Announcement: ownCloud 10 and PHP Versions

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ownCloud will continue to deliver a Docker Container with maintained and secured PHP 7.4 and its application to all our administrators worldwide. Operating system vendors and professional PHP support companies around the globe have announced that they will also continue to maintain PHP 7.4.

The PHP Community has decided to end support for the 7.4 major version as of November 28th 2022. ownCloud has PHP 7.4 as one of its core dependencies. We at ownCloud take the responsibility to always deliver high quality software and continue to provide supported PHP 7.4 to you in order to maintain a secure operating environment. For that we’re working with external PHP experts.

ownCloud Enterprise customers have additional options and shall contact our support organisation. We will provide them with secure and maintained PHP 7.4 packages for most of your Linux distributions where the vendor is not providing PHP 7.4 support.
For community users we will provide a docker image with maintained PHP 7.4 free of charge.

ownCloud 10 Roadmap

The next version of ownCloud 10 will be 10.12 and is expected in the first quarter of 2023. Find an ongoing changelog is here: Server Changelog - ownCloud

This version will still rely on PHP 7.4. In the future we will reevaluate with each release and we might enterain a PHP 8.2 port together with all of you. Projects like Rector - Automated Way to Instantly Upgrade and Refactor any PHP code (getrector.org) might be a good start for this path.

Resources

Our official docker Image is available here: owncloud/server - Docker Image | Docker Hub this will always include a maintained and secured PHP 7.4 version ready to run!

The following options are also available:

ownCloud Infinte Scale

We have just announced the general availability of ownCloud Infinite Scale. We believe that this is the future of secure content collaboration in a hybrid cloud:

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Hello,

Unfortunately, PHP 7.4 has reached EOL, therefore Owncloud must be made compatible with PHP 8+

Thank you.

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Sorry, I’m not changing my server’s OS (FreeBSD) or installing a Docker. Transitioning to nextCloud.

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Looks like that was it with Owncloud then. Insisting on using an EOL version just shows that there will be no secure version for deployment in any standard environment in the future. It was nice while it was still maintained.

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Just to repeat what was said above in a nutshell:

  1. You can continue to run the PHP version of ownCloud on a maintained (!) platform based on PHP 7.4 using our docker container.
  2. ownCloud Infinite Scale is improving every day and might be a viable alternative for your usecase.

So I’d say it is still nice.

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Nextcloud works just fine - and no need to mess around with Docker or find somebody who might maintain an old/outdated php version.

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Question, how do you maintain a software on a platform without any sort of upstream maintenance other than just accepting the risk? Are you patching PHP 7.4?

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As it is stated in the article above: The docker container builds on Ubuntu 20.04 which comes with maintained PHP 7.4.

For enterprise customers we are offering even more options, including a patched PHP 7.4 version maintained by a company specialized on that.

By no means we recommend to accept any risk in that regard.

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Hey,

i think it is important to mention that for example Debian and other major Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE and similar are still maintaining PHP 7.4 with security fixes. And this in a reliable way since more then a decade.

I’m also not sure why this is now such a big interest in the EOL of PHP 7.4. :slightly_frowning_face:

From what i know this happened for previous PHP versions like PHP 7.3 down to PHP 5.3 as well. And Linux distributions also kept the maintenance of these with security fixes for quite a few years even after the EOL of the versions from PHP side.

As a user of ownCloud 10 i’m happily running Debian stable (BookwormBullseye) which receives security fixes / maintenance of PHP 7.4 until ~2024-07 (and likely later in Debian Long Term Support until ~2026-06).

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I think you mean Bullseye (Debian 11). Bookworm is still Debian Unstable and it will ship with PHP 8.2.

Using names that start with the letter B for three consecutive versions of Debian has made it more challenging than usual to keep them all straight. :laughing:

I understand the interest in seeing ownCloud use a developer supported version of PHP. I also have been managing production ownCloud deployments long enough to know that ownCloud has always been slow to migrate to current PHP. With the new OCIS having no PHP, I presume that the decision not to support ownCloud on current PHP is likely to stand.

