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Are there any examples of all of that functionality being used by some other community? I would love to be able to look how all of that compares to what the needs are for us

pjessen wrote:

Overall, I see no issue, except the two main ones -

• is there a demand and
• can we support it, also in the future.

Calendar - doesn't everyone have enough calendars? I have my own, my family's, my son's work calendar, my wife's work calendar, Swiss holidays, Danish holidays, Müllabfuhr Herrliberg, plus one or two with local associations and clubs. My calendar is as full of colours as the Zurich love parade :-)

As hellcp mentioned, openSUSE is missing a calendar. ...and before we setup one machine just to provide one, I was thinking: maybe we can use a tool, which provides more, to make it more useful...?

Filesharing - yeah, my business offers that too, although with owncloud. Personally I would not be keen on another client etc etc.

I remember that the Artwork team asked in the past to get some storage space with version history. We pushed them towards Github, but they were not that happy with it, as Github does not fit into their workflow at this time. Maybe we should ask them again, if they would find it useful.

I have to admit, that I forgot two additional plugins:

• Moodle integration (OK: it's not a plugin for Nextcloud, but for Moodle. This would allow to store presentations, videos and other files in Nextcloud, but use them from our Moodle instance.)
• Mail. I haven't tested the Mail plugin myself that much (I'm a fan of Roundcube), but it looked like a tiny and very focussed plugin to allow people to read and write Emails, while they could share attached files via Nextcloud instead of attaching them to their Emails. Also extracting attachments into the fileshare of Nextcloud is integrated. But the Email Plugin does not have advanced support like Sieve filters and so on.

If these were services essential to something, I would agree 100%, but in my company I have been offering the same for over ten years, and people do not find them very essential :-(
Some of them, once they have gotten used to it, do find them irreplaceable.

Overall, I don't want to be a kill-joy, so I say go for it, but let us review usage in 5 years time, and close down if some thresholds have not been met.

I have to admit: I wouldn't have started here with this ticket, if I would be sure we need it ;-)
IMHO a Nextcloud/Owncloud instance has Pros and Cons. Maybe we should discuss this on the openSUSE-project mailing list, the Forum or Matrix or ... $channel ? - Suggestions welcome!

hellcp wrote:

Are there any examples of all of that functionality being used by some other community? I would love to be able to look how all of that compares to what the needs are for us

Depends: I know that for example the Nextcloud Community makes heavy use of it. They (as well as some Owncloud folks) usually visit our openSUSE Conference (as some were former openSUSE members or still are). But https://try.nextcloud.com/ should give you an idea at least about Files, Calendar and Deck.

lrupp wrote:

As hellcp mentioned, openSUSE is missing a calendar. ...and before we setup one machine just to provide one, I was thinking: maybe we can use a tool, which provides more, to make it more useful...?

I'm sorry, I think I was a bit grumpy yesterday. I agree a public openSUSE calendar would be a Good Thing(r) and doing it with nextcloud is not a bad idea. (in my own customer offering, we use SOGo). I think nextcloud or owncloud is probably the better option for us though.

Filesharing - yeah, my business offers that too, although with owncloud. Personally I would not be keen on another client etc etc.

I remember that the Artwork team asked in the past to get some storage space with version history. We pushed them towards Github, but they were not that happy with it, as Github does not fit into their workflow at this time. Maybe we should ask them again, if they would find it useful.

It was easy to set up with owncloud, my only worry is us ending up with 2-3-4-5 people using it, yet requiring ongoing support and maintenance from us.

• Mail. I haven't tested the Mail plugin myself that much (I'm a fan of Roundcube),

Ditto, I'm also a roundcube fan. Mind you, SOGo has a very cool looking Thunderbird emulation.
But - I think offering webmail is pointless without an imap backend.

I have to admit: I wouldn't have started here with this ticket, if I would be sure we need it ;-)

You have my vote for the calendar (exclusively for publishing openSUSE events, meetings etc). I also vote for using nextcloud or owncloud.
Sasi, wrt fedocal, I've never heard of it, hence I was a little lukewarm.

lrupp wrote:

hellcp wrote:

Are there any examples of all of that functionality being used by some other community? I would love to be able to look how all of that compares to what the needs are for us

Depends: I know that for example the Nextcloud Community makes heavy use of it. They (as well as some Owncloud folks) usually visit our openSUSE Conference (as some were former openSUSE members or still are). But https://try.nextcloud.com/ should give you an idea at least about Files, Calendar and Deck.

I am just a little bit curious if that's the right choice, because to me it seems like nextcloud's focus isn't really to provide a way to access common community stuff without having to go to custom share links, which is the entire point of a public calendar for example (we would have just used google calendar if that was the case). If we go with nextcloud, do we host another website just to share links for where all of the public stuff on nextcloud is hosted?

hellcp wrote:

Are there any examples of all of that functionality being used by some other community?

