This is a new one for us, so that's the first time that we are doing a panel in the collaboration
Thank you for joining us.
This panel will be about integration between collaborative applications.
So the moderator will be yours and I will let the others introduce maybe.
Is it working now? Yes, it is.
All right, and I'm going to give this to you already, Ludovic.
You get introduced yourself first.
So I'm Ludovic. I'm the CEO and founder of Xwiki.
Well, Xwiki is a company behind the project prepared that was presented before, but also the project Xwiki itself.
And we've been doing open source for 20 years.
Hi, I'm Bjorn. I'm the co-founder of next cloud.
We are doing we start out as a filesing and share solution.
But these days we have a complete content collaboration platform.
So you can do basically everything you want with next cloud.
You can manage your files, but you may have a group of integration.
We have many editors and viewers.
Text, text, text, within audio chat integration.
So everything you expect from a particular collaboration platform.
And maybe most important, which is also interesting for the discussion.
We will have here.
Next up can also serve as a platform, both to integrate stuff directly with the next cloud.
Or to use next up to integrate into existing other solutions, which I'm sure will also discuss here a little bit in the panel.
Hello, I'm Ingol from Univention, responsible for, let's say, technology at Univention, however.
You mentioned also in the market for more than 20 years.
Livering, you might know the open source solution unit corporate server, which is focused on bringing open source technology easily to customers.
And we recently released the core of our software called Noobos, which is an identity management solution.
And identity management means you manage users, but the users need to do something.
And so if we don't integrate with someone else, users can't do anything.
So integration is key for us.
Yeah, hi, I'm Dila Denta, co-founder and CEO of Open Project.
And it's open project has been around 13 years, I don't know, 14 years.
And we integrated with Univention, with next cloud.
And we would integrate with XViki.
And we also integrating in the server and web plays called Open Desk.
I see people from Open Desk over here as well.
So the topic of integration is very deep on the road map of Open Project.
By the way, Open Project is a collaborative online project management environment.
And it runs in your own service or in our cloud.
And so we do also do the hosting.
Yeah, let's get started.
All right, thank you.
So I'm Yos.
I'm also from next cloud like Bjorn.
So I don't have to explain what next up is about anymore.
It's not only the first panel here, but it's also the first time I try to ask questions in the panel.
So bear with me here.
I always think answering the questions is easy, just debating it for Bjorn.
What is the easiest?
We will see.
So Open Source is a lot of a bad collaboration.
I think it was interesting the first couple.
The last couple of talks are was a project basically building a
disinking engine where you can just point it to a folder and then
with different text editors work on it.
And they were building on these different libraries and tools that they
found open source on the internet.
And I think this is one important component of how Open Source works.
That's a lot of projects are using libraries to integrate into their own
products.
For example, next up, we have the next text editor, which is built on.
I don't know the name of the underlying library.
You don't know either.
But sometimes you take a library somewhere, you build it into your
products.
And this happens, of course, all the time.
So that's one way of having the collaboration.
But there are other ways.
So that's the one.
So there are other ways.
Sometimes you have something like a library or open project, which is a
huge thing on its own, which actually integrate many of these other things
by itself.
And yet you want to be able to exchange data with that, like
Frost's next cloud.
And so that's an entire different level of integration and collaboration.
And so that's what we wanted to talk a bit about because in this
room of course are a tons of projects that are integrating and
collaborating and building things that are as the
previous speakers at maybe why is there a new protocol.
So I think it's just interesting to go over these different levels of
collaboration, integration, et cetera.
So I'm just going to fire off the first question and then a new view
can, you know, who's first basically can try and answer it.
So how is this around competition, basically?
How do you see the role of collaboration versus maybe
competition also between projects like how can
project balance that?
And if you're willing to give that a shot?
I can go with simple one.
For example, open project has fire management in the light light
light version.
Like attachments to task.
And you could say that it's we're doing something similar
to the next cloud, but actually we're not.
It's ridiculous.
Next cloud is doing something smaller task in the deck.
A deck for canvas, task management, but it in the future
richness, it can't compete with open project.
So it makes sense to work together and ignore those little
tiny places where we are competing.
And instead build something greater, there is more value in total
and can really compete with, you know, with the real challenge
which is the big tech.
And so I usually don't see so much competition, but maybe
the competition for project management software in the open source
field is not as big as maybe, I don't know, for other players.
I really like, for example, I can only add on that.
But I would like to add on a higher level.
I mean, we are all have parts of our solutions which
similar to each other.
I think each one of you has the user management.
And we come there with the user management.
But it still makes totally sense to have a decision if you want
to build a solution, you have a decision what's the leading system.
And then the others integrate with that.
And each one of us is better in something that they can lead.
And that they can provide to the solution and then
integration makes totally sense.
And the other level I wanted to add here is that I think
only we are all growing companies.
And we represent a few hundred people here, I think.
