Kopano - Roadmap 2021

Gerald

If you have the impression that Kopano is not communicating honestly I would be very interested in finding out where you got this impression. I am very open for talking directly to you: Drop me an email at d.rauer@kopano.com, or give me a call at +4951122001980

Thank you for the offer, but perhaps what is going on at kopano can be discussed openly?

For example:

Why has kopano-core development completely (!) stopped 6 months ago?
Why has there been no new major kopano release for paying customers in 3 years?
Why the hostile reaction to your new competitor grommunio, formerly grammm? That sounded kind of desperate and was really did not leave kopano in a good light.
What really lead to the loss of the Z-Push domain? Will further ActiveSync development be resumed at some point?
What is the state of the PWA WebApp successor, if any?

There are no new owners. The owners of Kopano are still the same,

this is bad news, so I guess no consequences were drawn for the complete and utter strategic failure of the last years (stopping full Outlook support, removing any incentives to pay for Kopano except for support, the Kopano ONE desaster, lots of unimportant side projects, I could go on…) IMHO someone should have been fired (with a cannon, into the sun) for this. I don’t have any insights into the financial situation this has left Kopano in, but the lack of development and the rumors show that the mismanagement probably had consequences here too?

the technicians at Kopano are still the same, it is simply the administration (sales, communication etc) that bytemine is taking care of currently.

this is good news! They are ~~great~~ amazing.

Please stop spreading rumors.

In the lack of real information, rumors flourish…

Perhaps my viewpoint is a bit to negative, doomsday-like perhaps, but I’ve been in the exact situation before, a slow and painful death of a software project/company, which lead me to migrate from Scalix to Kopano years ago.

Sinux

@gerald
+1

@gerald

i really hope that kopano keeps on track with everything. i love the product!

drauer

@Sinux My offer still exists: Give me a call, or drop me an email if you like to.

@Gerald Of course some things can be discussed openly here, but I want to give Sinux the opportunity to have a direct and synchronous channel to talk.

Other things you mentioned cannot be discussed openly, of course: We will for sure not talk about personnel matters, for obvious reasons. And me (myself) and bytemine also cannot talk about it even if we wanted, because (as I said) we are not the owners, we are not the managers, we were not involved in personnel matters and we won’t be in future; we (bytemine) are here to help with communication, organization, accounting.

To your questions I can talk about:

Kopano Core and WebApp development has not stopped 6 months ago, but nobody took care of the release page. Simple as that. We added the missing entries today: https://kopano.com/resources/releases-notes/
These releases were uploaded to the repositories, the changelogs had been published to e.g. https://documentation.kopano.io/kopano_changelog/kc.html but the website was not updated. That is a pitty, we now have an eye on this as well.
No major release in the past: Kopano One was a major release, there was a lot of work put into, but it turned out not to be the product everyone expected. Sometimes you have to take a risk and try a new approach, and not everytime the result is what you wanted.
PWA development has been stopped. If and when it might be revived I cannot tell at the moment. Same goes with ActiveSync. We currently focus on the core product to keep up with things that might have not got enough attention in the past.

Bye, Daniel

thctlo

@drauer Thanks on the reply Daniel, most apriciated.

im also a long zarafa/kopano user and im wondering of you can tell when there will be a Debian Bullseye (11) release for kopano.

Currenlty im holding back 2 server upgrades due it.

One thing would be nice, making access to git sources better available.
Im always searching for it because links for it are very hard to find on kopano websites.

umgfoin

@thctlo
git-repos:

[…]
++umgfoin.

JungleMarc

I like Kopano.

I am a previous Zarafa user, been on paid subscription for many years.

Kopano makes whole lot more sense to me versus using any other collab platform. I find everything is well organized, very good for debugging any aspect of the system. I look forward to renewing my subscription this year.

I pay for subscription even if I don’t use much support time. It is there if I really need it. For the few times I had to open a ticket, I always liked the level of insight / technical detail from the support team.

I hope the Z-Push development will keep going for Oultook, knowing it was the intended direction, as opposed from using the oldschool Zarafa MAPI plugins.

As much as it must be difficult to support and develop Z-Push for Outlook compatibility, I applaud the effort of everyone involved. I hope Z-Push development keeps going. It is an amazing tool.

Best regards,

Marc

kermit13

@drauer
Hello Daniel,
do I understand it right that we don´t have a chance to get native Outlook in the near future ?

Best Regards

Frank

drauer

@kermit13 said in Kopano - Roadmap 2021:

@drauer
Hello Daniel,
do I understand it right that we don´t have a chance to get native Outlook in the near future ?

Best Regards

Frank

Hi Frank.

No, thats not what I wrote:
We currently cannot say when and how the ActiveSync/Z-Push development will go on. But no matter how, it will never be what you probably mean by “native Outlook”. This is not possible with ActiveSync implementation by Microsoft. Kopano with its KOE is one of the only groupware vendors that enhances ActiveSync by collaboration features, but it can never reach the native Outlook with Exchange implementation.

Regarding native Outlook support please bear with me that I currently cannot go into detail, but Kopano has and will put a lot of effort into implementing a solution.

