Hi, I would like to be able to share a link and let anyone with access to that link edit the document using OnlyOffice. It seems that the community edition does not allow for this but the paid version does allow for this. I would like to stay on the community edition. Is there any plan to allow the use of this feature in the community edition?
How do others work around this? Do you replace Seafile with some other file server for sharing files?
To make Seafile an alternative to Google Drive I think this feature is essential.
If I bought every software I tested within the first week of testing it, I could not afford to upgrade to Pro. I see the utility of a Pro version if you are using features that a professional would like. Being able to share documents with others is marketing Seafile. It is not a “pro” decision to stop people from doing that. Crippling the community version for individual use will probably push people to other solutions I guess. I would like to look into SyncThing and Filestash because of this issue.
It’s a paid feature because Seafile needs to pay it’s developers to continue improving and maintaining the software.
If you’re looking for something for free you could search the net for other alternatives or free accounts with cloud providers. Be careful about the privacy of your data though.
I think you are missing the point about free. It is not just about money. I don’t want to be locked into proprietary software. I also want to have my data on my server.
The general reaction of pushing people to a paid service does not fit with OSS. There are plenty of ways to pay the benefits forward without locking oneself into commercial solutions.
If you have ideas for how cloud file hosting solutions like Nextcloud, Pydio, and SeaFile can gain revenue to develop software while providing all of their extra features like collaborative document editing for free please list them here. We’re all curious.
If not, yeah there are a dozen other less mature open source projects that won’t get off the runway that you can allocate your time to.
My recommendation on protecting your data sovereignty would be to focus on open standards and data portability rather than freeloading on free software.
I think I recall that Seafile offered a free four-user license to Pro for evaluation purposes. Maybe you should contact the sales department and see if it is still in effect.
Correction: It is a three-user license. The details are here.
Thanks for the suggestion. It is the first constructive reply. I don’t want to get locked into proprietary software features. I would rather pay for support of the community edition. That is in fact what I have done so far.
But at the moment based on the replies above I am motivated to look for other solutions.
In case others run into the same issue. Sharing a document with a guest user and allowing them to edit/comment is possible with Nextcloud and Onlyoffice. I looked into Filestash but it does not seem to use JWT to keep the onlyoffice server private.
Given that Nextcloud has this feature in the community edition of their solution, I hope Seafile will reconsider and remove the code that cripples this feature in the community edition.
I’m in the same situation, we want to stay with free-libre software, and need this feature. We hacked the Seafile to code to add this, our code is here:
But our solution is hard to maintain, and I don’t recommend to use it in production. We are thinking to build an app using the Seafile API to use it, with a simple injection of a « shared edit » button in the seafile interface to call this external app. But this is in the TODO.
In fact, we would also love to paid to get this feature in the community edition. It’s for us the only missing feature to make seafile the best file sharing libre software.
It is cool that you did that. It is a shame that the community is spending effort recoding functionality that is being disabled. Because of this issue I am using NextCloud. It is still early days in my testing so if NextCloud does not work out maybe I will be back…
It’s only in seahub, we add a new value in the databases in share links, change the share link code to allow to open a document in WOPI from a share link, and change the frontend to add the interface to create those links.