But still, that's small in terms of IT industry.
And so we can only grow together.
We can't solve everything by our own.
No surprise.
I like your example as well.
I mean, it's also a really nice example because it takes a
show the thing here.
I think that's the big advantage of open source.
We don't have to compete with each other all the time.
We don't have to reinvent the wheel.
But we can build up on what's already there.
And then, of course, we can give our user the choice,
so that they can use the best thing they need.
If they use open broad check because their main task is
project management.
And they just need a small place to install the files.
Then feel free go with it.
Other way around, if next, if next,
our users are more interested in the next sort of features.
And it's just need a small task management.
And let's go with our tech solution.
They don't need to open broad check.
And then we have users, of course,
who need to have the full power of next cloud.
And then we complete a broad check management.
And then we integrate with each other.
And then people can use the best of both worlds.
And I think that's one of the really strengths of open source.
That you have all these choices.
And we can collaborate because all our code is open.
Our communities are open.
There are no borders between it.
And I think that's the big power of open source.
Yeah, I think.
I mean, clients tend to push you to they ask you,
oh, I would like this additional feature in your software.
That's actually a bit outside of your core,
the core benefit of your software.
And so you end up doing this little extension
that's not doing that.
This is how we ended up having tasks in it.
And actually, for some stuff,
it makes sense.
In a Wikipedia page, people love to have to do.
But the to-do is not a project management tool.
It does project management.
But it's a very light project management.
And so it makes a lot of sense to have a to-do in a Wikipedia page.
But it would be also very interesting to extend to connect
that to-do to a project management tool.
So, and so in the end, you don't really compete because you're not going as deep
in the subject of each of these needs.
And it takes a lot of time to go deep.
And as you mentioned, the real competition is not the other open source people.
The real competition is the big tech.
And if you look at what the big tech do,
they do have, they go seriously deep in each of the tools.
So they're going to go very deep in office,
very deep in project management, very deep in files,
very deep in wickies, etc.
And so we need as open source people to provide a very good alternative
that will go very deep on all of these subjects.
And each of us also need simple tools that go very quickly in the market.
And so that the customers can still take them even if they take the big tech on the other side,
so that we can penetrate the big companies with software.
Most of our clients, we didn't sell them where there is next cloud.
We sold them where there is Microsoft.
And they didn't like the wickie of Microsoft.
They preferred the open source wickie that goes deeply in the subject of wickies.
And so we never really competed with other open source tools.
Actually, and the opportunity to actually work together is much bigger.
If as an alternative to big techs, and that's actually what open desk is,
now look, if we all put everything that we did together,
and if we connect them well, then we're going to be able to just say,
look, just get rid of Microsoft to Google,
and you can just use open source all together for everything.
So several of you brought up open source, like being open source.
Pure and sets, like it means lower barriers.
Can you maybe elaborate more like why, like if we're all proprietors of the company,
it wouldn't be maybe also have an incentive to integrate,
what does open source make a difference there?
First, I think, because the community that the code is open,
so we can go to each other and go to our repositories,
and provide for requests, can really work together with the developers.
That's something you can do with non-free software.
The other thing I would like to challenge actually,
the assumption that the big tech also have an interest in working together.
My experience, big tech, most of the time,
to isolate each other because they want to grow their silo,
as big as possible.
Maybe that's a good point to tell a bit of funny side note.
There was a few years ago, I gave a talk at the conference,
and I presented next-slout federated sharing feature,
which allows you to have many different next-slout servers,
and you can share freely across the instance, no matter where your server is.
And in the audience, there was someone from Dropbox,
and they came to me after the presentation and said,
this was the Dropbox developer back then,
told me, oh, that's super awesome.
We at Dropbox should implement this API as well.
We should also implement this federation.
We exchange context data and said,
we definitely have to talk afterwards, guess what?
We never talked, because he was an engineer,
of course, he liked the technology and the idea that we can integrate,
but probably he got back to his bosses,
and he said, no, that's not our interest.
And we want to grow our side,
or we want everybody uses our solution.
We don't have to interest in having this,
so I would actually challenge this assumption a little bit.
Maybe someone else wants that?
I remember, for example, when we started the next-slout integrator,
like two years ago, or three, I don't know, for quite a long time already.
And I remember that we were willing to invest,
like we were willing to put people on that work,
and wanted to have that integration.
I remember that next-cloud was saying,
sure, go for it.
Something like that, and being open source help,
as we could simply take, get into the next-cloud code,
and extend the next-cloud code for what we needed.
No, there were definitely stuff missing,
that we needed, and we could simply build it,
and it could be, let's say, one side at least,
the development could be pushed, right?
Do that with Microsoft, asking for the code,
and as they may, can we extend that a little bit with an app,
or something like this?
It's a year, a SharePoint app exists,
but they don't allow all this stuff.
