Today we are releasing ownCloud 1.0
This is the first step of the 1.x series with a planed 1.1 really soon.
You can download ownCloud 1.0 now and put it in a webspace with PHP support and it should work.
So what is ownCloud?
ownCloud is a central place where you can store your files and documents. You don´t have to upload your personal data to central closed services like Google Docs, Dropbox or Ubuntu One. All the data is under your own control.
You can access your files via WebDAV from Linux, Mac and Windows Desktops without a special client because WebDAV support is build into all modern operation systems and distributions. On Linux you can use the KDE KIO-Slaves or mount it via FUSE into your home directory.
If you can´t use WebDAV for example on your smart phone you can use the webinterface to access your files.
The data transfer is encrypted if your web-server supports SSL and ownCloud has no problems with firewalls and proxy servers.
ownCloud support the Open Collaboration Services API so your ownCloud can push notification to your KDE Desktop if something interesting happens, like your storage is full or somebody is accessing a shared file of you.
So 1.0 is only the first step and we are already working on the next versions.
Future plans are:
– Versioning of all files using git as a backend.
– Easy sharing of your files with others.
– Storage for KDE applications to save and share configuration data. (Martin Sandsmark is working on this)
– Syncing client so you can access your files offline. (work has already started)
We already have a basic plugin system and plan to improve this a lot for version 1.1.
So in the future developers can write add ons for your ownCloud.
Examples are:
– A photo gallery plugins. So you can share your photos with others without uploading it to services like Flickr or Picasa.
– Music server. You can listen to your music from every device without copying it around.
– Podcast catcher. A central place to collect your audio and video podcasts and access it via a HTML5 interface or a native media player.
I´m thrilled by the current development speed. It´s only 5 month after I started the project during Camp KDE in San Diego in January and we already have the first enduser ready release. The reason for this speed is that we already have a very active and motivated developer community of great people. Thanks a lot to everybody who contributed to this release.
You find the download file and more information on the website ownCloud.org.
If you want to help with the development or integration with other projects send a message to the ownCloud mailing-list.
I will give a talk about the future of ownCloud at Akademy in Tampere in 2 weeks. Please join as there if you are interested in KDE and cloud computing. I also plan to organize a BOF session to discuss the future of this project with everybody who´s interested.
You can find more information here:
Cheers
Frank