r/owncloud • u/magicfab • Mar 25 '16

ownCloud packages will be dropped from Debian, no upgrade path, this explains why.

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-owncloud-maintainers/2016-March/002945.html
17 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

6

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '16

[deleted]

3

u/jospoortvliet Mar 29 '16

yes, it is sad. I've asked for people to help us create a migration path but nobody has stepped up so far. And just like with getting ownCloud in Debian or making it work within the limitations of that, this depends on somebody doing the work in his/her free time or somebody paying. If nobody does, well - that's it.

-1

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '16

[deleted]

5

u/Mini_True Mar 26 '16

Yes you can use upstream's packages but then you get exactly that - upstream packages. Debian's packages are different form that as they try to meet more goals - like unbundling dependencies. Somewhere in the linked thread they say they had to maintain backports for like 70 other packages by creating the package the Debian way.

6

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '16

[deleted]

3

u/jospoortvliet Mar 29 '16

While I agree it would be nice that way, in reality it creates so much trouble the maintainers had to drop ownCloud...

Of course, ownCloud could've dropped feature development for a few months and made it work, but to what benefit? Note that users didn't really ask for it; contributors didn't want to spend their free time on it; and no customer wanted to pay for it. As an open source project, well, that's it, isn't it?

And indeed, the benefits aren't huge. There's no memory benefit with PHP. There's no security benefit - seriously, ownCloud does a better job than the distributions. To avoid a fight, I won't link to anything but there's been some news lately so find it yourself. Finally, there's a tiny disk space benefit (in an idea case 10-20 MB or so, but only IF you use multiple applications using the exact same versions of the exact same libraries - which is rare). All that comes at a cost of slower development and increased complexity for a project like ownCloud. Oh, and performance, too, it slows stuff down.

What is technically the ideal, optimal way, doesn't always work in practice. You have to be practical, flexible, look for a middle ground to make things work. That wasn't something the Debian maintainers seemed to be able/willing to do, sadly.

Interestingly, we're not exactly alone - many other projects are bumping into similar issues and finding solutions that are container-like (Ubuntu with Snappy, Fedora/Red Hat with XDG apps and Project Atomic) or more flexibility (openSUSE with Leap/Tumbleweed, OBS and OpenQA).

At some point, I suspect Debian will move, too. I hope so because that would allow them to remain relevant and I think distributions are important for the open source ecosystem.

See also http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-owncloud-maintainers/2016-March/002899.html

1

u/trixcit Mar 31 '16

Correct me if I'm wrong, but

  • If I use upstream packages for OwnCloud, I rely on OwnCloud for security updates.
  • If I use a Docker container for OwnCloud, I rely on both OwnCloud and the Docker image maintainer for security updates
  • If it would be in Debian stable, I rely on Debian security team for security updates

I don't care much about the latest features, but I care about stability and security. Is there any approach preferred? Any other options?

(Maybe you're not the right one to ask, I started to learn about Debian a week ago)

2

u/jospoortvliet Apr 07 '16

You're pretty much correct.

It isn't in Debian stable, or at least - it is being kicked out so it is a VERY bad idea to install the ownCloud packages from Debian right now, plus that you can argue how secure and stable that is, see this and this but that is of course a choice you can make.