Dear subscribers
What started with the hypothetical question, "how would we implement Roundcube if we could start over again?" [1], has now grown into a concrete plan how to create the responsive, fast and beautiful successor of Roundcube. It has become clear that the architectural changes necessary for this are way too big to be applied to the current Roundcube codebase without breaking the compatibility in a major way. That's why we're planning to define Roundcube One as feature complete and focus on a new core engine for the future Roundcube webmail application.
In order to make than happen, we can reply on long time partners who supported Roundcube already in the past. Kolab Systems has offered to drive this project by contributing their well established software development capabilities and dedicate additional developer power to help us get the work done. In addition to that, the folks from Kolab Digital in London are going to share their expertise on the UX and design part of it.
Two major goals are important to us: Besides improving the core technology and modernizing the UI, we also aim to move some of the groupware features we currently see in the Kolab suite into Roundcube itself and make them available for other backends. And we'll certainly provide a migration path to existing Roundcube installations.
So to enable us to achieve these high stake goals together for Roundcube Next we proudly announce our crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo. Go to https://roundcu.be/next and back us if you can or help us spread the word about it. Your websites, blogs and social media channels can help us reach more people. Or if you're working for, or are a customer of, an ISP who's already using Roundcube, please forward this campaign to your product manager.
Let's challenge today's email and create the most awesome webmail application people deserve to communicate freely using systems and services they can trust. The next Roundcube will of course again be 100% open source and made available to everybody. This is your chance to contribute to the success of free software.
Many thanks to all of our past, current and future supporters!
Sincerely, The Roundcube Dev Team
[1] https://roundcubeinbox.wordpress.com/2014/09/12/roundcube-next-if-we-would-s...