ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Mathijs Veen <mathijsv33n@xxxxxxxxx>]

The various parts of owncloud are indeed by far the most requested feature.
Not just on this mailing list but looking at the wishlist on uappexplorer
(which seems pretty realistic and not too riggable), there are four items
in the top 12 that all score pretty heavily on some variation of cal- web-
carddav, which owncloud basically is. When you roll those requests into
one, it is the most requested feature by far. When you start saying that
owncloud on the phone doesnt solve every conceivable syncing scenario, you
are just obscuring the basic discussion. If owncloud for file syncing wasnt
really a thing on a phone, why does it have between 100.000 and 500.000
downloads for just the file syncing app at the android store? And that is
even a non-gratis app.. Also lets keep in mind that owncloud is even part
of  off-the-shelve nas boxes like Synology nowadays. And those are not even
considered geeky anymore :)

And yes we tend to be the geeky crowd. And regular phone buyers may be less
so. And yes there may be more of them in the market. And even if Canonical
says early adopters alone are never going to make for a viable
phone/converged os in the log run, they still need to answer Alans question:
How is it going to distinguish itself if it is openly saying: we are not
too different from android on phone or tablet other then having the ability
to have multiple homescreens? Are we really saying: we are going to compete
by primarily offering poorer versions of googles software? And in direct
response to Rodney: you say oems/telcos are not interested in apps like
owncloud on the phone. I wonder how interested oems/telcos will be in
having no customers. because we all know, the geeky crowd is at this moment
still all Canonical has. If they get too disappointed, where would ubuntu
on phone and tablet be? it would just be an extremely expensive lab
experiment for snappy.

Also, what bugged me a little in seeing this discussion fire up just about
every 2 months like clockwork on this mailing list: the response from
Canonical (sorry Rodney, for all intents and purposes that means you today)
is saying to the community: all the tools are there, there is no one
stopping you from setting up a project and building it. Ok fair enough, but
when pushed enough, the respons is:

An ownCloud solution requires significantly more design and engineering
work, because the system is vastly more complicated.

So if Canonical people judge it vastly complicated, how do they honestly
expect the community to solve that puzzle? The community have been at a
real dissadvantage these past 2 and a half years, trying to shoot at a
moving target where they could only partly see the people that were moving
it.
And yet I have seen very serious attemps be made and a lot of effort put
into it it by very capable people. Mitchell being part of one of the very
first efforts way back in (I believe) late 2013. And since then lots more
have tried and walked into walls. Sure ofcourse it can be done. But given
the "vastly complicated" external parts of the equation like confinement,
push notifications, lifecycle management, trusted helpers etc, the
community has understandably failed to overcome these.
I remember myself asking on irc even before that first placeholder-ridden
utouch version was released if said protocols were going to be supported.
The official answer then was: sure, Evolution was going to be fully
supported. All an app needed to do was latch on to evolution data server,
that would be all to it. That however hasnt really panned out that way.

I do not mean to be harsh to obviously very highly regarded Canonical
people. Yet I feel it is not unfair (in fact, sound advice) to ask
Canonical to put some structured effort into this one. Even if it was just
a project-lead/shepherd and a design coming from Canonical. I am sure that
some people with ability from the community will gladly do their part. Both
have to play a part. Ok so it seems  most agree that it would probably be
wise to split the problem up into file-syncing on the one hand and cal and
carddav on the other. But still. Lets have some help on this Canonical.
Please.

