ownCloud 6 gets document collaboration
It has a few rough edges, but ownCloud is generally a good way to store and sync files via your own private server. It also covers contacts and calendars, making it more useful than just a simple file store, but the upcoming version 6 is going to be a major leap forward. Its biggest new feature is document collaboration: users can work together on rich text documents, with highlighting to show who has edited what.
It’s based on the ODT file format (as used by Open/LibreOffice), and while it’s still in the early stages of development, it could eventually give Google Docs a run for its money. Check out the video from the ownCloud team.
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Mike Saunders
Mike stores his data by printing out hex dumps and laminating the sheets. He's the author of The Haynes Linux Manual and the creator of MikeOS, an operating system hand-built from assembly language.
I'm really excited about this. I'm going to update my own installation next week and let you know how it goes. Having said that, I've been pretty happy with the simple text editor.
As far as I know, the open source version of OX Documents hasn't appeared (which is slightly worrying), but I've been working quite happily using local editors on top of a shared OwnCloud folder (even on Android), so a Google Docs replacement isn't quite as important to me as it was 12 months ago.
I'm so excited about this — it's exactly what I've been waiting for. I've got a test version up and running and on first inspection it looks really good. Hopefully I'll have time to put it through its paces over the next few days and I'll put up a post about it.
Pretty interesting. I think the continued development of WebRTC is going to make collaborative work apps explode over the next couple years so I expect we'll end up with a lot of options in the not too distant future.
It is an important development.
There are some odd bugs in OC, but generally it is quite good. I have been reluctant to recommend it to people for business, but at least the updates/upgrades do not bomb as badly as they used to.
I wrote a brief write-up on the upgrade (http://blog.paldandy.com/owncloud-5-to-6-beta-1/), and while it does seem a little rough around the edges – there are a few bugs, I've not had any stability issues. Docs sometimes regenerate themselves, but I've not lost data, and I hope this is a feature that will get a lot more people interested in OC.
You're a braver man than me Graham. I haven't updated my main install, but I've been running a test instance of OC6b1. With only light use, I've managed to completely kill the Documents app (i.e. it no longer works at all). It also seems to sometimes crash the server sometimes. I haven't had time to investigate it yet so I don't know what caused it.
I'm sure they'll get it sorted by the time of the main release, but this seemed like an early beta to me (which it is).
Does it have any kind of chat facility? The video demo suggests not, but I've always found that useful when editing Google Drive docs.
Thanks for the updates on OpenCloud Jonathan, Graham, and Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér.
I've been wanting to migrate out of the Google cloud for some time and have been interested in OC, but I'm adverse to bleeding edge projects for my daily tools (I'm a bit of a 'project hemophiliac'). I really appreciate trustworthy sources for assessing the state of reliability.
FWIW, I was just listening to the Linux Action Show podcast and they said that they will have the 'elite developer' of ownCloud on their show to be recorded Sun Nov 3.
They have live IRC during the show if you want to submit questions, or check out the podcast later at: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/show/linuxactionshow/
Does anyone here have experience of this on a pi?
Frank Karlitschek, the founder of the OwnCloud project, gave a 30 minute interview last Sunday on the Linux Action Show video/podcast. He expanded on the current state of the OwnCloud project and future directions.
To view the interview, search YouTube for "A Frank OwnCloud Interview" or "LAS s29e05" and jump to minute 35. The interview runs about 30 but is embedded within a longer show.
Maybe he'd like to join us on our podcast — that'd be even better 🙂 But thanks for the pointer!
May be worth a shot, Frank's bio currently says he is "CTO, Community Leader and co-founder" at ownCloud Inc (a company formed in 2011 to provide ownCloud support).
The 'Community Leader' role sounds encouraging for potential interviews.
I don't have any contact info but Frank has a LinkedIn page and there is a twitter link for him on the About page | Meet the Team at ownCloud.com
Looks like Frank is based in Germany, he skyped in for the LAS interview, speaks excellent English. (Of course, we always have Mike to translate for us if necessary.)
If only Owncloud was even slightly usable in an enterprise environment. Last I tried it (perhaps 6 months back) all it offered was an utterly useless pile of features that don't actually work.
* Working Syncronisation: Nope
* Working Mobile client: Nope
That is with LDAP authentication so perhaps for individual use it might be ok, I haven't tried it that way.
If half of the features worked as advertised, it would be a seriously killer application and I would throw piles of money at them (not really, maybe a tenner here or there).
Please please please please please, I know it's your project and you can do what you want with it, and that it's totally open so I can choose to spend a lot of time fixing those bugs, but just spend some effort fixing the more critical bugs before doing another feature release! Everyone will benefit!