[Users] Any ETA or planning on actual Zimbra ZCS fork?
Victor d'Agostino
d.agostino.victor at gmail.com
Fri Dec 13 07:38:33 CET 2019
Hello
> John Hurley (head of Zimbra tech support) also mentioned that Zimbra
> currently sees very few contributions to the product from the open
> source community.
Well they could have consider not ignoring the public bug tracker and
the github pull requests.
Regards
Cordialement
Victor d'Agostino
Le 12/12/2019 à 19:32, Randy Leiker a écrit :
> Hi Adrian,
>
> Following the weekly Zeta Alliance conference call on December 3rd,
> both myself & everyone on the call gained a better understanding of
> your concerns about the open source edition of Zimbra and we
> appreciated you joining the call. Again, we welcome anyone to join the
> weekly calls (https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/zetalliance) to
> discuss all things Zimbra related, and get early heads-up on Zimbra
> improvements in the pipeline. Just to recap the highlights of the
> conference call for everyone seeing this message on the mailing list,
> we discussed:
>
> *Concerns about whether or not an open source version of Zimbra X will
> be released*
> Barry De Graaff agreed that Zimbra has not been forthcoming with the
> community about the product direction for open source Zimbra. In his
> role as a Zimbra employee, he's initiated a discussion with Rene Otto
> (head of product management for Zimbra) to seek clarification. Barry
> reported in this week's Zeta Alliance call that he has not yet heard
> back from Rene on this topic.
>
> *The challenges and workload involved with forking Zimbra*
> Most everyone on the call agreed that forking Zimbra would be a
> massive task with many challenges, and is not advisable. Barry also
> reminded everyone that the Zeta Alliance is not a fork of Zimbra
> (https://zetalliance.org/faq/). There was also a discussion about the
> challenges related to building a community around a fork and managing
> code contributions. John Hurley (head of Zimbra tech support) also
> mentioned that Zimbra currently sees very few contributions to the
> product from the open source community.
>
> *Running Zimbra X using on-premise hardware*
> Barry also asked Rene about this topic, but reported he has not heard
> back on this topic. Following the call on December 3rd, I think you
> are right Adrian in that it will continue to be possible to run Zimbra
> X with on-premise hardware, since many Zimbra BSPs depend on this
> capability for thier business model.
>
> *Next Zimbra X product announcement*
> There were hints offered that the community may be hearing more about
> the direction of Zimbra X in the coming weeks, which may help
> definitively answer some of the above concerns.
>
> *Upcoming schedule for weekly calls*
> Discussed in this week's Zeta Alliance call, we are planning to do one
> more call this year on December 17th, then will take a break and
> continue the weekly calls starting on January 7, 2020.
>
>
> Randy Leiker (randy at skywaynetworks.com )
> Skyway Networks, LLC
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From: *"Adrián Gibanel" <adrian.gibanel at btactic.com>
> *To: *"users" <users at lists.zetalliance.org>
> *Sent: *Thursday, December 12, 2019 3:49:41 AM
> *Subject: *Re: [Users] Any ETA or planning on actual Zimbra ZCS fork?
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *De: *"Randy Leiker" <randy at skywaynetworks.com>
> *Para: *users at lists.zetalliance.org
> *Enviados: *Lunes, 2 de Diciembre 2019 22:55:04
> *Asunto: *Re: [Users] Any ETA or planning on actual Zimbra ZCS fork?
>
> Hi Adrian,
>
> Thanks for sending such a thorough email outlining your ideas for
> forking ZCS 8.8.x. Similar to Zimbra's policy prior to the GA
> release of 8.8, they are likewise being quiet about specific
> roadmap details for the GA release of X, aside from a few high
> level bits of information publicly released.
>
> I see.
>
> Aside from the things that I've been told that are confidential
> partner information, it has been publicly hinted that there will
> be more than one version of X, targeted at different markets. It
> has likewise been publicly disclosed that it will likely be based
> on Docker containers in a Kubernetes environment.
>
> My personal speculation (not based on anything shared with me by
> Syncaor) is that one of those versions will probably be a hosted
> offering similar to Office 365's Business Premium email
> subscription model, possibly based on an AWS cloud platform. I
> seriously doubt Synacor would directly offer to host it on
> Microsoft's Azure or Google's cloud services, since they are
> direct competitors to Zimbra (Office 365 & G Suite). I also
> speculate that they would make it optional for a Zimbra admin to
> independently deploy ZCS on their own using either Azure or
> Google's clouds, and a Zimbra admin's own in-house infrastructure too.