Mathijs

On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 12:42 AM, Mitchell Reese <dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> +10 to this idea!
>
> M
>
> On 5 April 2016 7:51:14 AM AEST, Joseph Liau <joseph@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> On Monday, April 4, 2016 1:43:35 PM PDT, Mitchell Reese
>> <dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>>  Caldav and carddav support seem two of the most requested sync
>>>  options on this mailing list - I'm surprised nothing is in the
>>>  works to support them yet. Yep, I get that Google is easy, but
>>>  there are plenty of people that don't want to be tied to their
>>>  services.
>>>
>>>  Both these sync protocols are very widely used, and should be
>>>  integrated into the base image.
>>>
>>
>> I agree. Do you think that we can create a system that allows community to
>> submit feature requests and application development for the mobile system?
>> Then have it displayed as a list/queue.
>>
>> It could allow voting, which would move features to the top of the list.
>> Those who are able could then
>> get an idea of things to work on.
>>
>> It would be reasonable to not expect everything on the list to be
>> implemented or picked up. But it would also give us the chance to clearly
>> express and track what people would like to use the devices for.
>>
>> I.e. I think a lot of things get lost in the mailing list.
>>
>>
>>
>>>  Mitchell
>>>
>>>  On 4 April 2016 11:39:32 PM AEST, Rodney Dawes
>>>  <rodney.dawes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, 2016-04-04 at 09:12 +0100, Alan Bell wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>  On 02/04/16 17:25, Rodney Dawes wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  Not everyone wants to maintain their own server.
>>>>>>
>>>>>  but some people do! The phone project seems to be very very focussed
>>>>>  on
>>>>>  not taking any advantage of the fact that users might run Ubuntu
>>>>>  desktops and servers and maybe a bunch of phones.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> But the phone image is still Ubuntu. There's nothing stopping anyone
>>>> from contributing to make parts of this easier by default, or from
>>>> building their own custom images with their own sync software, if
>>>> needed.
>>>>
>>>> Is anyone even doing the work necessary to get a solution for ownCloud
>>>> enabled by default on the image?
>>>>
>>>>    The part of ownCloud
>>>>>>
>>>>>> which is problematic as a general solution is the "own" part.
>>>>>>  Google,
>>>>>>  Dropbox, iCloud, etc… do not provide compatibility with owncloud,
>>>>>>  so
>>>>>>  while it theoretically allows some of us to have some level of
>>>>>>  sync, it
>>>>>>  doesn't solve all the problems, and doesn't enable things for all.
>>>>>>
>>>>>  but it does enable things for people who buy into the concept of
>>>>>  Free
>>>>>  software and want their infrastructure to be Free software that
>>>>>  works
>>>>>  together. This is a perfectly good target niche.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> But it's still a niche, and not something that phone makers or telcos
>>>> are asking for, AFAIK.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>  Note of course, that Google contacts/calendar sync is already on
>>>>>>
>>>>>> the
>>>>>>  phone, and has been for a very long time now, so if Google is an
>>>>>>  acceptable place for storing those things, it can be used (with
>>>>>>  some
>>>>>>  small caveats, as it seems only default contacts/calendar are
>>>>>>  synced,
>>>>>>  so alternate/subscribed calendars on Google don't get seem to be
>>>>>>  exposed).
>>>>>>
>>>>>  working on the assumption that people are using Google to run all
>>>>>  their
>>>>>  stuff means that the phone is competing head to head with Android on
>>>>>  Google's playing field. It isn't necessarily wrong to support those
>>>>>  users, and yes, they might be a numerically large target, however
>>>>>  there
>>>>>  is a wide open opportunity to change the rules of the game and go a
>>>>>  different way.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It's not an assumption. Sure, there will be a few who have never used
>>>> Android and don't use Google at all, who buy an Ubuntu phone. But most
>>>> are migrating from Android. Google is also a complete service,
>>>> for
>>>> which most all of the necessary code already existed, so it required
>>>> very little design and engineering work, and was included from the
>>>> beginning.
>>>>
>>>> An ownCloud solution requires significantly more design and engineering
>>>> work, because the system is vastly more complicated. There are plenty
>>>> of other solutions for various things, that I'm sure people would like
>>>> to see implemented too. LDAP, Exchange, NIS, ActiveDirectory, or
>>>> others.
>>>>
>>>> There's also plenty of additional concerns, because we are talking
>>>> about phones after all, and they don't have unlimited storage, memory,
>>>> power, or network, readily available. How much stuff do we install by
>>>> default? Features are great, but only so much stuff will fit in a 2GB
>>>> partition.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
> --
> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
>
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