This is the sixteenth conversation of the 100+ Conversations to Inspire Our New Direction (#OKFN100) project.
Starting in 2023, we are meeting with over 100 people to discuss the future of open knowledge, shaped by a diverse set of visions from artists, activists, academics, archivists, thinkers, policymakers, data scientists, educators, and community leaders from around the world.
How can openness accelerate and strengthen struggles against the complex challenges of our time? This is the key question behind conversations like the one you can read below.
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Today’s conversation is with Frank Karlitschek, co-founder and CEO of Nextcloud.
Frank is a long time open source contributor and privacy activist. He contributed to KDE and other free software projects since the end of the 90s and managed engineering teams for over 20 years at different internet companies.
In 2010 he started the ownCloud project, developed and released the first version and lead the project since then. In 2016 he left ownCloud together with the core team and founded Nextcloud as successor to bring the vision to the next level. He currently serves as CEO at Nextcloud GmbH.
This conversation with Renata Ávila, CEO of OKFN, took place on 8 July after his keynote ‘The Cloud People Want’ at The Tech People Want Summit (video below).
We hope you enjoy reading it.
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Renata Ávila: One of the difficulties often faced by the open movement is that there are small niche projects that don’t really scale. When did Nextcloud start to take off? What was the adoption at scale that changed the landscape for you, in your experience? And if you can, share a little bit of the “secret sauce” that led to that?
Frank Karlitschek: I don’t know if I have the perfect answer. First of all, it takes time, right? When I started this – this was still during the ownCloud times – the first few months, it was like, some people looked into it, some people used it, but it was very, very small. Then the press started to write about it, more people got interested, and it started growing.
But the first real big user – and also the first customer who actually gave money – came two or three years later. So it really took a lot of time.
Maybe a tip is: what helps Nextcloud a lot is that it is a product that is useful both for home users and big organisations. I think this is an important component. You need to have the home users – they’re your fans, your ambassadors, and your open-source contributors who help make the product better – but they’re not really paying for the software.
To get paid, you need a product that works for big companies and governments. So it’s necessary to have a product that works for two people on a Raspberry Pi and also for a hundred thousand people in a government. That’s important.
Renata Ávila: I personally use a fork of Nextcloud for personal entertainment. It wasn’t even my choice – it was a friend’s, who’s a collector of films and music, and uses it to share curated catalogues with friends and family.
But what’s interesting to me is: why am I not doing it with, for example, my family pictures or very valuable things? I’m an activist fighting for all of this, and sometimes, the previous work is not plug-and-play.
So part of that “previous work” – setting up your ownCloud, your Nextcloud, managing it – can be intimidating for some. How have you navigated that initial complexity? What were the steps from being a very technical, early-adopter product to what you have now, which is very close to people?
Frank Karlitschek: Yeah, very good question. As you said, we have a lot of features – sometimes very powerful and complicated features. We also have a very active community that keeps adding more and more. This could lead to a product that’s overloaded and super complicated to use – something not compatible with your family, my family, or regular users. And we want to have something simple.
This is why I’m a big fan of our plugin system. We have an app system; a plugin system. A lot of things can be switched on and off in Nextcloud. So, you can make it super simple, or you can make it very powerful – and everything in between.
So I think this flexibility with plugins is a really good thing.
Renata Ávila: There’s a very good question in the chat. They’re asking if you’ve ever been offered a load of money to sell this to the “bad guys”. Do you have any stories like that from big tech companies?
Frank Karlitschek: No, we’ve never received any offers from the big tech companies. Sometimes we get requests from investors who want to invest in us, but we always say no. The reason is – you can’t really buy Nextcloud. You could buy our company, but as I said earlier, the source code is open source and will always be open.
So if someone were to buy the Nextcloud company, someone else could just pick up the code and push it forward. You can’t really “buy” it. It’s shared ownership of the whole community.
You could buy the employees and the name – but the idea, the software, the source code – all of that will stay. So because of that, we’re not really that valuable in that sense. We’re just the developers.
