[Owncloud] Re: Time to reach out to other projects?

[Jan-Christoph Borchardt]

I agree 100% with what Aaron said.

Before I started contributing to ownCloud I thought it was a KDE project
and to be honest, was almost put off by that. (Although I use GNOME and
contributed to that & Ubuntu, I consider myself a web person above any
desktop affiliation.)

The KDE community and infrastructure sure is great but I believe that
there are "neutral" platforms which are even better. Such as Transifex and
Gitorious, where the project was very visible and had 45 forks already.
While I know this is not a measure, getting an account at KDE identity and
requesting developer access is a hurdle. As primarily a web project we
should power other free web platforms (as we already do with Identi.ca to
an extent). I‘m not pushing for this but I think we should change sooner
or later.

Though we are all volunteers we must understand that ownCloud has the
potential to (or rather currently already is) the best free & open-source
alternative to projects such as Dropbox & iCloud/MobileMe. Thus we have
to, as Aaron said, embrace other web projects and not, if I may say so,
limit us in the security that KDE offers. Nearly every day I see someone
ask for a real Dropbox alternative and people have to refer to SpiderOak
or Wuala which are not a solution.

We need to be more visible and (through that) more known. I‘m sure people
can‘t wait to use & contribute to ownCloud.



On Mon, July 25, 2011 10:55, Aaron Reichman wrote:
> Personally, I like the idea of strengthening our ties to other projects
by
> being a separate entity that interacts equally with everybody like
Apache,
> Wordpress and other server based projects. I think we run the risk of
becoming the KDE cloud otherwise when we could be the open/free cloud.
Nobody else is doing the things we're doing in the way we're doing them
and
> I think we should make the most of the situation we find ourselves in.
Nothing stops us from being just as involved in KDE as we are now while
becoming more involved with gnome, XFCE, enlightenment and whoever else
wants to help us out.
>
> That being said, I have no problems with being a KDE project, either.
KDE
> is
> an amazing community and we should be proud to be a part of it. I just
think
> we can maintain a great relationship with KDE without sacrificing other
possible relationships. Whatever the group decides I'm fine with, just
wanted to put in my $0.02.