Hello Community,
I am new to nextcloud and I like it, but I would like to make a few suggestions for feature requests / new apps and I am confused as to where to make such requests and where I can put a bounty on such requests. Here are some examples:
Implement a hotkey to archive an email in the mail app (and merge this into the official nextcloud app)
Make a fork of the proton ios client with nextcloud branding and modify so that it connects with nextcloud mail and publish this as official nextcloud app
Implement multi-select of photos in nextcloud talk for ios and merge into official app
Implement album views for groups of photos in nextcloud talk for ios and merge into official app
What is the right place to put such issues?
Contact nextcloud via contactform
Put on bounty source
Open issues on the github repos of talk and mail (but there is no github repo for a mail ios client…)
Put it somewhere here on the forum
Hire a freelancer for this on upworks
Somewhere else
I would be willing to put some money on these features, but unsure how to approach it. Any directions where to go with it would be much appreciated.
In general, you should post such requests with the authors who have written the code. For example, the mail app is not maintained by the core team (although there is an intersecting set as far as I know).
They can at least point you in the right direction and also tell you about any bounty options you might have.
This would not be an app. All apps are PHP scripts that are run along the NC server on the server. If I understand that correctly (I am not using iOS or proton), this is an app for iOS/Apple devices, right?
Here you might want to ask yourself: Why is this intended/useful? Eventually, you can ask the original authors to allow a quick setup process?
A fork is quite some work, so the intention must be very clear here.
I think you are talking of this repo. I might be wrong but this is my best guess.
Well you are going to have a hard time, because the Proton apps work completely different than Nextcloud.
First of all, Nextcloud does not provide an Email server. Second, Nextcloud uses open protocols like IMAP, SMTP for their mail client, and CalDAV / CardDAV for their calendar and contacts server. Proton on the other hand uses a proprietary server backend and it’s own API to connect their apps, because of their end-to-end-encryption, which makes it hard or in many cases even impossible to integrate it with other apps.
There is the Proton Mail Bridge in order to connect desktop email clients via IMAP and SMTP protocol. Other than that I’m not aware of any solutions to integrate the proton services with standard desktop / mobile apps.
You are linking the github repo. So what would be best practice to approach the authors? Open a new issue @christianlupus ?
Yes, this wouldn’t be a nextcloud webapp. Rather an independent ios app such as the talk ios app. For me the purpose of using nextcloud is to get off from services such as google suite. So of course something I would like to replace is gmail for ios. But right now nextcloud doesn’t offer an ios email client and for a complete groupware solution, I believe this is needed. But it doesn’t have to be written from scratch. However, bb77 is already pointing out, that this might not be the best starting point…
@bb77 Do you know of any open source ios email clients that would be a better suited starting point for a fork?
Nextcloud Mail is basically just another IMAP/SMTP client like there are many. You can connect it to almost any email provider (unless this provider is Proton*). Same thing on iOS: You can just use the iOS Mail app and connect it to to the same email provider via IMAP/SMTP (again, unless this provider is Proton )
Also, you don’t need a separate app for Calendar and Contacts. You can use the standard iOS Contacts and Calendar apps and connect them to your Nextcloud via CalDAV/Card/DAV (if you are using Nextlocud as your primary Calendar and Contacts server)
EDIT:
*There might be ways to install Proton Mail Bridge on your Nextcloud server.
I would suggest to bring the issue to the developers of the appropriate app. If they see fit, they will likely implement things at some point in time. You might change priorities via bounties but that is the first hand information.
@bb77 For me the whole point of using nextcloud is to ditch the apps of the big tech companies such as google and Apple. So I would prefer if I could install an open source email client on ios too. Basically, if you are coming from the google ecosystem you are used to the fact, that they just offer you gmail on ios or android. If you try to switch to nextcloud, this is a bit a stumbling point. But you are right, forking proton might not make sense due to their architecture.
@marcelklehr Thank you for pointing this out. So the way of doing this would be opening an issue in the respective nextcloud repo on github and linking this with a bounty on bounty (sorry, I never did it before). Coming more from working with agencies and freelancers, wouldn’t it be easier to post it on a platform like upworks.com and ask freelancers to submit quotes to implement something? Or would such edits not be welcome by the community?
That might depend on the project in question. Done projects have already a bounty system in place or encourage a certain system.
Just ask the authors. They might have plans you are unaware. In that case a freelancer might just be overkill or the wrong direction. Just make your claim clear that you are willing to spend money or working resources from a freelancer on the project. They will help your hopefully to get a clearer view and tall description (in case of the freelancer).
I don’t know why there are no open 3rd party open source email clients like K9 on iOS. But if you are using Apple devices you will never have a really open platform anyway, unless maybe if they will be forced to allow side-loading of apps in the future. But even then you still would have all the Apple services running on your device that can’t really be disabled. In my opinion, it doesn’t make much difference on an iOS device, whether you are using the default email client or a third party open source client, just like it doesn’t really make a difference which browser you are using, because they all have to use the Safari engine.
I’m afraid, if you really want to use free an open source software on your phone, you will have to switch to Android. But not to some random phone, I mean specifically to a phone on which you can run something like GrapheneOS, e/OS or LineageOS, and then run it without the Google Apps. These “Aftermarket OSs” or “Custom ROMs” are of course not perfect either, because although the AOSP project, on which they are based on, is technically open source software, it’s clearly Google who calls the shots in that project. However, an AOSP-based system, without Google apps, is definitely better than iOS, and as close as you can get to a free and open source mobile platform, that is still suitable for everyday use.
Thanks for your reply. I guess you are right. Too bad really. I wonder though how the encryption works for proton mail since they do offer an ios client. Maybe that is a reasonable compromise for people who want to stay on ios. But I think that is for another thread to discuss.
But it was great to get all these good answers from the community in this thread. Thank you!
fyi in case somebody stumbles across this thread in the future: The archive hotkey was actually a bug that was discovered and hopefully will get fixed at some point in the future.
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