It's not as free, so it really can make a difference
if both need to agree to take the initiative,
or just one part.
And I think here it worked out pretty well.
Yeah, what I was in addition thinking was,
open source drives you to do the right thing,
because if you don't do the right thing,
someone else will take the code and we do it.
So it's a different thinking than drive to maximise the revenue.
So we also need revenue to pay our developers and so on,
so that's not the point itself,
but we have to think about the right thing,
and integration is often the right thing to do,
because things are already there,
there are good solutions,
why not integrate instead of stuff on your own.
So I think that's really a different thinking.
So I think we have to think a bit about what the situation is
on the big tech side is,
I mean, it's massively cloud services.
You massively can not install them anymore in your company,
so they decide what goes in the cloud service.
They can turn on turn off features at any time.
So I mean, I've seen Google being open with Google chat,
which was XMPP at the beginning,
and overnight they stopped it,
and it was not compatible with XMPP anymore.
Slack was RFC compatible, closed RFC compatibility.
So when they want to adopt users and get people,
they open their APIs,
they make APIs open, they let people connect,
and at some point they say,
that's not an interest anymore,
which is closed that integration.
So they can be very open,
and oh, here is my API,
you can put plugins from my app,
bring me value, bring me value,
bring me value to my app,
and then at some point they say,
look, now I build an app that is a competitive to you,
and I'm going to advertise it so much
that nobody will ever see that there was an integration with your app.
That's not happening in open source.
Yes, you could do the same thing in the package that you build,
in the software that you build,
and stuff like that,
you can bundle more stuff as the open source provider.
But in the end the customer is king,
and the customer is choosing the bricks,
and if it tells you,
I'm going to use this brick,
I would want to deactivate this one,
and this one with open source,
you can do it anyway if you really want,
and it will push you as a smaller company to actually do it,
and if you want to integrate,
if it prefers to take this brick for chat,
and this brick for thousands,
and this one for Wiki,
he will be able to do it,
and if an integration is not done,
technically you can even do it himself.
So you have this freedom that keeps all the vendors honest,
about what the power they have towards the market.
This is not what's happening in the big tech side.
No, absolutely.
All right, thank you.
I think that's really,
yeah, interesting points there.
So each of your projects then benefits from these integrations.
I mean, clearly, could you elaborate,
like what does this mean in the market?
Does it help you?
Does it help you in sales?
Does it help you in how you're perceived?
Is there collaborative marketing benefits?
Like how does this benefit?
You was open source companies.
I mean, I can continue on that.
So first, just talking about the fact that we work together
is super beneficial in the market.
I think open source needs to show that it's stronger
with multiple companies.
And so, for example, when we started working on open desk
and with next cloud,
I mean, it clearly made us much more credible in Germany.
We're French company,
and the people in Germany say,
oh, look, if these German companies are talking about this French company,
maybe we should look at what they do.
So first it gives you credibility the fact that you talk about each other
and that each company is saying,
oh, look, this software is also a good one.
So that's the first value.
Then there is, of course, the technical value of the integration.
So typically with open project,
and this is a big reason why we want to integrate
strongly with open project,
we're going after conference plus gyra.
And if we want to migrate all the conferences in the world
to exquisite,
so that we can get much more,
many more companies,
actually in a significant amount of cases,
if there is no solution to migrate gyra,
it's not going to happen.
And so we need open project to actually do it.
So if it happens,
and if we have the integration,
then we will be able to tackle that global solution
and to get more users on top of the issue.
So I think that's true.
These integrations are heavily demanded by the market.
So I mean, I had the discussion with CIOs of French company,
and they say the main reason we use Microsoft
is because it's an only one integrated package for us.
One buyer, one people to buy it.
One guy to say when we're not happy,
although probably there has no effect.
When they're not happy,
but one people discuss one contract,
one thing,
everything, the integrations are there.
It's simple for them.
They want simplicity and reduce complexity.
And so we need to have that too.
And if we do that,
then we're going to get more customers.
I think it boils down to what you said before.
The customer's king,
and that's not only true for the customer,
but also for a relevant for the audience here,
the users,
because open source not only cares about customers,
but also as you all know,
a lot about the normal users of the software.
So we all, of course, try to provide what the users
want and need to for the daily work.
And that's just how we are driven at the end.
So I ended up in introduction.
I said that next,
it's a complete content collaboration platform.
So we can do a lot of stuff.
And there are a lot of customers,
and use out there who like it.
They like it,
and each of the module is the best possible one in the world,
but it's really everything in one platform,
nice and integrated.
And then that's great.
And then we have customers,
and they can use us,
who say,
now I want to have the best possible filesing solution,
come behind with the best possible.
Use the management,
the best possible knowledge management,
and the best possible project management,
just to pick the example,
which is sitting here at the panel.
And then we say,
of course,
then that's why we integrating with them,
and that's why you can use this possible pieces.
Or you exchange single file components out of it.