>
> In side conversations I've had with several owners of other Zimbra
> BSPs over the last year & a half, they share your preference and
> prefer to run Zimbra on their own infrastructure, rather than
> public cloud service (e.g. AWS) for various reasons. On the flip
> side, I have also heard from 1-2 BSPs who strongly prefer to use a
> public cloud services for their Zimbra instances. But, I have not
> heard any official information about what will happen to the
> option to run it on an organization's own infrastructure, rather
> than a public cloud service. Like yourself, I am hoping that
> running a self-hosted version of ZCS X remains an option.
>
> I'm pretty sure you will be able to self-host Zimbra X. You might need
> to tweak your hypervisor or virtual machines setups but you will be
> able to do it.
> I'm not concerned about Zimbra X being able to be self-hosted or not.
> That's not the big picture here.
> I'm worried about Zimbra X not being released with an open source license.
> The reason why I'm advocating for forking Zimbra 8.8.X is not because
> it is a self-hosted version.
> I'm advocating for forking Zimbra 8.8.X because its license is open
> source and Zimbra X is not clear is going to be open source.
> I would also advocate for forking Zimbra X if there was an already
> open source version of it from two years ago and no clear news about
> newer versions being kept under an open source license.
>
> I invite you and anyone else reading this message to join the Zeta
> Alliance on our weekly Tuesday conference calls
> (https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/zetalliance) to discuss
> your thoughts on ZCS & your proposed fork. There's usually at
> least 10-15 of us on those weekly calls, where most attendees are
> BSPs, key people that work in Zimbra tech support, engineering,
> marketing, and key people who work for Zextras. You can see a
> list
> (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uUUDJpwp2CAylU6lxtbEdVcUX_qSbciyes6gLTWw2fY/edit)
> of the things that we typically discuss on our weekly agendas.
>
>
> Thank you for inviting me.
> It was an educational talk which will help me to improve the project
> FAQ draft.
>
>
>
>
> Randy Leiker (randy at skywaynetworks.com )
> Skyway Networks, LLC
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From: *"Adrián Gibanel" <adrian.gibanel at btactic.com>
> *To: *"users" <users at lists.zetalliance.org>
> *Sent: *Monday, December 2, 2019 9:50:46 AM
> *Subject: *[Users] Any ETA or planning on actual Zimbra ZCS fork?
>
> Please note I already started this discussion at ZetaAlliance
> devel mailing list ( You can check the original thread here:
> https://lists.zetalliance.org/pipermail/devel_lists.zetalliance.org/2019-November/000403.html
> ) . As advised I have moved this discussion to the users mailing
> list.
>
> 1) ZCS 8.8.x being a dead end.
> 1.1) Synacor has stated that the current ZCS 8.8.x family builds
> will no longer be upgraded.
>
> More information on "Zimbra 8.8.X support" on "A annex" below.
>
> 1.2) ZCS 8.8.x now uses a mix of custom scripts and packages from
> a custom repo.
> 1.3) They will be replaced by "Zimbra X" (
> https://info.zimbra.com/zimbra-x-beta ) while the ZCS 8.8.x
> versions based on 'custom scripts and packages from custom repo'.
>
> As far as I understand Zimbra X is what a high-grade professional
> email service should be. A cloud service where many of its
> services are run in different containers. If a given container
> does not run as expected you can power it off and power on another
> one to replace it. If your service has a lot of usage then many
> more containers are started to keep up with demand. During the
> night only the minimal containers are kept run.
>
> There is also an improvement on UI based on React.
>
> Finally it's based on Zimbra's open source project. So that you
> can have a full source code review.
>
> More information on "Zimbra X" on "B annex" below.
>
> 1.4) No open source version
>
> Despite the former statement "based on Zimbra's open source
> project" as far as we know there won't be an open source binary
> version or download of Zimbra X.
> You won't be able to download your own Zimbra X binaries (built
> only from open source) to be able to deploy it either in your own
> cloud system (Although I suspect it will be technically feasible
> to install Zimbra X in a single server it won't be the default or
> recommended way of doing things, you will need a cloud system
> anyways.)
>
> So one of the key selling points of Zimbra: Being "open source"
> for either security or "ensuring future updates" reasons has
> vanished.
>
> More information on "Zimbra 8.8.x OSE" on "C annex" below.
>
> 2) ZCS 8.8.x Replacement
>
> This is what I think we need in order to replace ZCS 8.8.x
>
> 2.1) Git repos
>
> Basically we would need to replicate repos found at:
> https://github.com/Zimbra
> ( Note: I'm already working in this part. )
>
> 2.2) Pkg repos
>
> Ubuntu packages repo
> Centos packages repo
> Etc.
