http://www.cio.com/article/3079866/o...-collapse.html

https://twitter.com/fkarlitschek/sta...03779155591168

Thanks, I had followed this topic since 2 weeks ago. I was already getting uneasy back when they changed repository and moved calendar and lots of other stuff around.

Hopefully, Nextcloud will pass a better path. Would miss the possiblity to have a personal cloud.

Mostly Good News, I think.

Well it is news to me but hardly a surprise. Welcome to Abandonwareland, Mr Owncloud! You are in a good company. Gnome 2, GTK, Open Office, the list is just too long to continue. All abandoned the moment something "better" (in most cases, just "newer") came along.

The moral of the story? You have two options. Leave it to the professionals (that is, people who do it for money) or do it yourself. People who do it for the common good, whatever that may be this month, are just too keen to leave at the drop of a hat.

I would not put it so pessimistically

How I see it; there's a guy (or team) that has a wonderful idea of a new cloud framework, and they would like both to make money with it and keep it open source simultaneously.
So, they team up with some VC from Silicon Valley and form a company to productize their thing, creating a also an open Community version. The company side is set up to provide paid support to corporate entities that want to have the goodies and pay for it.
The developers want to make their baby perfect, they have lots of ideas how to enhance it but the moneybags don't want to hear about that at all, they just want to sell a dropbox replacement gizmo.
The new exiting stuff gets brewed in the Community Version, and the Coporate version starts to lag back... Finally the developers just decide to quit the company 'cos it's boring and backward.

All is OK, nothing lost there really.

Well, after that happens the VC's notice that the promising startup is just a marketing doozy leftover, all the talent leaked away. So they poull the plug, just as well.

Still, nothing's lost, the developers are happily spinning the new stuff with a new name. It just is better and more beautiful than the last one.

Now, instead of using something with a name made up of a meaningless word and a meaningless buzzword, we can use something with a name made up of two meaningless buzzwords! And the world rejoiced.

And what did I say different?

Nothing lost, except continuity, customers' data and confidence.

Of course supporting your existing product is boring. Of course everyone wants to move on to something newer and more beautiful than the last one. But releasing a popular product brings some moral obligations. Moving on to something more beautiful every other week is exactly what gives Open Source a bad name.

It's always a good idea to leave it to the professionals if you want long-term support. Speaking of which, how's that PR 1.4 coming along, or did you switch to CSSU provided by people who do it for the common good?

+1 Ahh, My Thoughts Exactly!

Almost touché. Almost. Except you are forgetting the "do it yourself" part of my sentence.

I am sure you can provide one such example for every ten examples I can give you. And I concede that yes, there are exceptions both ways.

But look at the most common reasons for abandoning projects. Why are commercial product abandoned? There are usually two reasons: a lack of resources and a lack of commercial success. Both are justifiable reasons IMO. Maemo is a typical example of the latter.

Why are Open Source projects abandoned? Again two main reasons: something new and more exciting came along (Unity, Gnome 3, Wayland, QML) and politics including personal disagreements (Open vs Libre Office and now Own Clown). None of which is excusable in the eye of the customer.