Yesterday Apple announced their new internet service called iCloud. They finally have features which are essential for people who live in a connected world and have more than one device. I can’t help myself but to compare this features with the stuff we are doing in KDE with the ownCloud project since last year.

It seems that we support everything iCloud is doing and a bit more if you look into the feature set. And we have a fundamentally more advanced vision and architecture.

Features

ownCloud supports all the basic features of iCloud:

– Access your files from all your devices (webDAV, HTML5, Sync)

– Syncing Application Data (Bookmarks, Settings, …)

– Listen to your music from all your devices (Sync, Ampache, HTML5 player)

– Access your movies from all your devices (Sync, HTML5)

– Access you photos from everyhere

– PIM Syncing (work in progress)

Additional Features

ownCloud has even more advanced file storage features which are currently not supported in iCloud:

– Versioning of all file changes with a git backend

– Sharing all your files with whoever you want

Extensible

ownCloud is extensible. Everybody can write AddOns for ownCloud to extend its basic features:

– Examples for “ownCloud Apps” are RSS readers, Todo Lists, Notes Syncing or Collaborative Gaming

– The ownCloud Apps are installable from within ownCloud

– Updating of Apps

– HTML5/JS/PHP/SQL support

Device support

ownCloud supports more devices than just Apple devices.

– KDE/GNOME/Windows/Mac

– Android

– MeeGo

– iPhone/iPad

– all other devices with WebDAV/HTML5 support

No DRM

We don´t use DRM or check digital fingerprints.

Everybody can access and share their files without restrictions

– ownCloud handles all music files

– ownCloud handles all movie files

– Unlimited sharing of files with your friends

Open Standards

We use open standards instead of proprietary protocols.

– WebDAV

– OCS (Open Collaboration Services)

– Ampache

– HTML5

Decentralized

ownCloud is running wherever you want. You don´t have to put your private data into the hosting center of a big company. ownCloud runs:

– on your root server

– on your desktop at home

– on your company/project server

– at your internet provider

– on your appliance at home

– on every webspace with PHP support (university, school, … )

Free Software

ownCloud is completely free software. This is especially important for a software which is supposed to store a big part of your personal data.

– ownCloud is released under the AGPL license.

– Everybody can check what is happening with their private data

I think ownCloud has the potential to become the cloud storage solution for people who don´t like vendor lock-ins and care about freedom and privacy. More information here: ownCloud.org