An Apparent Exodus Continues At OwnCloud

Written by Michael Larabel in Free Software on 26 May 2016 at 10:15 AM EDT. 37 Comments
FREE SOFTWARE
Something's happening at ownCloud Inc, the company behind this popular open-source alternative to Dropbox and other cloud hosting services.

Since the recent ownCloud 9.0 release, a number of high-profile individuals have been leaving the company.

This apparent exodus began with ownCloud founder Frank Karlitschek leaving the company after six years. He wrote on his blog last month about leaving the company. He also commented, "I’m extremely impressed by the immense interest we see from our user community and company customers and prospects. We have built something people like and want to use and buy. But there were also other experiences. I won’t go into the details there but these have put us in the very difficult situation...Without sharing too much, there are some moral questions popping up for me. Who owns the community? Who owns ownCloud itself? And what matters more, short term money or long term responsibility and growth? Is ownCloud just another company or do we also have to answer to the hundreds of volunteers who contribute and make it what it is today? These questions brought me to the very tough decisions: I have decided to leave my own company today. Yes, I handed in my resignation and will no longer work for ownCloud, Inc."

This week we've now seen the announcements by Jos Poortvliet, Lukas Reschke, Björn Schießle, and Arthur Schiwon are among those leaving ownCloud Inc. Each of their blog posts confirm they are leaving but don't shed much light on the underlying situation at the company.

Anyone have any more details about other departures or what's going on at ownCloud? Ping me please!
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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