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

[Klaas Freitag]

Am Montag 25 Juli 2011, 14:29:20 schrieb Jan-Christoph Borchardt:
Hi,

> 
> Before I started contributing to ownCloud I thought it was a KDE project
> and to be honest, was almost put off by that. 
I am sorry to hear that. 
> 
> 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.
Hmm, I didn't ever experienced that, but if thats the case, I think that 
must be addressed within  the KDE community. I am happy to help there.

> 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. 
I fail to see which security KDE offers limits us. Nothing in or around KDE
will limit us to become whatever in the Dropbox & iCloud space, the opposite
is the case IMHO.

For the following reasons I think its important for owncloud to continue 
to  position itself as a part of the KDE commuinty:

- KDE is by far not "only desktop" any more, it's a platform where people 
build their solutions upon. For Owncloud its beneficial to be part the 
framework.

- Even if we talk Desktop, where owncloud imo needs a good integration to
become successful, KDE is a good partner. This does by far not mean that
its limited to KDE only, think Desktop Summit, its cross Desktop.

- The KDE community is huge, with lots of smart people and a big impact
in FOSS. If these people comment on, use and finally promote owncloud 
that can only be beneficial. The more people in KDE like owncloud and 
use it for their projects, the larger the installed base of owncloud 
becomes. That is important for owncloud.

I think that it would be dangerous for owncloud to go away from KDE. 
Frankly, owncloud is still a bunch of php scripts with so far ok 
functionality, even though it has huge potential. But its not there yet.
There are millions of php based projects out there and I am convinced
that owncloud wouldn't be where it is if Frank weren't active in KDE
and KDE people helped to promote it.

Why for example would distributors pick owncloud and integrate it into 
the Linux distributions? I can tell you from own experience that the 
argument "its KDEs cloud idea" helps. Otherwise you quickly end up 
in the "oh yeah, another cool php based web app" - corner ;-)

regards,

Klaas