Live data from Hacker News

Owncloud has been forked into Nextcloud

nextcloud.com

61–70 of 134 posts

Re: Owncloud has been forked into Nextcloud

#61
I like how OwnCloud was characterized on Bad Voltage (paraphrasing here): "It's as if someone a few years ago wrote down their definition of cloud and sent it back in time to 1996. Then a bunch of PHP developers in 1996 implemented it knowing nothing about what they were doing and then sent the code back to present day."

That's not to say I don't appreciate the fact that ownCloud exists, but I find it much harder to use, and the fact that it's written in PHP makes me not want to dig into it to fix.

Re: Owncloud has been forked into Nextcloud

#62

Let me tell you an anecdote about Owncloud. Once upon a time, I hosted an Owncloud instance for my family. I had a raid 5 system setup on an old Xserve with around 10 TB of usable space. I was really into learning about encryption at the time, so I figured it would be cool to encrypt all my families files on the server. I made sure that all my family members were properly educated about not forgetting their password,…

I don't mean to belittle the severity of the bug you encountered -- but the root-cause of your problem was a lack of a backup. A large number of issues, some of them software bugs, many of them not, could lead to data loss. It that vein, too, your RAID-5 system is/was a disaster waiting to happen, especially when you don't have a backup: http://www.zdnet.com/article/raidfail-dont-use-raid-5-on-sma...

The problem was that encryption totally broke after an update. A symptom of that problem was that files became inaccessible.

Restoring from backup would have corrected the symptom, not the root problem: a bug.

Re: Owncloud has been forked into Nextcloud

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't talk about this in detail yet but http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2016/06/nextcloud-is-replacing... has some more information on what's upcoming. If you can understand German a very good in-depth research article is at http://www.golem.de/news/community-fork-und-neues-unternehme... Disclaimer: I am one of those folks that left ownCloud for Nextcloud.

I sincerely hope that Nextcould embraces the C4 contract for community building. That would be IMHO the best way to create and grow a community that is truly open and will survive for a long time. http://rfc.zeromq.org/spec:42/C4/

This seems like a great codified set of best practices - but why the prohibition on topic branches?

The project SHALL NOT use topic branches for any reason.

This is a main tenet of git-flow, and it's hardly uncommon.

Re: Owncloud has been forked into Nextcloud

#64

I like how OwnCloud was characterized on Bad Voltage (paraphrasing here): "It's as if someone a few years ago wrote down their definition of cloud and sent it back in time to 1996. Then a bunch of PHP developers in 1996 implemented it knowing nothing about what they were doing and then sent the code back to present day." That's not to say I don't appreciate the fact that ownCloud exists, but I find it much harder to…

Indeed I've been waiting for something like Owncloud for Django or Flask or something Pythonesque for a while.

I'd join in if there were a better Pythonista to start it than myself.

Re: Owncloud has been forked into Nextcloud

#65
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to belittle the severity of the bug you encountered -- but the root-cause of your problem was a lack of a backup. A large number of issues, some of them software bugs, many of them not, could lead to data loss. It that vein, too, your RAID-5 system is/was a disaster waiting to happen, especially when you don't have a backup: http://www.zdnet.com/article/raidfail-dont-use-raid-5-on-sma...

"You're holding it wrong." He did have a backup. Having it also be mysteriously borked certainly violates the principle of least surprise. That's a bug like Fukushima is an industrial accident.

If you want to rely on backups, you have to test them periodically and not overwrite older ones with newer ones. It sounds like the backups had probably never worked, or there was some necessary component that was not backed up.

Re: Owncloud has been forked into Nextcloud

#66
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://blog.jospoortvliet.com/2016/06/nextcloud-is-replacing... >'why' is the question everybody has and I hope you understand I don't want to talk too much about that Grow up, maybe, Jos? This sounds to me like the usual and continuous splits inside OSS communities, but Jesus, I do miss the days when you had a detailed explanation as soon as somebody leaked the IRC logs!

