Nextcloud

[Al Johnson]

After talking with Tony about some of the things he needs to exchange
information with people on the Balloon project I suggested we could try a
Nextcloud instance.

The problem is mainly file exchange with a degree of versioning, but for people
who aren't familiar with version control systems like git or svn. There are
also bits that may have some confidentiality elements, so we might need the
ability to restrict access. We could use the web site for this, but it really
isn't built for it and doesn't provide a friendly interface for that sort of
interaction. Many people have a preferred online service like Google Docs,
Dropbox, WhatsApp and so on. We've yet to find one that doesn't cause problems
for somebody. Reasons include the technical (doesn't work for platform X),
privacy and data protection.

For anyone not familiar with Nextcloud, it provides similar services to a lot
of the cloud-based offerings out there, but you can run it yourself or use a
service to host it. The base functionality is file sync, but there are plugins
for task management, calendar, chat, online editing and so on. There are apps
for Windows, Mac, linux, iOS and Android, as well as the web interface. If you
want to have a quick look around you can use the 'instant trial' at:
https://demo.nextcloud.com/
That will give you admin access to a temporary instance that will last for an
hour.
I have an instance of nextcloud at home so have some confidence in it, and it
seemed to work reasonably in a small office setting between linux and Mac. I
don't have first hand experience with other platforms though.

The suggestion is that we use a hosted instance to begin with. We've found a
supplier that seems to fit the bill - the 'Mini 1' package from:
https://owncube.com/admin_en.php
We get 7 days free trial, and it's reasonably cheap. From a data protection
point of view the Austrians usually have higher standards than the UK, and
we'd pick a UK data center, so we should be clear with whatever Parliament
pass in the next few weeks.

Known issues - some things I think we should be aware of, but that I don't see
as deal breakers:
* the Collabora and Turn addons may need an extra monthly fee. Collabora
provides web-based editing of OpenOffice/LibreOffice documents. Turn may be needed
for voice and/or video chat, depending on the firewall and network connection
details of the people wanting to chat.
* The chat part is new and has some issues and limitations, some of which have
been fixed in the development version and are queued for the next release.
Other issues, like teh Android chat app not doing text chat, may take longer
to fix.
* End-to-end encryption is not recommended for production use yet.

I had a bit of a discussion about it with Morgan last Thursday and he was
broadly in favour. If there are no major objections, and if I get approval
from sufficient committee members, I'll go ahead and get it set up.

[MARK HANCOX]

I don't pretend to understand the technical details, but if there's consensus from those who know about these things that this is the right way forward, it gets my vote.

Cheers

Mark

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