ClearFoundation

Hi Ben, the Marketplace is a new feature for ClearOS 6.x, you can check out the demo servers or a VM version?

... Oh right. I have no idea why I didn't think of that already.

Will give it a go. :thumbsup:

This is..interesting.

I'd like to say it's great that Zarafa is coming to ClearOS very soon and I'm happy to hear that. I would like to say I have no problems with the fact that Tim gets paid by buying a $10 app for zarafa. He has personally helped me out on several ocasions on problems with ClearOS 5.2 when Zarafa would not provide support due to it being an un supported OS.

For that I am enternally greatful for the hardwork that Tim has put in even when he didn't have to and is STILL I might add putting in that hard work in supporting 5.2 providing updates for the community to use, you are amazing guy and I wish I had the programming ability to help you with doing the stuff you do alas I am only an engineer but I do want to start learning though! No time like the present.

However, I do have one thing I would like to add, with you making Zarafa officially a paid for app for both professional and community I think that the community version should be given a chance to get abilities like professional does. What I mean by this is that in clearos professional you are allowing people to buy Zarafa professional per person. I would like to see that you can provide Zarafa small business version to clear os community so that users can also choose to buy the free model of zarafa or pay for small business version that includes mapi.

When you start doing this paid for version of zarafa on community I feel that it slightly gimps people that choose to use it, Zarafa community is free after all and you are charging $10 for people to use it (again stating I have no problem with this just making a point). I feel that users using the community version should have the oppourtunity to be able to use paid for zarafa as well and not just the open source version since you are now going down this route. It is just a suggestion and one I hope you can take into consideration.

On a side note, with regards to Zarafa is z-push going to be in the repos or will people have to build it from source, I remember making a post in the mailstack testing a while ago and I haven't really heard much from it since. I would appreciate it if you could provide that kind of information also.

Just a quick question around this, I assume of course that there will be a smooth transition for those of us currently running the beta?

Very happy to pay for the addition of Zarafa - in fact, after running the beta I doubt I will ever go back! I just hope all works seamlessly when the time comes for the final release.

Zarafa is sick innit. I think that means very good.

Community version of Zarafa is superb. I have to say that the inability to do brick level backups and restores in the community version is a hindrance that will bite any sysadmin eventually in the bum.

I am not really bothered about Outlook MAPI as why bother when you have such a superb zero config web interface.
If you ever want to restore a single email account to a previous date then its a Pro license.

Thats the big one for me with Zarafa and its licensing.

I did a clean install of Zentyal one time and recreated all the users and obviously you get new UID's. I had to manually replace the UID's in the Zarafa community database that had been restored. So it was two spreadsheets of old & new, match em and replace, for over a hundred users. Wasn't happy.

Stuart

Thanks Ben, James, Jared and Stuart for your support, just some responses
When you start doing this paid for version of zarafa on community I feel that it slightly gimps people that choose to use it, Zarafa community is free after all and you are charging $10 for people to use it The way I see it - yes you can download and install the Zarafa Community edition for free, and configure it yourself...or you can pay $10 and have an app that does it all for you

I've have requested Z-push to be formerly included on the build system, I'll ask again.

Just a quick question around this, I assume of course that there will be a smooth transition for those of us currently running the beta?The configuration as I understand it should not change substantially to the main version. Assuming there are no major bugs which become roadblocks then there shouldn't be any issues upgrading to final release.

Yes unfortunately the brick level backup tool is only available in Zarafa Professional - that's the way Zarafa package it. The mechanism for Community backup is via Mysqldump, and backup of attachment directory /var/lib/zarafa. With the ClearOS configuration backup, there is the ability to restore systems to the previous LDAP setup and therefore restoring the full Zarafa database shouldn't involve mapping hundreds of users mailboxes to the right UID

Tim,
Regarding the brick level backup that's not entirely true. If you buy small business edittion of zarafa you can do brick level backup as well as use outlook mapi clients. Professional version allows you to intergrate Blackberry enterprise server on top of the adittions of what small business server has and extra support blocks.

This is why on my previios post I think clearos should allow the community version to have small business edittion if they have professional version on the paid for version of clearos.

It's cheaper then professional and it gives people a chance to get an affordable paid for zarafa. I know you can manually install small business on top of the app but I think clearos should really think about intergrating it into their app market.

Good point James as ClearOS is perfect for the Small Business.

Does an IMAP backup utility in conjunction with the community edition break any of the licensing?

ClearOS has the user credentials in LDAP and being IMAP it wouldn't just be limited to Zarafa.

Maybe Tim might be tempted to have a look at SOGo www.sogo.nu
SOGo practically matches Zarafa and has the advantage of being under a GPL and does brick level for free.

I still don't mind $10 for integration and choice would be advantageous to all.

Stuart, there should be no problem with using any type of backup utility with clearos as long as your not trying to hack a free way of using their zarafa-backup

I have had a client that I have sold zarafa licenses to (I am a zarafa partner) use a sync of e-mail to another server as a backup without any issues in the past before he even bought the zarafa small business edittion. This should be no problem.

I first found out about ClearOS from FLOSS weekly. I have been following your project ever since. Before then I was using another system for my home server. They started charging for apps too. The biggest problem I found was they waited for all the work to be done on the new verison and only communicated the changes when they released it. If they really wanted a community around their product they should of at least asked the community itself and made them feel like our voices counted.

It also became apparent that when I was paying for an app and I had a problem or bug they would take forever to fix them or they always told me to file the bug upstream. This happened because there core developers were few and were supporting too many apps. This lead me to ask myself why am I paying all this money for. The only answer I could come up with was for configuration and not for support or help. Also there were a few packages that were misconfigured or not configured with the settings that I needed. I knew I could do installation and configuration myself so I did just that and stopped buying apps.

The second part of the story is that when I got involved I was fixing their documentation. I do this at work and I'm a bit of a documentation nazi. So I fixed what I could. However I started feeling let down because I was contributing yet they only rewarded the programmers/developers. So ultimately I stopped contributing and started searching for alternatives.

The reason I'm telling you this story is that I beleive that charging for apps gets to be a slippery slope. For $10 dollars what are you providing? Configuration, support, or both? I think you should make this very clear. Keep the expectations or your customers the same as the expectations of your developers. Second Zarafa is licensed under the AGPL which lets you charge for it. It also says you have to release your sources to the public. If you do these few things I see no reason not to charge for the app.