And at the end,
we are all acting to what the market,
what the customers,
and also the users,
one,
because as you also said,
that's also the truth about open source.
If you go in the wrong direction,
people will just fork you,
or do something else,
and do something else.
So I think that's the world boils down at the end,
and that's why I think at the end,
it's beneficial for all of us.
Also,
if we take different passes at the end,
it's all beneficial because at the end,
we together can serve what the users,
what you need,
and this makes us happy,
and this makes you happy,
and that's the best for all of us at the end.
I can only add our own solution here,
because integration for us is key.
I've said that in the introduction,
because integration is actually the pain point
that makes user use in identity management.
If an organization grows,
they can't explain the user that they have five different accounts
for six different applications,
and so integrating them is key,
and that's what we do.
So that's actually our job,
integrating on the initial level,
and the initial level is the user needs to have access
to each application.
Afterwards,
there can be a functional integration,
where things are exchange data is exchange and so on.
So without the need of integration,
you don't need an IRM.
Yeah, the question was about,
if we can integrate in marketing and sales
and all benefit from,
from the integration on that field,
and yes, of course,
the obvious thing is like,
hey, show me your clients,
because we have clients and you have clients,
and the clients that book subscriptions
with Open Project,
they probably share the same values and expectations
of the software as your clients do.
So if you can get to our clients,
and then we can open the box,
and you can open the box,
showing us your clients,
or helping us to get in contact with them,
it's much more likely to get a conversion done
in that area than if it was with Microsoft.
The values are not shared the same.
Someone who's used to,
I don't know,
writing notes in a word document,
might not be on the same level of,
or might not share the same values
or be triggered by the same stuff as someone
who would do this in collaboration online,
in on next cloud.
They need to tick differently.
So yes, of course,
there's a huge huge opportunity,
and I think we should use that much more often.
We're honest,
but we're on the same panels,
we're going to the same conferences,
but we share the same bed,
no, we don't.
But I think it makes sense to appear together,
and also to show that we really mean it,
like we want to make it work together,
and we are trustworthy in the combination.
Yeah.
All right.
So that's how we benefit.
But of course,
as we talked earlier already,
like how the users benefit.
So now I want to ask,
what's next,
where are these integrations going?
Like you already mentioned Open Desk,
but there are also one-on-one integrations,
not other places where we collaborate.
Yeah,
how do Open Projects evolve their collaboration?
And will we have more projects joining us?
Like next year,
if we want to do a panel art,
20 party food,
could join,
what's next?
Yeah,
I have some microphone,
I have a start.
From,
as I already said,
we as identity management,
we want to have integrations,
and having integration is actually something
that we are very open to,
and we are currently in the face of initiating something
that we call packaged integration.
So that makes it the idea is to make it very easy
to integrate some application
with our identity management system.
Because integration also always means,
we need some configuration.
You need to create a trust.
We already had that in other talks today,
which is very relevant and was very interesting.
And we wanted to make that as easy as possible,
so that not only environments where our technicians
are available can have these integrations,
but everybody should be able to have that.
Because otherwise,
the whole story doesn't fit.
For me,
yes, of course,
we wanted to create with more applications.
Because of the reason that I just said,
to join forces,
and to line up.
But the problem here that I see is,
we need to take all the basics first.
Just from the technical perspective,
how to integrate into a single sign on,
and then really have a single sign on experience,
where the user doesn't need to know.
Now I'm next cloud.
Now I'm in XViki.
New users don't care.
I want to think that like,
okay, if I count in this application or that application,
they expect one experience,
they're looking somewhere,
and then they can work.
And for this to be able to work,
we need to have quite a lot of basics of technology available
to make this user session really be seamless
between the applications.
And when I look around in our current software solutions,
everyone has implemented something,
some part of it.
Right?
And that makes it really, really hard
to really get the first level of integration done.
And if we all together would agree
in a couple of open standards and implement them
to agree that it's decent enough.
Let's say,
our IDC token exchange scheme for the user provisioning.
If we can agree to these ones,
then the second integration would be so much cheaper,
and we can focus really on really the use cases
that these two applications together make.
So this is my call for,
let's synchronize more on the standards
and spend the time of it.
So spend money on that,
and then the next integration will be so much easier,
and we can focus on the real fun parts.
So you're saying there are technical,
there's a technical layer to be built
to enable more integration between different open software projects.
Yes, let's be honest,
integrations they sound really, really reasonable,
but they are very, very hard to implement.
You have a user living having lifecycle on one side,
a user having lifecycle on the different side,
then the one application in that version
is updating the other one is not.
How do you make that all work together at the same time?
Integrations are hard business.
And we need to be having standards
like checking for,
I don't know, what version is installed?
Is the connection up and running?
You have, I don't know,
how do we do it?
We're talking up data and so on.
Very technically,
it is so much easier for software providers.
