In the Wake of ownCloud, Here Comes Nextcloud

The extremely popular ownCloud open source file-sharing and storage platform for building private clouds has been much in the news lately. CTO and founder of ownCloud Frank Karlitschek resigned from the company a few months ago. His open letter announcing the move pointed to possible friction created as ownCloud moved forward as a commercial entity as opposed to a solely community focused, open source project.

Karlitschek had a plan, though. He is now out with a fork of ownCloud called Nextcloud, and there are strong signs that we can expect good things from this open platform.

According to ZDNet, Nextcloud puts openness first:

"Unlike the open-core ownCloud, all of Nextcloud's features will be open-source. There will be no features reserved for enterprise customers. This first release is based on ownCloud 9, which was released in March 2016. It delivers a capable, proven private infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud. This version also introduces new features such as a file drop capability and enterprise grade logging."

Nextcloud has even announced an update and said that the iOS app released this week. The company has also announced Nextcloud Android Client version 1.1.0 on the Google Play Store.

You can get the latest release of Nextcloud on its install page and learn more about it here.

According to his Karlitschek's original letter announcing his departure from ownCloud:

"I founded the ownCloud project a little over 6 years ago with the goal to enable home users, companies, universities and big enterprises to host their own cloud services and files. In a world with growing threats around security, surveillance and espionage, this idea is becoming more important every day. 4.5 years ago I co-founded ownCloud Inc, a company that supports enterprise use of ownCloud and drives the development of ownCloud forward."

"...The company could have done a better job recognizing the achievements of the community. It sometimes has a tendency to control the work too closely and discuss things internally. But overall, the balance was not too bad."

 It looks like he has found a worth new venture, and we will follow up on Nextcloud.