[Owncloud] Dying apps: Shorty, Shorty Tracking, Imprint

[Christian Reiner]

Hello all, 
as I have written many times before, I myself am not able to maintain "my" 
apps any more. I tried to somehow hold up their usability for quite some time 
now but this is not a situation that can last. Issues have to be fixed, 
enhancements are waiting for implementation and owncloud 6 is coming which 
adds huge challenges to maintainers of existing apps. 
These apps are: 
- Shorty
- Shorty Tracking
- Imprint
- FluXX Compensator (Y)
The reason why I cannot hold up that work any more is simple: I coded those 
apps in my spare time out of interest in the required technology (I wanted to 
learn), because I experienced owncloud as an important component of the IT 
environment I would like to have available for myself and out of pure fun. 
However I simply cannot invest that huge amount of time any more. 

I asked several users and developers with interest in one or another of the 
apps for contributions, tried to motivate many people asking for fixes, 
enhancements or support to take a look at things, all without success. 

So the bottom line is: those apps are unmaintained. 

I was able to modify the FluXX Compensator (Y) such that it is compatible with 
owncloud 6. There still is (after years!) the annoying issue that the app 
store does not allow to support more than a single owncloud version by an app 
(still my question: why?). But the bigger problem is: 
owncloud 6 again introduces much more incompatibilities for apps than I 
expected. As an effect, porting the other three apps to owncloud 6 would 
required quite some time and effort. Especially when trying to maintain 
backwards compatibility which always was important to me: the apps currently 
are usable with owncloud versions 4, 4.5 and 5 without any modification. Yes, 
you cannot install them from the app store, see above, you have to do that 
manually. But things work and are usable. I think some backward compatibility 
is very important for a project like owncloud which delivers a production 
environment. We all know that there are many good reasons which might prevent 
an installation from getting upgraded right away when a new version comes 
out...

So basically :
those remaining three apps will not be available any more in owncloud 6. 

I am sorry for that, I liked to contribute to owncloud. And although I see and 
experience problems in the way the owncloud community is currently handled by 
the core team I still think owncloud is a great thing! So keep up the good 
work and hopefully some other great apps will fill the gap! 

Have fun, 
Christian Reiner (arkascha)