I do my own thing,
I have it under control,
so much cheaper,
I have a new feature that I can present,
but integrations are hard.
And so if we agree to some standards,
it might be to put make it significantly easier.
And initiative like,
let's say,
open desk and also the next cloud hub idea,
is also helping to,
you know,
or could potentially create standards
if those platforms push for it.
If they ask,
hey, our way is to do the scheme way.
You can mention.
If our way is the scheme way to provision users,
well, then next time it's much easier to have it.
If those platforms that do the user provisioning,
use that one and really promote it,
then every other vendor would follow and implement it.
So,
I really would like to use that energy to pitch that idea.
I mean, if I got your question initially right,
and you ask,
what will be the next integration?
Who will sit here maybe next year?
And to be honest,
I can answer the question.
I have no clue.
The only thing I can say is,
we are really open to integrations.
So, I will basically say,
I'm you decide which integrations is there,
and all the people are not in the room,
but we are using our software.
So, it's you who decide,
and when you have your favorite software,
you ask yourself,
why is it not integrated?
I mean, as I said at the beginning,
for some of the next cloud,
we're really putting a lot of focus on being some kind of platform
where people can innovate and top of it.
So, we make sure that a lot of APIs are there,
well documented.
Even in the company,
we have a complete team,
where focus on the integrations and work,
together with communities with other companies
to build this integrations.
What comes out of us is,
then, always the question,
what the users want,
and, as far as you had,
first of them, of course,
I'm sure also a lot of developers sitting in the room,
what developers want,
and what they are equal to implement,
and that will be there at the end,
and we land your talk about,
a lot about the technical challenge,
which I complete agreed,
I mean, that's the,
they need to be solved in order to have
this good integration at the end of the day.
But then again,
I have to come back,
sorry if I stress the term to often today,
but we are at first them,
that's again,
the power of open source, right?
It's not something a black box or something
where you look at the APIs,
and it's not there,
you are lost.
If something is missing,
if you want to integrate your favorite product,
or your favorite software project,
or maybe your own project,
and you try to integrate,
you find out there's an API missing,
just talk to us or to open project,
or to an invention or to X-Wiki,
and I'm sure we are all happy
to look at what's missing in the APIs,
and enhance the API so at it,
that's how our community works, right?
Or you do what we learned at,
until they themselves are next flat.
So there is one thing you mentioned,
open centers,
but there is actually a question,
why don't we have so many,
many integrations between open source software,
and one of the thing is that
every smaller company is very pressured
to integrate with the big leaders,
like when you go at the customer,
they tell you,
oh, you have a connector to Google,
you have a connector to Microsoft,
do you have this?
So, and then the question is,
okay, why not standards?
Why they're not more standards?
Well, same thing,
like whatever,
if the standard is not implemented
by one of these leaders,
it's a dead standard.
I've known open source show,
which was a very interesting standard
to integrate widgets between applications.
It was,
it was IBM launching it
with you had a classian doing it.
We did some prototypes with open source show,
and Microsoft didn't implement it.
It was dead,
completely dead.
Microsoft was not allowing an open social widget,
nobody would build open social widgets.
So, you know,
the standards are great,
but if you don't push or make it mandatory
for the big companies that are leading the market
that are closed,
closed monopolist or monopolist,
if you don't force them to implement them,
you're that open IDC has been implemented,
has been implemented by large providers,
and it's very easy for everybody to integrate.
You do it,
it's very interesting,
you're going to do it for the large providers,
and it's going to work for the smaller integration.
So, that's one aspect.
And now,
on what's next,
I have a very specific item,
I want to pitch my own idea,
that goes beyond the standards and thing,
and what I want to pitch is the moderity idea.
And I mean,
this is something we actually,
if you look at our presentation,
we have about crystal,
because this is one of the big reasons
we decided to push on,
we decided to push out the tricky for crystal,
is the idea that actually,
software should be,
we should rebuild software to be way more modular.
Maybe you can quickly pitch crystal.
Yeah.
So, crystal is new Wiki UI,
that we can switch back ends,
switch UI designs,
so you could switch UI frameworks,
you can modify part of the features,
so basically,
and it could be embedded as a web application
into another.
So, it's been made,
so that it doesn't run as a separate.
It won't be able to only run as its own web page,
but it could run as a module
inside another application at the same time.
And actually,
one of this idea,
I don't want to take the whole credit for actually saying
that we should do that,
but I listened to a talk by the GTI founder,
Emil,
I think it's two years ago,
or three years ago,
I think it was remote for them.
And basically,
he pitched this modularity idea
as one of the future of tech,
and I really bought into that idea,
is that actually the value of open source
is modularity and reuse,
and so even,
and so we need at the application level.
So, I think this value of modularity
exists everywhere in the open source world
at the library level.
So, if we take,
we've got the price,
the open source of word,
first day.
Actually,
the biggest value of curl is not curl.
