On the ownCloud blog, Jos shared today that the ownCloud community has hit an impressive milestone!

The project I started 6 years ago just got a contribution from the 1000th volunteer who considered ownCloud worth the time and effort to contribute code to! Only a year ago, we were so proud having hit over 550 contributors at our 5 year anniversary. It is stunning how fast ownCloud has continued to grow.

Around this great technology a massive ecosystem has grown, as evident in the almost 400.000 downloads the top-10 of apps on apps.owncloud.com has gotten! We’ve got third parties like the amazing Spreed private video conferencing, the JSXC Chat app and Collabora LibreOffice Online integrate their technologies with our cloud, making things possible we never thought of before.

Looking back, I’m very proud of the miracle we’ve pulled off. This shows, once again, how important a private cloud technology is and how powerful the community is in pushing it forward. There would be no ownCloud, Inc. without the community!

Similarly, the ownCloud community has benefited tremendously from the company and contributions by it and its customers and partners. No present-day issues can erase the great accomplishments of the past! Free and open source file sync and share technology has a bright future, one I wholeheartedly believe in and will continue to be a part of.

Of course, at the same time, some statistics also point to some strain in the community. Like ghtorrent which documents the number of pull requests which remain unmerged for a long time – a number that continues to rise, over 120 now. It is crucially important to give new contributors quick feedback and guide their code in to grow the contributor community. Sadly ownCloud, Inc. failed here to balance the community and company side. Something that should be done better for a true symbiotic relationship where both sides win.

A big thank you and hugs to my fellow ownCloud contributors!