom fork, then itās clearly possible to remove the 20 concurrent documents restriction. Itās a choice to leave that artificial restriction in there, encouraging users to pay to lift the limit, and I think thatās dubious now that OnlyOffice is integrated and promoted as a key feature of Nextcloud Hub.
Again OnlyOffice isnāt ācripplewareā. Yes in the easy to use Docker version they put a 20 concurrent user limit (so 20 simultaneous users, no limit to users otherwise). At first I was also a bit put off by that, but after considering it a bit, it actually makes sense. Not only from a business perspective, but also to ensure a smooth operation on a typical low powered VPS, that will struggle with more than 20 simultaneous users.
Do I think there should be an easier way to turn the limit off? Yes, probably, but it isnāt really hard for technical users to recompile it.
On the otherhand if there wasnāt a limit the internet and issue trackers would be full with non technical users complaining about bad performance, lost edits and all that sort of issues that might happen when you try to run the Document server with too many users on totally underpowered hardware.
Hey @jospoortvliet, could you please comment the 20 simultaneous users thing. That seems to be a big issue for some people here (not only in this thread) I donāt see such a limitation with the documentserver app but the onlyoffice code is quite complex.
Well, I would say that software that contains an artificial restriction, primarily to encourage the purchase of paid versions, is essentially crippled. It may be that the restriction is not imposed by closed-source components, but instead achieved by obfuscation in undocumented code, or simply by imposing a cost of time on the community to identify and circumvent the artificial restriction. If the limitation could only be circumvented by the community scouring the code for how the limitation is implemented, and creating a liberated fork, then yes, I call that crippled.
As to the idea that an arbitrary hard-coded limitation is to protect users from themselves on underpowered hardware, Iām afraid Iām not buying that at all. Think of all the complex software thatās involved in any LAMP-type application. I donāt think that would make any more sense than having MariaDB or Apache have very low hardcoded limits, to prevent newbies from overloading weak hardware. I think that if youāre deploying your own web application, we should expect the user to take the responsibility (and the freedom) to configure for the hardware appropriately.
It is more a technical decision. Only office runs more in the browser and needs less stuff on the server. Collabora/libre office requires alot of stuff on the server and thus is impossible to reimplement in browser/php.
And for the cripple part. This is something that makes stuff easier for the end user. If you donāt like the limit and have the know how compile it yourself instead of complaining here. Or you can always write you own full opensource office package from scratch without restrictions.
This will actually bring nextcloud closer to the end user.
Remember that this innovation will help you in the future. And this is a huge win for most that wants to move from big cloud operators and self host.
Again, I think itās just a diversion and not a very persuasive argument to say, āIf you donāt like an opensource project introducing paid restrictions, stop complaining and go and write your own.ā That one can be (and frequently is) pulled out to deflect any criticism of shenanigans in any opensource community.
I would suggest that when we have a project that is a collaborative opensource effort, members of that community might get to say when theyāre concerned about the direction of the project, when it shifts to opensource-with-a-catch.
As I said earlier, the task of compiling without the restriction is not always a trivial or reasonable task, because first you have to study and understand a large codebase, and hope that the mechanism of restriction isnāt too convoluted or obfuscated to find. And then you have to examine things again after every update.
If youāre happy with the restrictions because they donāt impact you - good for you. Iām just trying to explain why I think these deliberate barriers are a problem.
Well. The reason for implementing is that there are no real contending options. It was most probably either this or none.
Again this will help the community more than it will hurt it. And if a better option will turn up that will install this easy it will be quite easy to swap to that.
I disagree. I think we donāt know the reason for implementing it, but it could also simply be to do a deal with OnlyOffice to sell enterprise licenses. OnlyOffice are clearly doing similar integration deals with several other projects. I think that can be harmful to an opensource project, and some of us will be less keen to contribute or use that type of software.