If OCIS had support for the applications I rely on (mostly, but not exclusively, calendar and contacts), I could consider migrating. Until such time, I am willing to rely on the PHP 7.4 provided by deb.sury.org.

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Hey,

yes i was refering to Bullseye and updated my post accordingly. :grin:

Having no calendar and contact support in OCIS is indeed also the remaining item which is preventing me to migrate to it and to stay on the PHP version of ownCloud.

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I don’t understand why you don’t just upgrade to PHP8.

There are only a few things to do, basically add “ReturnTypeWillChange” annotation, add a few typecasts and remove the curly brackets around inline string variables.

Already done at GitHub “bohwaz:owncloud-core-php8”.

This fix is done in a few hours. Instead, you guys make Docker images and let specialized companies fix an outdated PHP version. I begin to think that you intentionally want to let classic owncloud die, just so everyone uses this “Infinite Scale” product.

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Hey,

i’m not sure who is “right” as i’m just using ownCloud but it seems it could be possible that the repository might not tell the full truth https://github.com/owncloud/core/issues/40241#issuecomment-1693110093:

There is much more to do then these few code changes.

and i think some later comments seems to confirm that (some one not from ownCloud assumes a week of work but that might be also not valid, too much or too less).

But i think it maybe doesn’t matter as a final comment in that issue says:

No need to continue in here. PHP 8.x will come these days…

What i think still could be improved from the ownCloud people side could be the communication around such topics. If they would have clear statements on the rationale of the decisions to not support PHP8 until now if could have avoided various guessing or possible misinterpretations on the reasons :slightly_frowning_face:

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Indeed, I am indeed a bit salty about the closed PHP 8 issue at GitHub ( #40241), with the comment “No need to continue in here. PHP 8.x will come these days…”

If ownCloud really wants to add PHP 8 instead of letting it die and wait for people to switch to NextCloud, I expect them to do the following:

  1. Don’t close GitHub issues mentioning PHP 8 !!! Just by closing your eyes (or closing the GitHub issue), the problem won’t go away. Only close if the bug is FIXED or if it WONT FIX (forever). If it is on your TODO list, leave it open!

  2. Even if you can’t do the full PHP 8 compatibility yet, you can still try to do it “step by step”, e.g. start by changing the curly braces around the strings.

  3. Why not create a GIT branch “PHP 8” where PHP 8 is developed step by step. I am sure a lot of people (including me) would like to contribute to it. Accept pull-requests, and then the PHP 8 compatibility will come through the community. Once you are happy with the compatibility, merge the branch in the main code base.

It’s so easy…

By the way… how can I update my ownCloud 10.13 to Nextcloud? Nextcloud only seems to accept OwnCloud 10.11 for upgrading.

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Hey,

what i’m also not sure is the following of https://github.com/bohwaz/owncloud-core-php8/blob/master/README.md :

The ownCloud company claims that getting PHP 8 support is too hard.

Does anyone have any background info from where this is originating from?

At least i haven’t seen any such claims from the ownCloud company :slightly_frowning_face: and the first posting of this topic even includes:

In the future we will reevaluate with each release and we might enterain a PHP 8.2 port together with all of you.

In general i think the ownCloud people could have strong reasons like resource constraints on PHP developers, support staff (they would need to give customer support for PHP 8.x environments even if the “compatibility” came from the community) and similar.

But i think a little bit more transparency / communication on the rationales wouldn’t have hurt :slightly_frowning_face:

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Hey,

it seems that the ownCloud people started to introduce PHP 8.2 support in ownCloud 10 via a new draft pull request.

If i’m reading it correctly currently only PHP 8.2 is supported (8.0, 8.1 and 8.4+) for that pull request and it seems to me that there is a lot more work / changes involved.

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Is there any new info about support for PHP8+? :eyes:

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I would also be very interested in updates.
For example, the official support by the Debian Security Team for Bullseye (the last version with PHP 7.4) ends at the end of July.