Bye Zarafa... bye Kopano?

I’m a long time and more than happy user of Zarafa (the Debian packages) . Since I’m self-employed my needs are humble. And as I’m an IT pro I run Zarafa on my own Debian server. Zarafa served me really well over the years.
Development of Zarafa has stopped however, so I want to switch to Kopano. But much to my regret that’s not easy. First of all there are no stable ‘open source’ packages anymore. The Alioth project could be an alternative, but that one does not contain the webapp. An essential component for me. And finally - to my big surprise -neither Kopano nor one of their partners replied to my request for a (single) license. I think getting a license would be the perfect solution: it would enable me to continue using my favorite ‘groupware’ and I pay (little as it me be) for the development. However, it seems no one is willing to sell to me. And that’s a pity because I looked at the competition but haven’t found anything that’s as good and nice as Zarafa/Kopano.
Any ideas on what to do…?

bhuisman

Hi vco1,

I’m sorry to hear you did not receive a reply to your request. I did a quick search on your email address but I could not find your request. Can you send you send your details to me in a direct message here on the forum? I can then look into it and make sure you get a response!

-Bob

Within a couple of hours after posting the above I got contacted by someone from Kopano. Top! Now waiting for one of the partners to contact me. …

khung

Like vco1, I have been running Zarafa on my own server for years. I also tried to get Kopano and their partners to sell me a single license, but the partner I contacted is not able to purchase fewer than 5 licenses and Kopano has not replied to me. It’s a shame that there isn’t a “hobbyist” license with reduced support as I am sure there are others out there that are willing to pay to use Kopano but cannot afford to spend the money for 5 licenses as they only need 1.

mcostan

I personally run the community available packages and with by being careful a little bit (i.e. I run the software on virtual machines so rollback is easy) I very rarely have issues.

If I do, they are fixed quickly in the following builds. Once I find a stable one I keep it running for a while.

I.e. I think it is a perfectly valid solution running on the community builds.

micha

@Kopano Why not offering a low-priced non commercial license, including 5 or maybe 10 users that covers Kopano access to the whole family for private and hobby installations, giving those installations repository and stable build access?

AnotherAndy

Hi vco1, Khung, Micha

I totally understand your situation - I’m in the same. I had the Zarafa "home user subscription with 3 Outlook Licences)
I contacted kopano an requested for a “Home -User- Quote”. They told me there is none.
You have to buy at least 5 Licences. But for my private and hobby usage this is very expensive ( We are talking about 75€/year).

Khung your suggest ist really good - kopano, please bring back the Home User License - lets say up to 25€ everything ist ok - and all I want are the stable sources and not playing around with deb packages.
If I need support ( see https://forum.kopano.io/topic/442/ldap-migration-zarafa-kopano-not-working -> this board is doing fine.

Best regards

fbartels

Hello @Merlin2104 , @micha , @khung ,

thanks for your feedback. Due to your postings we have started an internal discussion on how private/non-commercial users could more easily benefit from the services coming with the paid subscriptions, without having to make a commitment to pay for five users.

I’ll keep you posted once there is something more concrete to reveal.

AnotherAndy

@fbartels Hi Felix,
sounds great:-) I’m happy to hear the result of the discussion :-)
Best regards
Merlin

khung

Thanks Felix. I hope to hear some good news. :smile:

Gerald

It would also be nice if it were possible to just buy a license at Kopano. Partners for those who want them, but it really is weird when a company makes their customers jump through a lot of hoops just to be able to pay for the software.

kimokono81

+1 from me!
I’m running my own server for me and two family members… thats it. But I am forced to buy 5 licenses to run the server on a stable release.

I was running zcp community edition just fine before it got shut down, and switching to kopano core community edition didn’t really work out for me right now.

Hope you find a better solution for private/noncommercial users that fits our needs.

AnotherAndy

@fbartels Hi Felx,
do you have any News for us about the “private/non-commercial users” licence?
The last info is about 3 weeks old.
Best regards

As the topic starter I’m of course happy to see Kopano is considering private/non-commercial licenses, I can only hope these will be available soon.
So far I’m still running Zarafa, which is a fine product and still serves me well. But since I want to make the move to Debian 9, Kopano seems to be the way forward. I’ll keep a close eye on this topic to see if there is any news from the Kopano HQ…

fbartels

@gerald said in Bye Zarafa... bye Kopano?:

but it really is weird when a company makes their customers jump through a lot of hoops just to be able to pay for the software.

I just checked the email address associated to your user account and you are a registered partner and can easily buy subscriptions through the partner webshop. I still would not call a minimum order size of five “a lot of hoops”. Creating and collecting invoices has a price to it as well, as a business owner you should know that.

@kimokono81 @Merlin2104 @vco1 almost there, just need to create a signup form. I’m confident that we should have something by the end of the month.

Gerald

@fbartels said in Bye Zarafa... bye Kopano?:

I just checked the email address associated to your user account and you are a registered partner and can easily buy subscriptions through the partner webshop.
Creating and collecting invoices has a price to it as well, as a business owner you should know that.

Yes, and this is exactly the problem! Now you have to create and collect an invoice from me. And I have to create and collect an invoice from someone else. Twice the work, no benefit at all - I don’t want to be an unnecessary middleman :-)

mcostan

I use Kopano myself but, as I mentioned before, I am very happy to run with the community builds.

It really isn’t that much trouble! You download the packages, install them, run them, and if you are careful and you run them in a virtual machine first, you only upgrade when you find a stable version which, to be honest, in my experience it is 9 out of 10 the versions I get from the community site.

And of course since you don’t pay for it, in return if you find a bug you help Kopano to sort it out!

I do think it’s a fair and workable arrangement.

fixundfertig123

@fbartels +1 for the small private/non-commercial license. Just as @vco1 I am in the process of setting up new Kopano Server migrating my existing the Zarafa system. So I would really appreciate something happen in this direction.

fbartels

Hello to everyone in this thread! This thread has inspired us in creating a new “Kopano Contributor Edition”. Basically you provide feedback, keep your system up to date and when you see it fit tell the world how much you like Kopano and in exchange you get a subscription that you can use for private setups without any charge.

You can find more information at https://forum.kopano.io/topic/580/announcing-the-kopano-contributor-edition

xthbx

@fbartels said in Bye Zarafa... bye Kopano?:

Hello to everyone in this thread! This thread has inspired us in creating a new “Kopano Contributor Edition”. Basically you provide feedback, keep your system up to date and when you see it fit tell the world how much you like Kopano and in exchange you get a subscription that you can use for private setups without any charge.

You can find more information at https://forum.kopano.io/topic/580/announcing-the-kopano-contributor-edition

that’s so cool. As Zarafa home user it’s time now to move on to kopano.