Because despite what anyone says, OnlyOffice is plainly crippleware - an opensource version that is significantly limited compared to their proprietary products, to require any but the smallest of deployments to pay. From their website:
[The proprietary edition] is a paid downloadable version of ONLYOFFICE Document Server distributed under a commercial proprietary license.
[The proprietary edition] has advanced functions not present in Community Edition, can support any number of concurrent connections (only 20 for the open sourced version)
And now thatās integrated as a key part of Nextcloud, which I think is not all to the good.
Check around on the options out there. You wonāt find that much. The only option would have been to ship without an office suite integrated that would run without an extra service installed.
But thatās just one way of framing the question - to assume that a third party online office suite is a requirement, and therefore ask which is the best of the bunch to integrate? Another way of looking at it, as others have mentioned, is to ask why is this online office suite a priority at all, when there are other more pressing concerns for the project? And I think the answer to that might be, āTo sell enterprise licenses.ā
I think we get into murky territory when software of the opensource-as-far-as-it-suits-us variety becomes a standard part of Nextcloud. And thatās the case now - watch the video on the new Nextcloud Hub product page. And on the same page the office editing features are listed under the āKey Capabilitiesā.
I just think that feature needs a big asterisk next to it saying ālimited without an enterprise license.ā And I think itās unfortunate thatās now the case. Better, IMO, not to have so integrated problematic third party software, and leave it as an integration option for those that accept those restrictive terms.
Somehow it is understandable. But it doesnāt work well with the open source idea, imagine debian/apache/ā¦ limiting the performance under certain conditions and requiring a pro-version (unless you recompile something not so well documented somehow on your own).
For me, that was one reason to go with Nextcloud and not ownCloud (some paid enterprise features) or seafile (limited pro version or reduced feature open-source version).
If there is no suitable business model, I expect an honest communication about the limits beforehand, we had a few users here, who did a few tests and when they rolled out the solution they found this restriction.
Onlyoffice was proprietary software some time ago, it is great that they went the Open Source way so everybody has a well working OOXML compatible office suite in a world where MS Office dominates everything. You can even send them documents causing problems so they can fix it.
This is not perfect, but still better than being left with only Libreoffice and Collabora as an Open Source office suite.
@jospoortvliet It would be great to have the beta channel updated with the final Nextcloud 18 release so people who like to upgrade can get it early.
Thatās the point, though - itās not really the opensource way, if the opensource version is deliberately restricted in favour of their proprietary version. Whether we call it crippleware, or feature-limited, or freemium, or opencore, or the latest preferred corporate-speak, we know what it is.
And it doesnāt mean āeverybody has a well working OOXML compatible office suiteā - the first lucky users before the limit of 20 open documents is hit a get well working OOXML compatible office suite, and if any more want the privilege, itās time to pay up.
Ah yes, dismiss with comedy gif. Interesting how many attempts are made to deflect in this thread.
If we want to assess your credibility on the matter, we need look no further than your claims in the other thread:
This is obvious nonsense, and will be shown as such if anyone ever actually succeeds in compiling it without the artificial restriction. When theyāre not defending the 20 connection limit with this talking point, theyāre boasting about how you can easily have 75 open connections per core, as compared to Collabora!
Check out this hatchet job article they wrote on the comparison to Collabora.
Hereās a quote.
Architecture of ONLYOFFICE, optimized before installed
Because we let your servers relax. Again, everything happens on a machine of a person who carelessly opened fifteen documents and is editing five of them simultaneously. Sure enough, the server takes responsibilities, but much less than if it would host an editor.
We keep the client and the server connected, but only to a minor, necessary extent. The practice shows that an average server with ONLYOFFICE running can afford 75 actively edited documents per core. Going back, while a hypothetical dual core machine with Collabora on can serve eight to ten users, ONLYOFFICE can take 150.
You can use the labels to filter the data.
I donāt see such a limitation with the documentserver app but the onlyoffice code is quite complex.