Bye, Daniel

hooge

There was the native Zarafa-Client (latest version as i remember zarafaclient-7.2.6-52189.msi), which is in heavy use by our company with Office 2010.
Unfortunately, the source code was never released after further development was stopped. Probably due to some copyright issues. Maybe it would be possible to publish the uncritical parts so that someone else could continue the development.
Kind Regards, Thomas

drauer

@hooge I just got the confirmation that the zarafaclient cannot be open-sourced, also not parts of it; I am sorry to tell.

thctlo

@drauer

https://github.com/steep-system/STEEP_SYSTEM
has Native outlook support and used kopano and samba components

Only you see he stopped with development because he didnt include/obey the Samba licences.

kermit13

@drauer
Hi Daniel,
thanks for the fast answer … I do not talk about z-push, this is working pretty fine for the mobile devices.

I really mean native access for Outlook, unfortunately 99% are working with Outlook only and the connection via
Activesync is more or less a nightmare regarding the calendar and resource booking.
We are coming from Zarafa and with the old mapi driver everything was fine but we know that the mapi driver is
not working with Outlook 2016 / 2019.
I understand that you can´t say me a date when we can expect outlook support, but a roadmap if we could expect
it this year or latest next year would be fine.

Best Reagards
Frank

drauer

@thctlo said in Kopano - Roadmap 2021:

https://github.com/steep-system/STEEP_SYSTEM
has Native outlook support and used kopano and samba components

I know, thats why I wrote “one of the only vendors”.

drauer

@kermit13 said in Kopano - Roadmap 2021:

We are coming from Zarafa and with the old mapi driver everything was fine but we know that the mapi driver is
not working with Outlook 2016 / 2019.

It was also a dead end, you probably remember the times when Microsoft changed “something” every few weeks, which had to be reverse engineered, implemented in the zarafaclient, tested, shipped and rolled out at the customers, meaning collaboration was broken every few weeks for several weeks.

I understand that you can´t say me a date when we can expect outlook support, but a roadmap if we could expect
it this year or latest next year would be fine.

You can expect “something” to happen surely this year.

Gerald

@drauer said in Kopano - Roadmap 2021:

To your questions I can talk about:

Kopano Core and WebApp development has not stopped 6 months ago, but nobody took care of the release page. Simple as that. We added the missing entries today

Thank you for your openness… But where is the development happening? According to the git repo the kopano-core project is quite dead except for very basic bug fixes, which I would not call “development” but at best “maintenance”.

alt text

I would love for the days of Zarafa to come back when there was actually a reason to pay for the product. I’ll never understand how management could have been so incredibly stupid to abandon the commercial native Outlook client in search of some vague “100% fully open source” future with unclear monetization opportunities. An open source future which then of course never materialized (a working and maintained Kopano is not part of any linux distribution, and even the commercial UCS Server port seems unmaintained). Perhaps the ship can still be turned around, but I fear its stuck in the Suez canal and too late. I for one have had to mostly migrate to Hosted Exchange by Microsoft (part of the Office 365 / Microsoft 365 offerings) and don’t see any way those paying customers will ever come back to Kopano.

Sinux

@gerald +1

ich habe mir auch den Stand auf github und die Entwickler mal angesehen wohin sie denn alle abgewandert sind und das geschah alles mitte 2021. Es wird bis heute nicht ehrlich kommuniziert und das ist ein NoGo!

einzige “Alternative” wäre
https://community.grommunio.com/

und nein kein englisch Felix ich schreibe mal deutsch;)

mcostan

@drauer I was wondering when the roadmap for 2022 will be released.

I have been with Zarafa / Kopano for years and years…

drauer

Hi.

Sorry for my late reply, I somehow did not receive notifications:

Thank you for your openness… But where is the development happening? According to the git repo the kopano-core project is quite dead except for very basic bug fixes, which I would not call “development” but at best “maintenance”.

Development happens on https://stash.kopano.io, e.g. https://stash.kopano.io/projects/KW/repos/kopano-webapp/commits for the WebApp.

I’ll never understand how management could have been so incredibly stupid to abandon the commercial native Outlook client in search of some vague “100% fully open source” future with unclear monetization opportunities.

I have to ask you to keep polite. Nobody abandonded native Outlook support out of fun or stupidity.

I for one have had to mostly migrate to Hosted Exchange by Microsoft (part of the Office 365 / Microsoft 365 offerings) and don’t see any way those paying customers will ever come back to Kopano.

Yes, for some customers Office 365 is the better option. Some later regret their choice, some are very happy with it. Thats life, products and needs and conditions keep changing.

drauer

@sinux said in Kopano - Roadmap 2021:

und nein kein englisch Felix ich schreibe mal deutsch;)

And I will keep posting in english.

ich habe mir auch den Stand auf github und die Entwickler mal angesehen wohin sie denn alle abgewandert sind und das geschah alles mitte 2021. Es wird bis heute nicht ehrlich kommuniziert und das ist ein NoGo!

You mix and mangle “openness” and “honesty” completely: We were always honest in our communication, but (of course!) we did not talk about internal personnel matters in the public. Yes, some people left the company, thats what we told, nothing new. Others joined. Everything else is not of your business.

einzige “Alternative” wäre
https://community.grommunio.com/

If you would look at them as critical as you are looking at Kopano I doubt you still would call it an alternative…

Btw: My offer to have a call together still exists.