>
> 2.3) Build knowledge and machines
>
> In addition to the code we need to know how to use it to build the
> different Zimbra versions for each of the supported operating
> systems and versions.
> Optionally we could have some build machines to automate the build
> and CI of the new system.
>
> 3) License rework
>
> It would be nice if plugins could be written in GPL3 and then
> being able to bundled into Zimbra itself.
> Apparently right now they can only be GPL2.
>
> 4) Name (Domain et al)
>
> A name for the Zimbra fork.
>
> 5) What's the current status from the Zeta Alliance side?
>
> I have checked both the devel and users mailing lists and I
> haven't seen any debate about an hypothetic community-driven fork.
>
> Is there any message that I have missed?
> Is there any work in progress that I have missed?
>
> Thank you very much for your feedback!
>
> 6) Finally I know that Zella Alliance has in its FAQ (
> https://zetalliance.org/faq/ ):
>
> "
> Q. Is this a fork ?
> A: No, no, no. Everyone involved has clearly expressed, a fork
> would be the worst possible outcome.
> "
>
> but given the current feedback we have from Synacor we have to be
> prepared to this new scenario.
>
>
> Annexes
> =====
> A) Current end of Support Matrix for ZCS 8.8.x and earlier
> versions (
> https://www.zimbra.com/support/support-offerings/product-lifecycle/ )
>
> Zimbra Major Release | General Availability | End of General
> Support | End of Technical Guidance
> Version 8.8.x | 12/12/2017 | 12/31/2023 | 12/31/2023
>
> Zimbra Standard Release | General Availability | End of General
> Support | End of Technical Guidance
> Version 8.8.15 (Joule) Next LTS | 07/19/2019 | 12/31/2023 |
> 12/31/2023
> Version 8.8.12 (Issac Newton) | 04/01/2019 | 12/31/2019 | 06/25/2020
> Version 8.8.11 (Homi Bhabha) | 12/18/2018 | 6/28/2019 | 12/17/2019
> Version 8.8.10 (Konrad Zuse) | 10/1/2018 | 03/29/2019 | 10/1/2019
> Version 8.8.9 (Curie) | 07/09/2018 | 12/14/2018 | 07/09/2019
> Version 8.8.8 (Turing) | 03/29/2018 | 10/01/2018 | 03/29/2019
>
> Zimbra Long Term Release | General Availability | End of General
> Support | End of Technical Guidance
> Version 8.7.11 | 07/13/2016 | 12/31/2019 | 12/31/2020
>
> Close to End of Life | General Availability | End of General
> Support | End of Technical Guidance
> Version 8.6.x | 08/26/2015 | 09/30/2018 | 09/30/2019
>
> B) About Zimbra X (taken from https://info.zimbra.com/zimbra-x-beta )
>
> The Next Generation of the Zimbra Email and Collaboration Platform
> Leapfrogging ahead of competitors with a first-of-its-kind
> containerized architecture and React-based application, Zimbra X
> is optimized for high performance and flexibility.
>
>
> * Zimbra X Platform
> ** Cloud native and cloud agnostic
> ** Stateless, highly available architecture
> ** Automated container orchestration utilizing Docker Swarm or
> Kubernetes
> ** Full separation of services and application
>
> Zimbra X Application
> ** React-based application built on top of Zimbra’s API and GraphQL
> ** Responsive for use on any device
> ** Easily integrates with third party services for a customizable
> experience
> ** WCAG compliant for full accessibility
>
> Zimbra X Benefits
> ** Automated deployment, recovery, and traffic management
> ** Flexible cloud hybrid deployment options
> ** Easily customizable and extensible application, with third
> party services like Giphy and Emojis already integrated
> ** Based on Zimbra’s open source project ensuring security and
> allowing for full source code review
>
> C) Zimbra 8.8.x Collaboration OSE (
> https://www.zimbra.com/open-source-email-overview/ )
>
> Since the inception, Zimbra has been a community. All of our
> Zimbra Collaboration Open Source Edition software, documentation
> and innovation has been created, tested, used, and discussed
> openly by people like you participating in our Open Source
> Community. Our contributors diagnose bugs, fix bugs, translate
> programs, submit patches, point out deficiencies in documentation,
> answer community questions, submit killer applications, alert us
> to something that needs tweaking, and write new software. No
> matter how you contribute, we welcome new ideas and contributions
> for the advancement of greater shared knowledge and a better
> Zimbra Collaboration product.
>
> --
> Adrián Gibanel
>
>
> --
> <http://www.btactic.com/>Adrián Gibanel
> I.T. Manager
>
> +34 675 683 301
> +34 973 270 382
> www.btactic.com <http://www.btactic.com>
>
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