as a long user (and hoster) of nextcloud I´ve started a cloud podcast and I´m very proud to announce that Frank Karlitschek of Nextcloud will be my first guest on the show.
There will be an own time frame for questions from the community: so, what do you want to know about Nextcloud & Co? Please let me know your questions.
The Podcast will be recorded in a week. Thanks and if you want to follow the show, please visit cloudpocast.eu. The episode will be in german, but fully transcripted so a translation would be easy.
I disagree. The gallery was removed and replaced with photos which from my understanding means it was approved at all levels. Many people feel it is unfinished and want gallery back but itâs impossible to install on 18.
Not being able to support external storage is just one example.
Could you clarify the situation about Virtual Drive Sync.
Did you hire new crew for development ?
The communication is really lacking on this topic because @jospoortvliet told once that basic folder sync will disappear. A lot of customers are afraid of that. Both sync solutions have pros and cons, but please make them available as every users have a different usage of Nextcloud.
one of the keyfeatures of NC was (when you forked it from OC) was: free theming. now itâs clear thatâs only a very basic feature⌠if you want more (like themed emails, clients, etc.) you need to have paid support. is it really neccessary (after we do read of all your successes in selling NC to several big players)?
why is there no paid support for small businesses and/or private users, yet? when is this going to come?
awww and it wasnât me if there wasnât some fun involved here, anyways⌠so when do you plan to have the very first nextcloud BBQ @stuttgart-birkenkopf (e.g.)?
/**
* Replaces the default mail template layout. This can be utilized if the
* options to modify the mail texts with the theming app is not enough.
* The class must extend ``\OC\Mail\EMailTemplate``
*/
'mail_template_class' => '\OC\Mail\EMailTemplate',
At least themed emails are available for a while. I donât know about clients. Indeed a good question.
i am aware of this - but itâs no one-click solution. plus i doesnt really correspond with the theming you can setup. and ya, thereâs a css-solution as well for theming reasons. not for one-clickers neither. and themed clients (for ms)? only for paid support users.
Please try to include some context to your questions. For example the themed emails @JimmyKater mentioned. I see that cloud name, description, logo and primary color are picked up by the default email template. If you need more customization itâs even possible to define a class to overwrite almost everything. To me itâs not clear what his question is about. We donât have to discuss this in this thread. I just used it as example.
users (including me) get the impression, that Nextcloud starts to develop too many new features and default apps before finishing (in terms of âmaking production readyâ) the older announced features; is this something you are aware of? What are your thoughts on that?
Examples: E2E-Encryption, Virtual Drive, Dashboard, Federated Sharing (not supported in Deck, crashing instances when remote server unavailable), Social, Dark Theme, Announcement Center, âŚ)
Sometimes feature rich apps like Gallery, Files Text Editor (with Markdown Editor) get completely replaced with new apps which donât provide the same amount of features and are in an early state of development, so that it is not the best idea to use them on ones instance. Wouldnât it be better to have a transition phase, meaning that from letâs say NC 18 to 18.03. both apps are supported and users can decide which apps to use?
are there plans to improve the quality assurance for major releases? (subjective impression according to forum posts, updates to NC17 and NC18 caused a lot of hustle for home users and administrators)
My suggestion for the last question:
Assuming there are statistics about the most famous and most downloaded apps: what about having a test instance with most of the available apps installed, activated and containing some basic example data and then perform the update?
It seems that this would show most of the bugs, which users regularly run into with updates to a new major release.
Thanks for this opportunity.
And beside of my concerns about some decisions, Iâm a huge Nextcloud fan
The answer to all the questions is the same: buy the Enterprise version yaâ cheapskates!
No, Iâm just kidding. But I do think it would be fair to ask about the OnlyOffice issue.
Itâs clearly functionally-limited open core software, and now itâs part of Nextcloud Hub. To some, this is a convenience, and a limited office editor is better than none.
But there are also folks that see the adoption of open core software as part of the Nextcloud Hub installation, and it seems to call into question Nextcloudâs stated position against that model, which Frank has described as toxic and unsustainable.
Congrats on the podcast launch, and I wish you the best with it!
Questions:
Nextcloud has been used in a lot of different places now! What were some of the most interesting uses Frank has seen it used, and where would he most like to see it adopted next?
If thereâs a single silver bullet for having Nextcloud-the-product overtake other cloud offerings (Azure, GDocs), what, in Frankâs opinion, is that bullet?
If Nextcloud-the-product does overtake the others, then what will that look like for Nextcloud GmbH?
Whatâs Nextcloud GmbHâs strategy for/policy on accepting community contributions to the core product?
What kind of support do they offer for application developers making either free/libre or proprietary addon apps for Nextcloud?
First, I just want to start off by saying that Nextcloud is almost perfect for many different use cases of mine so thank you so much for making and developing this project.
As an avid user and a somewhat frequent contributor, I am obviously very interested in the health of the project, its community, and, by extension, the sustainability of the company backing it.
When the project first forked, one of the ideas proposed was to create a Nextcloud Foundation that would help to advocate and develop Nextcloud and ensure somewhat of a separation between the project and the company backing it. Any progress on that front?
There has been some changes recently such as the removal of the production update channel and the inclusion of âfunctionally-limited open core softwareâ in the form of OnlyOffice Community Edition (and, while very small, the renaming of a release without community input) that has caused some worry for some people in the community including me. That combined with how there are no build instructions for Nextcloud final version releases (any chance we could get those?) means that while I feel confident about the sustainability of Nextcloud GmbH, I donât feel the same confidence about Nextcloud, the project and community.
To be clear though, I think you (Frank) and Nextcloud GmbH have been great stewardesses of the project, but I also think there is room for improvement to ensure the long-term sustainability of the project and community, not just the company.
The project has given me numerous opportunities to learn while allowing me to add features and fix bugs that I or others run into without having to face a âyouâre not in the company so we wonât accept a patch from youâ mentality that exists too often in company backed/controlled open source projects so Iâd like to really thank you for that. Thank you so much for not requiring a CLA.
i think, that if NC wants to really compete with MS or Google there should be a focus on catching up on Core funkionalities like filesharing an office, at least for companies like ours.
filesharing: while syncing works flawless most of the time, it is no option on bigger groupolders. A Virtual Drive is needed. Where did it go, by the way
Office: we use Onlyoffice, there are not all functions needed present. shifting those functions to specialized webservices (pivot -> reporting webserver) is painfull, because excel is a swiss knife and everybody knows how to work with, not all reporting tools are that easy. Sad, but true. So Wopi: last time i looked at the app: unclear if it works or how it works
NC GmbH should establish something like a marketplace where companies can invest in Apps/Funktions they need and are on their roadmap for Nextcloud.
i know, there would be a lot to think of: how long is the App maintained, which funktions exactly, there must be a commitment to open source an this Apps/Functions and so on.
But we had two things then:
shared costs for development
commitment to needed features for companies
Keep up the good work Nextcloud, i am happy with it, but to compete with Google and MS ⌠i`d say, there is room for improvement. And yes, i appreciate data sovereignty given by Nextcloud.
one tiny request at this point: you hugely feature âon spotifyâ. Please make other options as prominent. Spotify trying to take over podcasting is a bad thing for the ecosystem. In my opinion that shouldnât be advertised at all, but I get why podcasts are doing it; so this is why Iâd like to suggest putting ârss feedâ and other options (at least) on the same level.
