In about a week we release version 6.0.3 of ownCloud Community Edition! It is a maintenance release that includes nearly two months of improvements (including performance improvements) and some fixes. I want to use this opportunity to shed some light on the fixes the LDAP back-end has seen.

There are no big things, however, but the performance improvements in sharing related methods and in the configuration wizard will significantly enhance the experience for end users and admins. The following list is not a complete one, but addresses the most notable changes.

Since recently, Google delivers its YouTube videos using the weak RC4 cipher. There are rumours that the NSA can break RC4 in real time, so it is recommended to disable this cipher in your browser, if you want to play safe. However, when you disable RC4, you cannot watch YouTube anymore.

Why does YouTube insist on RC? Is it better than without transport encryption? Is it just temporarily? And how can I still the videos without re-enabling RC4?

We just released the Beta 1 of the upcoming ownCloud 6 series! It is spiced up with two new features. The most exciting one is probably collaborative editing of ODF documents. However, I do not want to write about it, ownCloud Documents is already covered by Frank.

The other feature that just went inside is revamped LDAP settings in a wizard-like fashion. Now, the minimum number of required fields you need to fill in is *drumrolls* 3! Of course without loosing the flexibility you are used to. Providing the LDAP server host, a user DN and a password is usually enough. ownCloud will take care of everything else. Some settings will be suggested, you can just accept them, and more will be auto-detected.

New wizard-like LDAP configuration

Kubuntu 13.10 has been released a day before yesterday! Hooray!

I did an upgrade a little bit prior to the final release, and everything went smooth and works properly. There is just one thing where I needed to put hands on manually. This is my Apache (used for development only) configuration which seemed to be incompatible with the version brought with 13.10. This however is nothing Kubuntu specific, but related to all Ubuntu-flavours.

Photo: Dominik Wagenführ, CC-BY-SA

Last weekend I attended Ubucon, an Ubuntu user conference organized by the German Ubuntu community. I was giving a talk about, surprise, ownCloud. If you are interested in my talk, please find the slides in PDF on the program page. Beware, they are in German! Those who have seen my talk, please give your honest feedback on the Ubucon feedback page!

A detail that is not on the slides is that I was wearing my "I am the first one" Jolla T-Shirt (like this). It provoked the question about an ownCloud mobile client for SailfishOS. I want to answer it here as well.

As you may know, the LDAP backend in ownCloud 5 got a couple of new features and some changes under the hood (see point 3 on ownCloud 5 released, Google Reader Alternative). Seven maintenance releases later, some bugs have been smashed, but an irksome quirk is left.

Today we released ownCloud 5!

I do not want to repeat what is already written in the Announcement, but I like to share some other points with you.

1. Frank blogged about this release not from a technical point of view, but in terms of a Vision, the greater idea behind ownCloud as part of the Internet as it was designed. In times when centralized solutions become more and more popular again and states fall back more and more into dark ages again with expanding surveillance ignoring more or less active their constitution (USA, Germany, Hungary are just examples) the Internet with decentralized actors is more important than before. Big hubs like Facebook or Google are easy to control, easy to manipulate. Read Frank's blog ownCloud 5 released: a vision realized, a vision expanded

As posted before, I spent the last week at LinuxTag in Berlin. For us (ownCloud) it was pretty good. It was our first appeareance there, hence we got a lot of interest and visitors. We got higher visibility through the two booths, i suppose, but especially because of our most recent ownCloud 4 release. All in all a good combination that made ownCloud overtake Ubuntu One in Google Trends (12 months view, click to enlarge).

During LinuxTag, Frank also gave an interview to Golem, a German online magazine, about features and the history of ownCloud and the company behind.