Why open source rocks!

Last week we’ve implemented some previously »enterprise only« functionality in Nextcloud. Having enterprise apps developed in the open means you can make a serious jump forward in quality and integration. Collaborating across the whole community with testing and reviewing makes a huge difference, and there is no need for all kinds of workarounds to ensure the functionality fits in an app. As example, let’s look at the two new features part of the Nextcloud 9 release.

Upload-only share

Upload-only link

Files Drop has been an enterprise feature which in Nextcloud is far easier and nicer to use as part of the sharing flow. It gives you the ability to share a folder link for upload only, so people you send the link to can’t see the files already uploaded by you or others.
This is very useful for example when students need to hand in their assignments or customers upload signed contracts. It’s nicely integrated with sharing as any link can be used as a write-only file drop, which when done as a separate app would be very difficult and confusing. For added context the page displays the profile picture of the person you are uploading the files to as well as the folder name. Additionally, while working on this we found and fixed a severe security issue in the Gallery app which allowed download of any picture file.

Audit log

A long requested feature has been more extended logging. Again, this is not that hard as the core functionality is there. The interface now also allows admins to check a proper audit log with individual user actions, as you might know from other platforms. The app can now be worked on and maintained in public and if there is need for any additional logging it can be easily added by anybody with some coding skills!

Open source rocks!

I am really happy that we’ll implement all future functionality in Nextcloud as fully free & open source software. Working together gives better results, and that helps everybody!