Recently the German computer magazin C’t posted an article about file sync solutions (“Unter eigener Regie”, C’t 23, 2018) with native sync clients. The article was pretty positive about the FOSS solution of… Nextcloud! I was wondering why they had not choosen ownCloud’s client as my feeling is that ownCloud is way more busy and innovative developing the desktop client for file synchronization together with community.
[caption id=“attachment_943” align=“alignright” width=“338”]
Code lines changed as of Nov. 10, 2018[/caption]
That motivated me to do some investigation what the Nextcloud client actually consists of (at due date Nov. 10, 2018). I was looking into the NC desktop client git repoository grouped the numbers of commits of people that can be associated clearly to either the ownCloud- or Nextcloud project, or to “other communities” or machine commits. Since the number of commits could be misleading (maybe some commits are huge?) I did the same exercise with numbers of changed lines of code.
When looking on the changed lines, the first top six contributors to the Nextcloud desktop client are only active in the ownCloud project. Number seven is an “other community” contributor whos project the client was based on in the beginning. Number eight to eleven go to Nextcloud, with a low percentage figure.
[caption id=“attachment_944” align=“alignnone” width=“666”]
# of commits to the Nextcloud Desktop repository as of Nov. 10, 2018[/caption]
As a result, far more than 80% of the changed lines of the Nextcloud client is actually work that ownClouders did (not considering the machine commits). In the past, and also today. The number would be even higher if it considered all the commits that go into the NC repo with an NC author, but are actually ownCloud patches where the original author got lost on the way by merging them through a NC branch. It looks like the Nextcloud developers were actually adding less commits to their client than all “other community” developers so far.
No wonder, it is a fork, you might think, and that is of course true. However, to my taste these numbers are not reflecting a “constructive” fork driving things forward when we talk about sync technology.
That is all fine, and I am proud that the work we do in ownCloud is actually stimulating two projects, with different focus areas nowadays. On the other hand, I would appreciate if the users of the technology would take a closer look to understand who really innovates, drives things forward and also fixes the nasty bugs in the stack. As a matter of fairness, that should be acknowledged. That is the motivation that keeps free software contributors busy and communities proud.