On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 at 06:47, Michael Slusarz via dovecot <dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote: > > Hello all, > > I want to provide a brief overview regarding various questions surrounding > features that are being removed from Dovecot CE going forward. > > We are currently working on providing updated/improved website info and > documentation that will better explain exactly what is being maintained in > CE. However, the desire to have unified messaging clashes with the > Engineering Team's desire to continue to push code to the open source > repository when it is ready... > > So I want to educate on just a few points here, with the promise that further > information will be provided in the future. > > A reminder that Dovecot is commercial software, and has been since Timo made > this decision 13 years ago. Dovecot is not maintained by a community of > volunteers. We continue to be lucky that Timo remains Dovecot's Chief > Architect today, but there are 20 dedicated Dovecot employees, plus > additional Open-Xchange support staff, that are working on the software > everyday. This is carrier-grade software, which requires significant > resources to maintain. > > Dovecot CE is the open source version of this commercial product (currently, > Dovecot Pro). Dovecot CE is not a separate project - it is maintained as > part of the day-to-day maintenance of Pro. > > Every single person that works for Dovecot/OX is extremely proud and > dedicated to releasing as much software as we can to open source. CE is able > to take advantage of this situation to provide features that would not be > allowed in a purely voluntary project (for example, there are 5 full time QA > people working on what is eventually released as Dovecot CE). > > However, there remains a delicate balance of what we can openly release and > what we need to be able to commercially provide in order to keep the lights > on (which allows us to continue to provide open releases...). This is a > difficult juggling act, and is one that is always prone to recalibration in > any open software product, not just Dovecot. > > Dovecot CE has always been 100% open source, and will continue to be so. > Nothing is changing in the future. Dovecot CE has been, and will always > continue to be, fully compliant with open source principles (see > https://opensource.org/osd/). > > For a variety of software, maintenance, and (yes) business reasons, there > comes a time when decisions need to be made to move beyond existing software. > This is completely normal in software development, and there is no "open > source" duty to continue to maintain software that is no longer useful (or, > is broken or is unmaintained or is not longer best practices or is no longer > commercially viable or is duplicative of other features that exist or ....) > That decision is what is being done for a selection of longstanding Dovecot > features. It is time to move on from them. There are valid reasons to do so. > > If you disagree: the software is open source. You can continue to use the > existing software, adapt it to your needs, move to a different solution, or > whatever else. > > To focus development efforts, and to provide extreme clarity for users going > forward, Dovecot CE for the first time has adopted a defined Vision > Statement: "To provide the world's premier open source, standards compliant, > full-featured, single node email backend server." This vision formulation > was made to ensure that CE users continue to receive world class, stable, > tested, modern, secure email software going forward. Maintaining features > that have existed since the mid-2000s (replication, Directors), at the > expense of moving the software forward to adapt to new paradigms (cloud, > containers, storage-layer replication, statelessness) is not the proper > choice.
I cannot imagine you will devote any time to justifying this statement, so I won't ask, but for a list of mainly technical participants, I imagine people cleverer than me have issues with the lack of substance. > These Dovecot CE feature decisions are mine. If you are unhappy with them, I > ask that you direct your vitriol directly (and privately) to me. The Dovecot > Team does fantastic work and has provided software, under open source > principles, that runs millions of email servers around the world. They > continue to provide invaluable feedback internally in determining the proper > balance between open and commercial considerations. They deserve to be > thanked by the community, not vilified. Just to be clear, no one - involved with the project, or the commercial operations - should be vilified for any decision taken at a senior level. But from my detached perspective - I do not use the feature - the real failure here is the lack of communication from the senior level. Aki has had to defend this decision for months without your support and communication. Similar to the complete absence of communication around the Horde Project/Horde LLC. Regards Simon _______________________________________________ dovecot mailing list -- dovecot@dovecot.org To unsubscribe send an email to dovecot-le...@dovecot.org
