OwnCloud
ownCloud is a suite of client–server software for creating and using file hosting services. ownCloud functionally has similarities to the widely used Dropbox. The primary functional difference between ownCloud and Dropbox is that ownCloud is primarily server software. (The company's ownCloud.online is a hosted service.) The Server Edition of ownCloud is free and open-source, thereby allowing anyone to install and operate it without charge on their own private server.

ownCloud supports extensions that allow it to work like Google Drive, with online office suite document editing, calendar and contact synchronization, and more. Its openness avoids enforced quotas on storage space or the number of connected clients, instead of having hard limits (for example on storage space or number of users) limits are determined by the physical capabilities of the server.

History 

The development of ownCloud was announced in January 2010, in order to provide a free software replacement to proprietary storage service providers.
The company was founded in 2011 and forked the code away from KDE to GitHub.

ownCloud Inc., the company founded by Markus Rex, Holger Dyroff and Frank Karlitschek, has attracted funding from investors, including an injection of 6.3 million US$ in 2014.

In April 2016, Karlitschek left ownCloud Inc. and founded a new company and project called Nextcloud in June 2016, resulting in the closure of ownCloud's U.S. operations. Some former ownCloud Inc. developers left ownCloud to form the fork with Karlitschek.

In July 2016, ownCloud GmbH, based in Nuremberg Germany, secured additional financing, and expanded its management team.

In 2018, ownCloud launched its own SaaS offer for small businesses and NGOs. The service aimed to provide a secure and GDPR-compatible solution for organizations without their own IT department.

In March 2019, ownCloud launched the BayernBox in cooperation with the Bavarian State Office for Survey and Geoinformation, an ownCloud-based collaboration solution for the Bavarian municipalities. The deployment involves one ownCloud instance for each of the over 2000 municipalities.

Server releases

Overview

Design 

Desktop clients for ownCloud are available for Windows, macOS, FreeBSD and Linux, mobile clients for iOS and Android devices. Files and other data (such as calendars, contacts or bookmarks) can also be accessed, managed, and uploaded using a web browser. Updates are pushed to all computers and mobile devices connected to a account.

Encryption of files may be enforced by the server administrator.

The ownCloud server is written in PHP and JavaScript scripting languages. In September 2020, ownCloud announced to switch to Go. The Go-based "ownCloud Infinite Scale" became first available to the public in early 2021, and in late 2021, the beta was announced for the first quarter of 2022. ownCloud is designed to work with several database management systems, including SQLite, MariaDB, MySQL, Oracle Database, and PostgreSQL.

Features 

owncloud is a software only product and does not offer off-premise storage. This is in contrast to Dropbox, for example, which offers off-premise storage. The storage capacity for owncloud has to be provided on user-owned devices.

ownCloud files are stored in conventional directory structures and can be accessed via WebDAV if necessary. User files are encrypted both at rest and during transit. ownCloud can synchronise with local clients running Windows, macOS and various Linux distributions. ownCloud users can manage calendars (CalDAV), contacts (CardDAV) scheduled tasks and streaming media (Ampache) from within the platform.

ownCloud permits user and group administration (via OpenID or LDAP). Content can be shared by granular read/write permissions between users or groups. Alternatively, ownCloud users can create public URLs for sharing files. Furthermore, users can interact with the browser-based ODF-format word processor, bookmarking service, URL shortening suite, gallery, RSS feed reader and document viewer tools from within ownCloud. ownCloud can be augmented with "one-click" applications and connection to Dropbox, Google Drive and Amazon S3.

Enterprise features 

Enterprise customers have access to apps with additional functionality. They are mainly useful for large organizations with more than 500 users. An Enterprise subscription includes support services.

Commercial features include end-to-end encryption, ransomware and antivirus protection, branding, document classification, and single sign-on via Shibboleth/SAML.

Distribution 

ownCloud server and clients may be downloaded from the website, from mobile app stores, such as Google Play and Apple iTunes,, and repositories of Linux distributions. There exist projects to use ownCloud on a Raspberry Pi to create a small-scale cloud storage system.

ownCloud.online is an SaaS that offers a secure and GDPR-compatible solution for small businesses, NGOs and others without their own IT department.

See also 

 Comparison of file hosting services
 Comparison of file synchronization software
 Comparison of online backup services

References

External links 

 
 Forum for open source community and project

Cloud storage
Free software for cloud computing
Free software programmed in JavaScript
Free software programmed in PHP
Software using the GNU AGPL license
Internet software for Linux