[Owncloud] Time to reach out to other projects?

[Aaron Reichman]

Hello everybody,

I've been thinking about the best ways to build up the ownCloud community
and I'm very interested in sending feelers out to other projects to try and
get them to join. What follows is a draft of an email to send to those
projects that I wanted to get feedback on. I also wanted to address the idea
of how closely we want to be tied to KDE. I personally love the project and
think the infrastructure they provide has been great for us. But now, we're
at a point where we should decide if we want to move deeper into KDE (move
to extragear instead of playground, perhaps?) or become a separate project
with ties to many desktop environments. I'd rather consciously make this
decision than follow the path of least resistance. At least then we can
justify it if we need to. Also, it very much impacts how other people and
projects view us and thus directly affects the recipients of this email.

Thanks everybody,
Aaron

Hello,

My name is Aaron and I'm involved in the ownCloud project that's trying to
create a personal cloud server to compete with services like iCloud/MobileMe
& Dropbox. We think that this project will give free software a way to reach
out to all the people who are taking their files and data into the cloud
without bombarding them with ads or making them give up their privacy.

ownCloud is a desktop-agnostic project that (of course) uses open standards
like webDAV, cardDAV, calDAV and syncml. Because of this it already
integrates well with most desktops environments. Right now we have basic
functionality. File uploading, downloading and viewing/playing of some file
types (images and audio) work in the web interface and it can be accessed
through Nautilus, Dolphin, Finder & Explorer very easily. We're also working
on lots of great features like LDAP integration, a media player,
server-server syncing, PIM syncing and basic document editing.

But so many features combined with a relatively small group of programmers
makes for slow going so we're reaching out to other projects we hope will
benefit from ownCloud. Because there is no desktop specific code, just HTML,
PHP & JS, it's very easy to get started. And, like every other project, lots
of different skill sets are necessary, from translators to usability experts
to coders and testers.

Anybody who wants to see what we're all about can join #owncloud on freenode
or email owncloud at kde.org. To make it easier to get started I can give a
limited number of accounts on my personal owncloud server to people who want
to try it out.

I know this email has gotten long but hopefully it conveys how excited we
are to be creating a personal cloud server. More and more of our lives are
moving into the cloud and the open source community needs to be a part of
that future in a way that stays true to our principles. This is a way to do
that and we'd like to bring together as many different communities as
possible. So, if nothing else, please take a look at the website (
http://www.owncloud.org) and send an email to the list requesting a test
account. Lots of things work now but there are many more things we can
accomplish by working together.

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Aaron
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/owncloud/attachments/20110724/52f4eca0/attachment.html>