It's lip curl.
The library that is embedded everywhere
in every software.
And he built curl,
but he built lip curl.
And he gave to other people
the same features that he gives
in the curl command line
that we all use on our Linux computer,
but he gave it to all the people
who are good,
a good way to do HTTP
in their software.
And I think this is the thing,
and actually,
JTC is a bit built with that with
JCUI and lip,
lip,
it doesn't mean that it's going to be successful.
Maybe there's another library
that's going to be better
for doing video conferencing
and things like that.
But I think,
and I want,
my idea is that we need to push this
at the further level,
not only at the library level,
where you can just talk protocols
and stuff like that,
but actually,
you can talk to a UI.
So the UI should be
moderate,
and not only the technical capacity,
and that's actually what we're trying to do
is crystal,
where the UI should be embeddable,
and actually,
we can change the design system,
and so if we want to do
a better integration with
the next cloud,
we implement the next cloud design system
in crystal,
and basically the look of crystal
is the same look as the whole next cloud suit,
sweet.
And so if we start building the application
with that in mind,
we're going to have,
we're going to go way further
in terms of integration in the future.
So I think it's a long-term thing.
It's not going to happen overnight.
I think we need to think about
that level of modularity
when we build the next generations
of the open source application.
So if you're building new application,
well, think really modular
and your application,
think embeddable,
and think to have APIs to connect them.
That's a pretty big picture, you understand?
Maybe I could respond to the first part of the open standard part,
because I think it's really interesting,
and also,
topic you can discuss a lot to be honest,
because I would be a bit more optimistic
than you are to be honest,
because in the beginning,
all of the previous comments you mentioned,
as a bad example,
Google Talk,
and it's like,
where they picked,
where they took some open standard,
and then extended it,
and at some point they no longer used it.
So that's always a big dangerous.
And if you look at the,
the opposite side of our room,
there's the master down and boost at the moment.
There's a lot of discussion at the moment
in the whole social networking area,
which should be allowing threats
to implement the activity path API.
Some people welcome it,
they say,
yeah, that's a really big step,
to have social networking,
really big federation becoming big everybody will do it,
and other fear that threats do to the protocol
and to master down,
what Google did to,
to EXMPP,
or select it with their IRC integration at the end of the day.
So that's always the challenge we facing here,
and I would say,
if you look how many people,
how many companies these days using open source
and free software,
I think no company can live without open source.
So I think we can be a bit more,
more positive and more self-confident
by ourselves,
and say,
if we have a good open standard,
where we in the open source world integrate,
there's always no way that a big company can get around.
It doesn't matter if Google,
Microsoft, whoever implements into first place,
and let's be a bit more self-confident
would be my opinion to open standards.
These days,
I think we can be more self-confident.
Yeah, I think that brings me a bit to the next point,
I want to ask,
what are the blockers here,
because you talk a little bit about their standards.
And you said,
there's a technical blocker,
a certain technology we need to integrate,
about the different ways of making things more modular.
How do you think about these things?
Yeah, I think they have been mentioned already.
I think a good integration comes with an open standard,
because then it's flexible,
then it's not a one-way integration between exactly two components,
but it's something that works with several components,
and it can scale.
So if we agree on open standards,
that is the key for a good integration landscape.
But there are needs,
one of the needs is just being open isn't enough.
The standard needs to be implemented.
Ideally, there are already lips that implemented,
and that can be used,
so it's easy to adopt to that standard,
and there needs to be an adoption rate.
Let's put it that way.
If the big players do it,
it's helpful, but risky,
but we need to agree on standards.
And that's something that brings
in a lot of communication and interaction and agreements
between many people,
and we see in the history,
and maybe everybody has this XKCD comic in mind,
where the other standards are not well enough,
I'd define 11's one,
and then we have 11 incompatibles standards.
That needs to be avoided.
So that's the challenge here.
Communication, openness,
talk with each other,
and agree on something good.
Yeah, somehow my mind drifted off into a different area,
and that is,
like, okay, let's say we have the technical integration,
like the software can work together.
Then we have the question that you asked,
like two or three rounds before,
but do our business models integrate.
So like do our pricing scheme,
like at the end,
we have organizations with a company in the background,
and we also have the goal to earn money.
So then are they compatible?
Like if, for example, open product,
currently has a freight,
almost a flat rate model,
not like after 250 users,
then it's a flat rate, unlimited.
And it's not compatible with next cloud,
right?
Well, you don't have this unlimited.
That's barely start at 250.
Yeah.
It also makes sense,
depending where you start from,
where the business grows from,
but that makes also sometimes the integration harder,
to meet and to find each other.
And yeah, that's also a learning curve,
but we need to take there,
and to learn and experience.
That's, but then we can really,
if we align also on the business side,
then we can build this,
this engine that makes,
make things grow.
