The new standard in on-premises team collaboration: Nextcloud Hub

[rollanders]

It seems that you can open odt-files in OnlyOffice in reading mode without editing.
When I choose to convert the odt-file in Onlyoffice nothing happens. The document does not opens. So there seem to be a bug.

[Jeff_Lee]

Did a simple ODT test. Need to check a lot more to determined capabilities.

I opened a ODT document in OnlyOffice, modified and saved as ODT, DOCX and PDF.

Open new documents in LibreOffice 6.2.8.2 (I don’t use MS Office anymore, though my customers do).

ODT was fine, OnlyOffice didn’t permanently change the fonts from the original even though they weren’t in OnlyOffice.

DOCX was a mangled mess, layout and fonts.

Opened PDF in Acrobat Reader and it was fine.

[knedlyk]

In community version it works fine with opening, editing and saving in ODT, though by default the newly created files are saved in docx.

[Nico2t]

Hi Just a simple BIG THANK… Viva O…Cloud…Oupsssy NEXTCLOUD IS GOD LIKE. No more OnlyO*** docker and isolation process concern/nightmare …

thx again

[Nemskiller]

It’s not as easy as you think.
This App won’t have the same performances as your Docker container…

[jospoortvliet]

@Semjel

That’s the point, though - it’s 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 doesn’t mean “everybody has a well working OOXML compatible office suite” - 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, it’s time to pay up.

May I call bull**** on this? You define the ‘open source way’ now? If a company develops a software and then open sources it (under an OSI license, which is the only relevant definition here) and finds that if they put in a limit of 20 users in that software it helps them sell more which in turn helps them hire people and improve the software, then good for them.

It says more about the users, who clearly didn’t want to pay until there was a bit of a push, then that it says anything about the company.

Yes we don’t do that at Nextcloud, but a partner which does (and both Collabora and ONLYOFFICE do this) has every right. And to people who complain it is not ‘the open source way’ I suggest to get over it. It is BUSINESS USERS that force them to do this, by trying to avoid having to pay but suddenly having budget if there’s a 20 user limit, even though they could just recompile it. I mean, are you KIDDING ME? The fact that you think that THAT is apparently compatible with the ‘open source way’ - that’s exactly why I and others say that many users seem to feel entitled to the free work of other people.

The open source way = make software available under a GPL license. Making packages is NICE. Making Docker containers is EVEN NICER. But it is not mandatory to being open source.

Crazy scenario:

If we would disable the updater server and ONLY do updates for customers, never do releases anymore (just build it yourself!) and that would result in so much money we could hire 10x more people to work on Nextcloud, which in turn means a much better product and many more people who no longer have to put their data with Microsoft, wouldn’t that be better? After all, our goal is to help as many people protect their privacy.

It would make it harder for somebody who is paid to deploy Nextcloud. Sorry for that person, but if their boss can pay them, they can pay other people - like those developing that software. It is a choice not to want to do that. And it has nothing to do with ‘the open source way’ if you make the life of such people harder.

We don’t do that, we don’t want to, because we’re way too nice. And yes, that possibly makes Nextcloud less good than it could have been otherwise.

To be clear: companies are not people and have no right to privacy, so no, we don’t care about companies other than as a way to earn money to achieve our goal of giving PEOPLE privacy.

[jospoortvliet]

@alexanderdd

Hello,
Is it still true that OnlyOffice cannot natively work with .odt Open Document Format, also not in Nextcloud Hub?
I read that to work with .odt files, Onlyoffice converts the file and saves it in the same location as .docx and then you can edit it.

Correct?

Thanks!

It works with ODT files, but keep in mind the quality is definately less good. My experience:
if you move from Collabora to ONLYOFFICE, safe your files in Microsoft formats and you won’t have many issues. If you open the Collabora ODT files in ONLYOFFICE, they will look very bad.

[jospoortvliet]

@Nemskiller

It’s not as easy as you think.
This App won’t have the same performances as your Docker container…

Certainly true, but for me personally - it is perfect. I managed to get Collabora working, but once every few updates of my system something would break and I would have no office for a month or two until I finally figured out how to fix it.

So first thing I did after updating to 18 was - disable collabora, enable the onlyoffice thing, boom. No more work

I’m very happy with it. Of course, if you want to use it for a lot of people, it is not fantastic, but this was never meant for that. We wanted to make something available for home users - and that is what we did. If you get paid to maintain a Nextcloud, I’m sure you have the time and money to purchase something from ONLYOFFICE. Helps you with a faster solution, helps them maintain and improve ONLYOFFICE. Seems a win-win, right?

