Please stop offering Nextcloud third party script!

roelofz

With a small community, it is too difficult to offer support on exotic flavours.

As the title says, if you can´t offer support, and it is needed as integrated Docker functionality is rather complex, then stop offering the functionality!

I’ve posted multiple questions, and contributed in related threads, but it looks like no one has experience, or is able to offer support, so too niche to offer.

The most obvious use case with Nextcloud is using the Nextcloud Mail client: It just doesn’t work and will not work missing correct documented descriptions.
Second is the backup script, not being complete in saving all Nextcloud data (I made a parallel script, but needed a restore, also more complex), and again, who will help me, looking at the mail client experience.

So keep focus on what a great product is, because that’s it: Mailcow is a great mail server!

mlcwuser

roelofz I’ve posted multiple questions, and contributed in related threads, but it looks like no one has experience, or is able to offer support, so too niche to offer.

With an open source product like Mailcow, you are generally not eligible for any level of support, and community support is always provided on a voluntary and best effort basis. If you need professional support, contact Servercow.

roelofz The most obvious use case with Nextcloud is using the Nextcloud Mail client: It just doesn’t work and will not work missing correct documented descriptions.

I always thought that the most obvious use case for Nextcloud would be file sharing. :p

roelofz Second is the backup script, not being complete in saving all Nextcloud data (I made a parallel script, but needed a restore, also more complex), and again, who will help me, looking at the mail client experience.

Feel free to adapt my answer from the first section and insert it here.

roelofz So keep focus on what a great product is, because that’s it: Mailcow is a great mail server!

Or you could just use it as is and leave the “third party” scripts alone, while letting other people who find them useful continue to use them.

roelofz

mlcwuser

If you need professional support, contact Servercow.

It is not about paid support (I earlier donated btw, but correct: not a business user), it is about knowledge available here and that seems to be missing on this subject.

I always thought that the most obvious use case for Nextcloud would be file sharing.

That depends so you noticed…

esackbauer Good point, combining is a bad idea, and so I experienced…

I was not surprised seeing the answer from @mlcwuser. It may not be nice what I posted, took a lot of work creating the scripts, but if a user falls for them, questions are inevitable to arise. And no, the (non paying) user has no base for support, very true indeed.
So I may have had the wrong assumption, knowing that in earlier cases people were willing to think with me and advise about experienced problems (short answers, some direction when things went wrong in my server).
In this case over a period of a month no answers came to politely asked questions, not even a question to clarify or judge my misbehaviour in daring to ask with too less info posted.
And that took me to the conclusion, this is too much asked.

So that’s the reason for calling out not to create too much third party scripts (stay at what you are best at as you all are best with this mailserver package), and from the user perspective, this will in the end not work, seperate the products as they are good products seperated but overcomplex when combined.

So I am criticizing but with the aim to help and the aim at the good stuff, Mailcow it self!

esackbauer

I never would combine such products in such a way. I am running OwnCloud, and keep it separate. For obvious reasons: Nothing breaks if one of the 2 products gets an update, and backup can also be done properly and separate. I am not a friend of such backup scripts spanning several products.
The only thing where I would join the 2 products is user authentication. So I am eagerly awaiting the OIDC release of mailcow, then I have one joined auth source (Authentik in my case).

mlcwuser

roelofz I was not surprised seeing the answer from @mlcwuser. It may not be nice what I posted, took a lot of work creating the scripts, but if a user falls for them, questions are inevitable to arise.

It’s not about whether you’ve been nice or whether you shouldn’t be allowed to criticise things, but to demand that they stop offering something that’s completely optional just because it doesn’t meet your high standards and because you’re a bit sour that no one answered your questions about it in a community forum is a bit, well, I’d call it arrogant and overbearing.

Btw. Like @esackbauer, I’m not a fan of installing additional services on my mail server either, and I prefer to keep things separate, but why should I mind that there’s an option to do so, and that someone even provides a script to make things easier if I wanted to?

But that’s not really what your criticism is about, is it? Otherwise you wouldn’t have used the script in the first place. Your criticism is that the script isn’t good enough, and that you didn’t get support for it in a community forum. Well, news flash: you are not entitled to any kind of support. However, since this is an open source project, you can always contribute, either by improving the existing script, providing a better one, or improving the documentation so that people don’t get the wrong idea of what the script does.