{"id":79732,"date":"2026-05-20T13:44:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/?p=79732"},"modified":"2026-05-20T13:44:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:44:36","slug":"owncloud-for-android-4-8-0-what-a-release-tells-you-about-a-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/blogs\/owncloud-for-android-4-8-0-what-a-release-tells-you-about-a-project\/","title":{"rendered":"ownCloud for Android 4.8.0: What a Release Tells You About a Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

Release notes do real work. They tell users what changed, credit the people who made it happen, and give the changelog a public home.
\nDone well, that’s already plenty.
\nBut there’s another way to read a release, and from an OSPO (Open Source Program Office)<\/a> perspective it’s the more interesting one: as evidence of how the project actually operates.
\nSo let’s do that.<\/p>\n

4.8.0 shipped<\/a> just recently for Android<\/a>.
\nThe headline feature is space management<\/strong>: users with the right permissions can now add, edit, and remove space members directly from the app, manage public links for spaces, and copy or share a permanent space link. That closes a real gap.
\noCIS is built around a drive-centric model where spaces are the primary unit of access control, and the expectation that you\u2019d manage that access only from a desktop has always been an awkward inconsistency. Now it isn\u2019t.
\nBut the feature list is almost beside the point here.
\nFour external contributors are credited in this release:\u00a0<\/span>dataCenter430<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>mykh-hailo<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>corevibe555<\/a>, and\u00a0<\/span>esaramago<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what an open contribution model looks like when it\u2019s actually working: people outside the core team showed up, built something useful, got their work reviewed, and it shipped. No fanfare required.
\n<\/span>The OSPO exists in part to make that loop reliable and repeatable, not just possible in principle. Releases like this are one measure of whether it\u2019s succeeding.<\/span><\/p>\n

The deprecation notice deserves a separate word.
\nStarting with 4.9.0, the minimum supported Android version will be 9.0 Pie (API 28).
\nAndroid 8.1 Oreo, which launched in 2017, will no longer be supported.
\nThis is the right call, and the way it\u2019s communicated here (one release in advance, clearly stated) is also the right call.
\nDeprecation decisions are stewardship decisions. Holding onto an almost nine-year-old platform version to avoid telling users uncomfortable news creates real engineering debt and constrains what you can build, while helping almost nobody in practice. Publishing the notice clearly, with time to adjust, is how projects earn trust over time rather than burning it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other fixes in this release are a bit more modest but real.
\nAlphabetical sorting now handles special characters correctly, which matters more than it sounds in a user base with significant German-speaking deployments (umlauts in filenames are not an edge case).
\nAdding the destination folder snackbar (the brief, small confirmation message or notification that appears on the screen after an action) for copy\/move operations closed a small but real UX gap. And yes, you can now set an emoji as a space image, which is the kind of detail that signals a project is paying attention to what users actually do.
\nCI improvements via GitHub Actions workflows also made it in. Less visible, but important for contribution health: a faster, more reliable pipeline makes it easier for external contributors to get feedback on their work without waiting. That\u2019s not glamorous, but it\u2019s the kind of infrastructure investment that keeps a contribution model functional over time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Taken together, this release reflects a project doing what it should: shipping incrementally, crediting contributors properly, communicating deprecations honestly, and closing gaps between the platform\u2019s architectural model and the day-to-day mobile experience.
\nStewardship isn\u2019t usually dramatic. Most of the time it looks exactly like this.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bugs and feedback go to the GitHub issue tracker<\/a> or ownCloud Central<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can read more about the release in the announcement on our community forum<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ownCloud for Android 4.8.0 released. Space management lands on mobile, four external contributors get credited, and Android 8.1 gets an honest deprecation notice. From an OSPO perspective, a release is evidence of how a project actually operates. Stewardship isn’t usually dramatic. Most of the time it looks exactly like this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":78665,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[356,333,621,354],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-android-app","category-community","category-ospo","category-release"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79732"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79739,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79732\/revisions\/79739"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}