[Semjel]

@jospoortvliet

May I call bull**** on this? You define the ‘open source way’ now? If a company develops a software and then open sources it (under an OSI license, which is the only relevant definition here) and finds that if they put in a limit of 20 users in that software it helps them sell more which in turn helps them hire people and improve the software, then good for them.

It says more about the users, who clearly didn’t want to pay until there was a bit of a push, then that it says anything about the company.

Yes we don’t do that at Nextcloud, but a partner which does (and both Collabora and ONLYOFFICE do this) has every right. And to people who complain it is not ‘the open source way’ I suggest to get over it.

Yes, you can call bull**** on that if you like. But you’d be calling bullshit on Frank as well, and his stated position on this sort of thing.

Frank talking about Owncloud and open core software:

We had unhappy customers, because customers thought they were actually using an open source solution, but once they talk to the company and say that want to have a feature, they say, “Yeah, no problem. Get this enterprise edition – just pay here and use it under this licence, which is a proprietary licence.” And if they stop paying, they’re not allowed to use the software anymore, one minute later. Which is just a complete proprietary software model; it’s nothing to do with open source. Open source is used as a marketing tool here – there’s a “community edition”, but no companies are actually using it.

He’s making the same distinction here that I am, when I talk about software that is genuinely an open source project (I happened to phrase it as the “open source way”, which is also a phrase Frank has used, BTW), vs software that is open source only really for marketing purposes, and is actually intended to be a freemium product.

Of course I (and I’m sure Frank) understand that companies can play that game while technically being classed as open source, but the distinction is an important one. And, again, he has discussed at length why he opposes this open core model. Being told to “get over it” by a Nextcloud representative is quite ironic, given that the founder of Nextcloud raised the same concerns as part of its reason for being.

It seemed to me quite clear that, at that time, Frank understood why this distinction might be important to all users, including companies, without the insinuation that they are all unreasonable entitled brats.

[usselite]

@Semjel you realize that the Enterprise version is a ‘better’ supported version by Nextcloud GbmH. What does that mean?

1. Quicker patches for production environments, scraped together from commits made on the git repo. You pay for the Enterprise version to get this more frequently done in essence, with a lot of care / testing.
2. Different configuration, hence, installing ONLYOFFICE is a choice, you do not have to use it, you can certainly not agree with their license. But for most home users this is good enough and easy to install and maintain as noted a few times in this topic already.
3. General support by Nextcloud GbmH, being able to access documentation and access to their support engineers.

In short, the Enterprise edition where this topic is about is just a more stable / tested channel, scraping together from the well known public repository https://github.com/nextcloud/server.

There are no OwnCloud practices here. It is nonsense to call this proprietary or compare it to open core, all this is fully AGPL and thus 100% “the open source way”, just like what Red Hat and lots of other open source companies do. There is no obligation to make your life easier included in the GPL - it only demands that a distributor of code gives the recipient access to it. No need to put it in a public github repo (but Nextcloud does ) or make releases for everyone for free (and Nextcloud does that yet again ) and so on…

[Nemskiller]

Too bad i was reading your post and suddenly it disappeared

[usselite]

It was more related to the Enterprise version topic when I was reading it back. Figured Jos his response there was basically alike with mine.

I will restore it.

[Semjel]

@usselite

There are no OwnCloud practices here. It is nonsense to call this proprietary or compare it to open core, all this is fully AGPL and thus 100% “the open source way”, just like what Red Hat and lots of other open source companies do. There is no obligation to make your life easier included in the GPL - it only demands that a distributor of code gives the recipient access to it. No need to put it in a public github repo (but Nextcloud does ) or make releases for everyone for free (and Nextcloud does that yet again ) and so on…

I think perhaps you misunderstood my post. My post here that Jos was calling bull**** was referring to OnlyOffice, which is most certainly open core.

I didn’t here invoke Frank’s comments about Owncloud to make a comparison to Owncloud, as such - it was to illustrate that when discussing that topic, he was making the same distinction as I between open source and open core projects. Open core is of course technically open source too (which I acknowledged) but there is a very significant difference, which Frank also defines as being truly open source vs open source only for marketing purposes.

We all understand that it’s possible to be technically open source, while being impenetrably unfriendly for anyone else to use, if one wants to.

[just]

Can we please dial the tension down a lot; address each other with respect and a polite tone.