Renata Ávila: For a long time, you’ve had a blueprint for a sustainable business – one that serves people, doesn’t eat data, and respects privacy and sovereignty.
So, if this technology is available, why does the extractive model prevail in Europe and in many other countries? If you had a wish, what would you fix to shift the situation toward alternatives like this?
Frank Karlitschek: I would love to know the answer myself. I don’t know. It’s definitely not a technology problem. The technology is there. There’s Nextcloud. There are lots of other open-source projects. I mean, we’re using BigBlueButton for this call – the technology is available. So that’s not the problem.
Somehow, people feel safer using what they’ve always used. They’re afraid of change. They’re afraid of using non-mainstream solutions. A lot of organisations just choose Microsoft or Google because everyone else is doing it, so it must be good.
It’s really just sticking to the well-known solutions. That’s something we need to overcome. The technology is there. But breaking those habits – that’s the main thing.
Renata Ávila: One of the interesting things you were highlighting was this idea of federability and interoperability. I come from Latin America, and many in our audience are from Africa. Every other year, there’s yet another project for digitisation, digital transformation, modernisation of the state, and so on.
Nextcloud is very broadly adopted in Europe – but have you had clients or partners outside Europe? Have there been any barriers to adoption you didn’t foresee, coming from a very privileged and resource-rich environment, especially when localising?
Frank Karlitschek: That’s a very good question. Of course, we’re in Europe. I’m from Europe. As you said correctly, we are in a privileged position. We have access to lots of services. Most of us can afford to pay a few Euros for services, and we can pick and choose. So we are in a privileged position where we can look for ethical, privacy-aware, open-source solutions, because we have the standards, values, and resources to protect them.
But if you’re in the Global South, for example, you don’t have that luxury. You have to choose what’s available and affordable. If Google gives you Google Drive with a few gigabytes for free, that’s very attractive.
Nextcloud is also free, but you need a server to run it. And if you tell people, “First, get a server, then install Nextcloud,” they say, “Okay, but who can afford a server?” Google Drive includes the server. So, often, in the Global South, people don’t have the luxury to choose ethical solutions – they choose what they can get. And that’s something we often forget in Europe.
Renata Ávila: We want to reframe that idea – that “you get what you can get.” Because yes, in resource-constrained situations, we often get the basics, but we pay with data, by becoming predictable and vulnerable in ways that make us pay the bill twice – or even three times. As we grow The Tech We Want conversation, one of the ideas I envision is that something like Nextcloud can be tweaked to lower server costs, and to localise technology versions in a way that aligns with what we want to see in the world.
There are a few questions in the chat. Can you answer them?
Frank Karlitschek: Yes, sure. There is a question about end-to-end encryption. We’re working to make that better and better. We already have it in introduced sharing—so you can have shared resources that are end-to-end encrypted.
There’s also a wish to have an end-to-end encrypted web interface. According to our security people, that’s a bit critical – it can leak data. But we’ve now made it possible. The list is optional, so you can have a read-only web interface for end-to-end encrypted data.
There is another question about the Google Play Store. Google removed the permission for Nextcloud to access files on the phone – which is quite stupid, since syncing files is the whole point of the app. We complained, they ignored us. We went to the press, and after some media attention, Google gave us the permission back. So syncing works again on Android.
Someone asked if we get support from the EU for this open-source project. No, we don’t get any support – not from the EU or anyone else. But that’s actually fine with me. For a sustainable organisation, it’s better to get money from customers, not from governments, as that’s not sustainable.
And finally, who is using Nextcloud? Lots of European governments – France, Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden – many of them use it. That’s where most of our funding comes from.
Renata Ávila: This is a good moment to wrap up. I’m very grateful that you highlighted very important aspects of the tech people actually want – reliable technology that respects data, that users can control, and that doesn’t have an invisible hand grabbing all their most private and sensitive information.
Another cloud is possible. Maybe we need more volunteers from different jurisdictions. Maybe we need more projects like Nextcloud, adapted to different contexts.
But the reality is: today, we do have tech that works – and serves people without abusing rights, without concentrating power and money, and even respecting planetary boundaries.