Yeah, just,
it's not only the business model,
I think there was another one that I just forgot,
but maybe you guys remember.
How can we actually write that?
Yeah, so you were asking whether the biggest blockers,
so I think time and money is probably the biggest blocker I see,
because in the end,
we get more and more incentives to actually do it,
so then it's a question of priorities in the roadmap,
and then it's limited by the revenue
that all our companies are doing,
all the companies and all the people that do open source are doing.
I suggested, for example,
for NGI to fund specifically integrations,
because I felt that integrations are a bit,
the stuff that is left aside,
because it's not asked directly by the client.
They expect them basically,
but they don't really go and come and say,
I'm gonna fund this in your roadmap,
or I want this specific integration,
because when it's Microsoft that they have,
they will ask you to fund the,
they will fund the Microsoft integration,
not the one with the tool that they might use in two years.
So unless they actually have the tools at the same time
in the company, it's pretty rare that they would fund the integration.
So, and standard is the same thing.
Nobody, I mean, the companies never fund standards.
I never seen that really, or maybe as a side thing.
So, I mean, I think NGI does a good job,
actually funding people that work on standards,
or library with standards with protocols
and things like that, so that's actually great.
I think we should thank them for that a lot,
because that's really important.
We need more protocols, so I just want to be clear.
I'm a big believer in standards.
I just have a few bad experiences,
for example, I can give another bad experiences.
I participated to Wiki Creole,
which is a common Wiki language.
We had like six,
there was a conference in like 15 years ago,
Wiki Sim.
And all the people that were making Wiki's,
and lots of them were open source, actually.
I think mostly open source,
there was, I don't think the proprietary Wiki's came there.
And we talked about Wiki syntax,
and you know, because there's so many Wiki syntaxes.
And we actually implemented Wiki Creole.
So it was packed by the group of people.
We implemented it, it was implemented by one or two others.
And the big, the, at last year,
obviously didn't implement it.
And many others didn't implement it.
And then one day, Markdown came up.
And frankly, if you ask me,
Wiki Creole was a much better Wiki syntax standard.
Then Markdown is.
Markdown has a lot of technical deficiencies.
We live with them now in our products.
It has a lot of technical deficiencies,
because it's a, it's a defective standard,
and not at all,
a standard that people have discussed or thought about
with a bit of science,
to, to, to make it the right standard.
So, and now Markdown is kind of a defective standard.
So, so, so, so you have these issues.
So I love standards, but there, there,
you also have a niche in the whole process of standard that is not easy.
And so we should, we should fund these standards more and more.
And that's a bit, my, my belief.
I think on the integrations between the companies,
I, I think, maybe one limitation is,
in our space, specifically,
with the collaborations spaces.
Indeed, we're against companies that are just lining up everything together.
Well, I mean, let's be clear,
Markdown is doing dumping and, and, and,
and, and, uh,
like, they sell you, I mean,
I've seen prices of, of the Microsoft stack,
where you had, uh,
office with, uh,
the Wiki waste project management,
that was actually zero.
Then just off, then, uh,
uh, then, then just office.
So, actually, it was cheaper to have all the other tools,
uh, then not have them, uh,
which makes absolutely no sense.
So, it's, I mean, it's a,
it's a bundling strategy,
they dominate with office,
uh, and, and so basically,
they give for free all the rest.
And so we, we live with that, that type of competition,
where we have to find, okay,
how do we, how can we make a whole stack,
that, that maybe larger companies can,
can decide to use,
but on the technical side,
I think it's,
if we, if we get a bit more money of,
or capacity,
we'll end up doing all these integrations,
and, uh,
and if we can have standards to do them,
that would help,
but they're not always easy to do these standards,
from a technical point of view, though,
that makes the whole thing more costly.
Yeah.
But still, to get a stronger.
Yeah.
You're fine.
Yeah.
I just wanted to add on that,
and give it a more positive note,
and regarding standards,
and so,
and one thing is that there are many examples
where open standards,
uh,
where the thing that everybody adopted to,
if you look back in,
in the history,
like,
uh,
caberos,
and LLAP, and actually P,
and so,
there are many open standards,
that, uh,
forced the big vendors to adopt them,
that's,
one thing,
and the other thing,
um,
still,
even if Microsoft doesn't build things,
or the other big five,
it makes sense for us to have open standards.
So,
there's no,
in my point of view,
there's no alternative to that,
uh,
even though,
uh,
the big five might not adopted,
because,
uh,
we can only,
uh,
work together with these open standards.
We shouldn't make things complicated.
Right.
Some of these problems have to be soft,
and the days before,
or for them,
but more political people,
and we then,
we have to stick to code, of course, here.
Yeah,
that makes it all of sense.
Hey,
we have only,
some minute left.
I thought,
maybe there are questions in the room,
and,
yeah,
that could be interesting.
Um,
there's already one there.
Yes.