You don't talk negative about other people, especially if you worked with them for a long time, and especially when it's not a matter of "they hid bodies of people they killed" but mere differences in opinion about how to do business. So no, this dirty laundry should not be aired in public.

On the other hand, that specific thing is the entire reason for the fork existing, its drive and motivation.

It could be anything. "We feel own-cloud isn't libre enough", "We don't feel this direction is profitable", "We feel owncloud was too open", "I personally disliked one of the people there any wanted to sink the ship", etc etc (note: I am being a bit tongue in cheek here)

If its a reason I agree with, then migration makes sense, if its a reason I don't agree with, then obviously migration might not be a good idea. But no one knows what the driving motivation of nextcloud is! So its a bit more worry-causing then reassuring

Re: Owncloud has been forked into Nextcloud

#67

Let me tell you an anecdote about Owncloud. Once upon a time, I hosted an Owncloud instance for my family. I had a raid 5 system setup on an old Xserve with around 10 TB of usable space. I was really into learning about encryption at the time, so I figured it would be cool to encrypt all my families files on the server. I made sure that all my family members were properly educated about not forgetting their password,…

I don't mean to belittle the severity of the bug you encountered -- but the root-cause of your problem was a lack of a backup. A large number of issues, some of them software bugs, many of them not, could lead to data loss. It that vein, too, your RAID-5 system is/was a disaster waiting to happen, especially when you don't have a backup: http://www.zdnet.com/article/raidfail-dont-use-raid-5-on-sma...

Do you back up the unencrypted data though? Regardless of the viability of the raid 5 system, the raid 5 wasn't what failed. It was the encryption.

It wouldn't have even been possible to backup the encrypted data without getting all my family members passwords too.

Re: Owncloud has been forked into Nextcloud

#68
post #64

I like how OwnCloud was characterized on Bad Voltage (paraphrasing here): "It's as if someone a few years ago wrote down their definition of cloud and sent it back in time to 1996. Then a bunch of PHP developers in 1996 implemented it knowing nothing about what they were doing and then sent the code back to present day." That's not to say I don't appreciate the fact that ownCloud exists, but I find it much harder to…

Indeed I've been waiting for something like Owncloud for Django or Flask or something Pythonesque for a while. I'd join in if there were a better Pythonista to start it than myself.

I actually wish that Owncloud would focus on file syncing and not on apps. Their app API feels like the wrong level of abstraction, more like you're building wordpress plugins than actual apps. I appreciate that it makes it easy for devs to get started, but can result in some terrible security holes and messy APIs. Something like Sandstorm is a much better way to separate apps and content and prevent security issues.

Owncloud's syncing clients for mac/win/linux are descended from mirall and are pretty good. I used Owncloud server for a while then built myself a lightweight replacement in node that uses the same sync API. (webdav)

Re: Owncloud has been forked into Nextcloud

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to belittle the severity of the bug you encountered -- but the root-cause of your problem was a lack of a backup. A large number of issues, some of them software bugs, many of them not, could lead to data loss. It that vein, too, your RAID-5 system is/was a disaster waiting to happen, especially when you don't have a backup: http://www.zdnet.com/article/raidfail-dont-use-raid-5-on-sma...

Do you back up the unencrypted data though? Regardless of the viability of the raid 5 system, the raid 5 wasn't what failed. It was the encryption. It wouldn't have even been possible to backup the encrypted data without getting all my family members passwords too.

>>> Everything went smoothly for about 6 months until I was updating Owncloud with a minor version upgrade, and then BAM; nobody (myself included) could decrypt any data on the server.

> Do you back up the unencrypted data though? Regardless of the viability of the raid 5 system, the raid 5 wasn't what failed. It was the encryption.

> It wouldn't have even been possible to backup the encrypted data without getting all my family members passwords too.

You could have backed up the encrypted data (+owncloud metadata) in its encrypted form. Then, when you ran into the bug that corrupted the main copy of the encrypted data, you could have restored the old backup of the encrypted data and reverted to the last working version of Owncloud to access your data.

Post reply on HN