On June 2, 2016, Frank Karlitschek, founder of ownCloud, left the financially struggling ownCloud project, along with most of the developers. The same year, the newly formed team launched its own Cloud solution in placing greater emphasis on collaboration under the name NextCloud. To this end, the software has been continuously developed in recent years. Today, the platform contains more than 200 different applications which offer features like real-time communication, task management, document editing or mail management directly in their own Nextcloud environment.
In addition to the precarious financial situation, disagreements on the subject of licenses also played a decisive role in the separation. This issue is the main difference between the two open source software: while ownCloud users can now use some features exclusively in the Enterprise edition under a commercial license, all Nextcloud components are available under the AGPLv3 free license.
The following section explains the differences between the two Cloud applications and the features which generally distinguish them. We first examine ownCloud and Nextcloud individually and then highlight the respective advantages and disadvantages in a direct comparison.