Uh,
I,
do,
mother mother,
uh,
Lil' Ecce C4 and use a,
a concept Wait,
it,
it sounds application with collaboration tools,
so i scene that the race in the free open world
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a lot of différence between the you cada,
uh,
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It sounds application with collaboration tools.
So aghhh i see that the race in the free open world,
Another example, the other end is Fediveras.
This is a control of collaboration is hedged in this sector.
And from this important, when I see more
than Microsoft and Google, that Elon Musk is buying
a lot of things.
And Elon Musk, in Ramani, if he financed the alternative
for Dodd-Fland.
So it's a real problem.
Yeah, I don't, I mean, I don't think so.
There wasn't much of a question in there.
Yes.
My question is to make better collaboration.
It's a good game.
Also good.
Thanks for the encouragement.
That's fair enough.
Yes.
Thank you.
My question is, is not in the open source scene.
The storytelling too much for technical.
So if you say integration and so, it's really necessary.
But why does user and people don't experience this?
Various, they use basic.
Where I can plug in and see the best management and see
the time and office food, build with open source.
With your, why do you not go into the room and plug this
everything together and show this very easy to people?
So then we don't need the marketing from Microsoft.
Instead of making things better and better, just explain
and storytelling more, the thing that's already here.
You're messing a good app store.
Is that a good summary?
Yes.
So where's the app store?
I mean, I know you have an answer.
Let me use your system.
First, I think there is already a lot of good integrations.
So we have a lot.
But yeah, advertising what exists and that we show and
evangelize basically the world with open source.
Yeah, but we do it.
We have all marketing and sales teams and that do it.
So we do it all the time, but with our limited capacity.
Actually, that's where the community does help us a lot and can help us a lot
even more.
I mean, I'm a strong believer that all our users are best marketing
and best demonstrator.
I mean, our job is supposedly to be coders and build the applications.
And actually other people can talk about what we do.
We're very, and we're super happy when they do.
And we're not, I mean, not asking for free labor.
And so just to be clear, it's just that it's,
we do it to the maximum of the extent that we're able to do it with the funding that we have.
But every time we have one year or more, we have to make a choice.
Whether it, we put it on technical stuff, on marketing stuff, on sales stuff.
It's always tough to make that decisions.
It's a difficult decision.
I would agree that sometimes we probably think a bit too technical.
I think that's maybe, yeah, that's when we are all technical people, right?
All coders, that's our, that's where we felt just into it.
I would also like to combine a bit with the question over there, which asked about the distribution
and all the different kind and everybody does their own thing.
I mean, there was many years ago already where Ubuntu actually tried to have this.
One distribution that I said is, I, okay, I picked the, I picked the X-windows system for you.
I picked the desktop manager for you.
And there's this one Ubuntu, which comes with this desktop manager and this apps and so on.
And what happened, just a few days later, there came out Kubuntu and X Ubuntu,
because everybody has, of course, their own opinion, right?
What's the best tool and what's the best solution and what's really should be in there?
I think that's really the challenge.
That's why I think at the end, we never will get rid of about some kind of modularity,
which was discussed before and some flexibility.
That's also what we try in next cloud, where we come out with next cloud hub,
but you have to complete solution with all the features built in more or less easy to deploy.
But then we provide a modularity, as I said also before,
when someone really wanted to have a really powerful wiki,
then you can use the X-Wiki integration,
or then they can use the open project integration.
So why I completely get what you would like to have,
and I sometimes would also like to have it.
I think in reality, it's really difficult, as I said, Ubuntu and other stories in the past,
showed us already.
The first time to be shown,
you had so many different questions.
Let's take a long question.
At the beginning, you said that developing integration was a good close,
because even to your whole developing software,
you're not doing exactly the same thing.
But sometimes it happens that when you're developing an integration,
for example, there are multiple open-source wiki projects,
our project management, the open-source,
do you sometimes develop integration with multiple companies or projects to fit into one?
Let's say developing an integration for next cloud as a wiki,
but you partnership with other projects,
so that you can visualize the default.
Maybe if I get the question right,
what you describe is a project called Open Desk,
where some colleagues are behind there.
That's a project funded by the German government and for German governments,
but also publicly available,
and that's exactly does that.
It's a combined software.
Software here represented by us and other software into one solution,
and tries to fit one need.
That goes a bit in the direction of the last question.
I think it matches very well the objective to have the German government delivered
and many other situations where you need an infrastructure for a file and group there and so on.
But it won't fit everybody,
and the more complicated an organization is the more complicated other needs,
and then you might need to exchange things,
and then OpenSource has its strengths,
and I think it's as a strength to have this modularity and the option to exchange things.
I think that's a good ending because we're ending on diversity of strength.
I think that's one of the most open source things you can say.
So thank you everybody for joining, watching, listening.
Full of questions can go to each of them separate,
and yeah, have a good rest of the day here.
Thank you.