New mailing list and online documentation

[Lennart]

Hi Mads,

Thank you very much for the update. It's great to hear that you are 
planning to improve community engagement. Also nice that a new release 
is coming.

As a first step on the path to "symbiosis", it would be good to find a 
solution for the documentation and mailing list. I'm happy to continue 
running alternatives; also happy to take them offline once the official 
versions are fixed.

Some thoughts on the documentation: I stumbled upon quite some problems 
when building the documentation, in part due to dated python code. 
Perhaps this is also the reason that the deployment pipeline on your end 
is broken (https://git.kolab.org/T6055). If your team has no time to 
solve these code issues I'm sure the community can do that. But then we 
need to know what exactly (if anything) is preventing the docs from 
being built right now.

Best,

Lennart


On 23-03-2022 12:54, Mads Petersen wrote:
> Hello Lennart, Hello all,
>
> Thank you for your comments and your feedback. It is inspiring to see 
> movement on the community, and that made me want to give a short 
> overview of the situation - and perhaps a few words about the future 
> as we see it.
>
> After the 'kolaps' (see what I did there..) of Kolab Systems, Apheleia 
> IT picked up the pieces, and are now working on developing Kolab 
> forward into the new decade. We are working on implementing the new 
> generation which we name 'Kolab 4', of which you will already be able 
> to see the results in action. This new Kolab generation will 
> eventually be the foundation of future Kolab on all the different 
> levels that we do.
>
> A short overview of the Apheleia activities:
>
> Kolab; is where the fun happens. This is the latest and greatest. This 
> is where new developments are done and R&D sometimes breaks everything 
> - until it is corrected and everyone moves forward. All new features 
> are developed here first, and is then pushed through QA towards the 
> other levels. Any community provided contributions will happen here. 
> All source is available on git.kolab.org.
>
> Kolab Now; is the SaaS installation of Kolab, run and maintained by 
> Apheleia staff on servers in Bern, Switzerland. The targets are, among 
> others, to increase the awareness of Kolab among the internet 
> population, to tweak and proof the usecases of the Kolab reference 
> architecture, and to serve a group of users with special demands 
> matching the Kolab strong points.
>
> Kolab Now is running the new Kolab 4.
>
> CyComm; is the quality assured version of Kolab that is installed and 
> supported by the Apheleia staff. It is where the guarantees of updates 
> with no surprise (good or bad) are valid, and it is where support 
> subscriptions and SLAs are included. It was named to avoid the large 
> confusion of 'Kolab', 'Kolab Now', 'Kolab Enterprise', 'Kolab 
> Systems', 'Kolab Community', 'MyKolab', 'Kolab You Name It', etc, etc. 
> Although it is a pr subscription offering, it is all Free and Open 
> Source software. All code is available on git.kolab.org, and that is 
> how it should be.
>
> git.kolab.org; is running a Phabricator front end, which unfortunately 
> is end of life (Phabriator is..). We have been very busy with moving 
> Kolab forward, and have had less time to think about the git front end 
> tooling. One of our goals for this year is, to engage more with the 
> community, and perhaps find a new and useful replacement for 
> Phabricator (which, as mentioned, is end of life).
>
> Facilitating the community; You will probably not see Apheleia staff 
> take support questions on the mailing list anytime soon, but we do 
> want to facilitate the community better than we have done lately. We 
> do read the discussions and learn what we can from those.  Hence we 
> are very happy for this mail, and for any of your ideas and input as 
> to how we could improve the life of you as a community member. We will 
> not make any promises (we are a small team) but symbiosis is the wave 
> of the future.
>
> I hope that this short overview contains useful information, and that 
> we can find a way to collect rather than separate.
>
> Sincerely
>
> Mads Petersen
> Creator of chaos
> Apheleia IT AG
>
>
> On 08.03.2022 15:07, Lennart wrote:
>> Dear Kolab community,
>>
>> Since a while ago the online docs have not been updated (T6055 [1])
>> and the mailing list web site has been down (T6220 [2]). It does not
>> look like Apheleia IT (the company that now runs Kolab) is interested
>> in fixing this. Hence, it might be time to take matters in our own
>> hands.
>>
>> I have uploaded the latest git version of the documentation to
>> kolab.dlnet.org/docs [3].
>>
>> I started a new users mailing list that can be found here:
>> kolab.dlnet.org/listserver [4].
>>
>> Of course to revive the community much more would need to be done. I
>> don't have much time to contribute substantially, but I hope that
>> providing these vital services can be a starting point. Please let me
>> know what you think.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Lennart
>>
>>
>> Links:
>> ------
>> [1] https://git.kolab.org/T6055
>> [2] https://git.kolab.org/T6220
>> [3] http://kolab.dlnet.org/docs/
>> [4] https://kolab.dlnet.org/listserver/
>> _______________________________________________
>> users mailing list
>> users at lists.kolab.org
>> https://lists.kolab.org/mailman/listinfo/users