Hardly communities (certainly not comparable to openSUSE), but smaller groups, like companies and families. Typically in much more close "cooperation".

I would love to be able to look how all of that compares to what the needs are for us

I think the calendar option for publishing our events (big and small) is no doubt the most useful. I use owncloud myself for easy sharing of photos on my mobile phone, but I don't see that as a "community need" :-)

hellcp wrote:

I am just a little bit curious if that's the right choice, because to me it seems like nextcloud's focus isn't really to provide a way to access common community stuff without having to go to custom share links,

Does any product have that focus ? :-)

which is the entire point of a public calendar for example (we would have just used google calendar if that was the case).

A public calendar is easily added to your own by a simple public link. It is quite commonly how e.g. national holidays are added.
Here in my local community, I host a calendar for the refuse collection, with a single public link. (with SOGo, not somecloud).

If we go with nextcloud, do we host another website just to share links for where all of the public stuff on nextcloud is hosted?

They could be published/hosted on the somecloud server, or I guess we could just publish links in the wiki?

pjessen wrote:

Hardly communities (certainly not comparable to openSUSE), but smaller groups, like companies and families. Typically in much more close "cooperation".

I asked specifically about that because as opposed to smaller groups like companies and families, openSUSE operates (or at least tries to operate) in a public forum.

pjessen wrote:

Does any product have that focus ? :-)

Yes, the thing that started this conversation, fedocal

pjessen wrote:

A public calendar is easily added to your own by a simple public link. It is quite commonly how e.g. national holidays are added.
Here in my local community, I host a calendar for the refuse collection, with a single public link. (with SOGo, not somecloud).

I have just created a calendar: https://cloud.jessen.ch/remote.php/dav/calendars/Per/persbirthday/ (with auth)
Public: https://cloud.jessen.ch/index.php/apps/calendar/p/1DHHGE2JV2HNLCMZ/persbirthday

This is owncloud, not nextcloud, but afaik, the differences are minimal.

hellcp wrote:

pjessen wrote:

Hardly communities (certainly not comparable to openSUSE), but smaller groups, like companies and families. Typically in much more close "cooperation".

I asked specifically about that because as opposed to smaller groups like companies and families, openSUSE operates (or at least tries to operate) in a public forum.

Yep, I understand that. In my experience, really large groups use mostly read-only stuff, to publish <whatever> to the entire group. This is essentially mailing list style, but with some sort of closer integration. I don't think it matters a lot though, because I don't think openSUSE really operates as one large group, but as several much smaller groups.
The only module I am otherwise familiar with is "files". I don't know if our community has a need for that.

pjessen wrote:

Public: https://cloud.jessen.ch/index.php/apps/calendar/p/1DHHGE2JV2HNLCMZ/persbirthday

Renamed to:
https://cloud.jessen.ch/index.php/apps/calendar/p/JFFAIX3LZF1XMXN8/opensuse

pjessen wrote:

pjessen wrote:

Public: https://cloud.jessen.ch/index.php/apps/calendar/p/1DHHGE2JV2HNLCMZ/persbirthday

Renamed to:
https://cloud.jessen.ch/index.php/apps/calendar/p/JFFAIX3LZF1XMXN8/opensuse

Well, that wasn't overly impressive. I think that server needs upgrading, although its running owncloud 10.0.10.
Bottom line - a public calendar is a Good Idea (R), but for reasons of support and maintenance, I would prefer to keep it on "known" software.

pjessen wrote:

Well, that wasn't overly impressive. I think that server needs upgrading, although its running owncloud 10.0.10.
Bottom line - a public calendar is a Good Idea (R), but for reasons of support and maintenance, I would prefer to keep it on "known" software.

I don't know if it was really necessary with an upgrade, but I did it anyway.

Try this now:
webcal://cloud.jessen.ch/remote.php/dav/public-calendars/XKA8YT5QI2441QCL?export

Whether nextcloud or owncloud, I don't mind, we have been using owncloud for about ten years.

pjessen wrote:

Try this now:
webcal://cloud.jessen.ch/remote.php/dav/public-calendars/XKA8YT5QI2441QCL?export

I have added a few more events, it should be easy to export/import the data once we have our own instance (regardless of which one we choose).

lrupp wrote:

Thanks, Per, for all your testing!
But I have to admit, that my motivation to introduce a new service, has become zero.
I will close this ticket here, as I will definitively neither use the service nor maintain it in the long run. ...and as Per already has a own|netcloud instance, I see no reason for Per to do this.

FWIW, setting up a (next|own)cloud instance for openSUSE on our own machine is no big deal.
I do have some doubts about the actual demand for such a setup though, but according to #96458 "A number of folks in the community want a calendar solution". I have added a comment that we have a test setup ready to use. If we see enough people using it, it is easily migrated away from my system.