Does owncloud really requires a server-side backend?

23 Mar 2010 in Digitalisation on Kde, Gnome

Hi planetkde, hi readers from planet gnome (so called aliens¹),

I’ve just stumbled upon a blog post dealing with a potential collaboration of KDE and gnome to initiate a replacement for dropbox, called ownCloud.

There are already thoughts about possible GSoC projects giving attention to the gnome/KDE frontend clients and to the server backend.

Nice idea, but in my humble opinion there is a problem, at least for me: I haven’t a hosted root server, but a lot of unix accounts with user webspace, where it is impossible to run any kind of background services/daemons.

Think of:

university accounts
(scientific) institute accounts
accounts from your IT related work

Think of people, who probably use linux.

In the case that ownCloud is meant to be the centre of all data synchronisations, it would be sad that those people who only have webspace cannot take advantage of it.

So I encourage the developer to design the ownCloud in a way that makes the server-side backend software only optional, but not a requirement.

This would be similar to git, which can use a server side backend (git://), but is also satisfied with a simple sftp connection (ssh://). (Please correct me if I am wrong.)

After all you might want to read an article about the disadvantages of SaaS published by http://www.gnu.org. Exaggerated message in one sentence: Don’t get dependant of other people server services.

Just a joke. Don’t take it serious. ↩︎

Comments

Chani wrote on March 23, 2010

uhh, if you want to get a message to the developers, wouldn't it be more effective to actually, like, *talk* to the *developers*? instead of just blogging about what you think might maybe be a potential problem?

maybe they've thought of this already and it won't be a problem. maybe they haven't. either way it'd make more sense for you to talk to them than to us.

Bob wrote on March 23, 2010

Ehm... ownCloud is a KDE-only project, maintained only by people in the KDE community, many times mentioned in Planet KDE.
That post about collaboration is, actually, just speculation about the fact Gnome and KDE people has each their own vaguely similar project based on completely different considerations.

Robert Riemann wrote on March 23, 2010

I think my problem is related to the question of the future way to sync our
data between different PCs and access it from different places.

This shouldn't be discussed by the developers only, but also by the user
who follows the KDE development actively on planetkde or by developers from
other KDE projects.

Additionally I don't like to join one or two mailing lists each time I have a
question/idea. As the inventor of ownCloud promoted his idea on the planet, I
am sure he will notice my question.

Thomas wrote on March 23, 2010

Writing a blog if you have a question or are not clear about something is similar to going outside and yelling at the end of the street about your question. It doesn't really help, its noisy and frankly, it makes you look silly.

My suggestion; do your research, take the effort to approach the people thinking about this in their own mailinglist/forum/irc channel and work together. You are doing none of those right now.

Projects that do their development and research in the open are generally welcoming input, just make sure you don't waste their time and force those people to stop communicating if they want to actually get something done.

Frank Karlitschek wrote on March 23, 2010

Thank you for your comments but please check the current code, documentation and concepts. ownCloud should run on any webspace without the need to have a special serverside services/daemons. So the plan is to do exactly what you propose.

It would be nice to discuss with the developers on the mailinglist and check the facts before complaining :-)

Jos Poortvliet wrote on March 24, 2010

Not really true, there are already talks going on about collaboration. ownCloud is meant to give the user back the control over their own data, I'm sure the Gnomies want that too. Webdav is supported in Nautilus, and is tested already. The NIH thing that 'because KDE ppl came up with it we don't want it' is as stupid as it is bad for FOSS.

Does owncloud really requires a server-side backend?

~rriemann

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