Thomas Bruederli wrote:

Just wanted to forward a mail I've got yesterday and would like to hear your opinions about this topic. Either this could make RoundCube grow faster or atmail just wants to get rid of some (more and more serious) competition.

Don't panic, I didn't decide anything yet and I don't want to get rich anyway :-)

I don't think atmail sees RC as a serious competition, the are both webmail but the similarities end there. Atmail has much more "beef" and requirements while RC comes with a simplistic approach.

I think such offer could be good for Thomas (although he doesn't want to get rich, he would get some extra spare change. I am sure not much, but some), the possibility of traveling --a plus on my book! :-) -- and RC might benefit (as well as atmail, of course) from it. It is easier to re-brand RC as atmail opensource product, than scale down atmail, which was never conceived to be such.

Ultimately, it is really up to you, Thomas. I would go for it.

Cheers,

from my previous experiences of when such offerings were done, they most often have ended to the same way in other words this is a buy out attempt to kill this project in fear of its possible competition. often they would offer positions and such but that is only for the transer period that at most would last 2 years and very often such transition consultancy runs for 3 to 6 months after which they would give you the pink slip..

i would be carefull with this..

On 7/26/06, Thomas Bruederli roundcube@gmail.com wrote:

Hi everybody,

Just wanted to forward a mail I've got yesterday and would like to hear your opinions about this topic. Either this could make RoundCube grow faster or atmail just wants to get rid of some (more and more serious) competition.

Don't panic, I didn't decide anything yet and I don't want to get rich anyway :-)

Regards, Thomas

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Ben Duncan Date: 25.07.2006 09:06 Subject: Roundcube merger - Ideas from atmail To: roundcube@gmail.com

Hello Thomas,

Ben Duncan here, I emailed you earlier this year about doing some consulting work for @Mail in Australia but it seemed you were busy.

Just as a quick intro, I'm the founder of @Mail, a WebMail/Email-server project I first started in 1998. We are based in Australia and run a business with about 6 people, supporting the @Mail product as our main focus. Our site is at: http://atmail.com/

We'd like to propose a business deal to merge Roundcube with our @Mail product. In summary we'd like to fork an open-source version of @Mail, and use the current Roundcube product as leverage for the open-source offering. We would then continue developing @Mail as the full commercial copy with added features; while running a decent quality open-source version as incentive for people to use our commercial copy.

We can offer you a reasonable fee to purchase the license of Roundcube, the site, and for the effort you have contributed to the project. We'd also be very interested if you could spear-head the development of our open-source @Mail product that would be merged into Roundcube and offered to the open-source community.

If you are available we'd love you to consult our company in Australia for 1-3 months on the development of @Mail and merging the two products for the open source offering. We could propose a deal for the merger and pay you for consulting our company for the desired time you'd like to visit Australia.

Let me know if you are open to any business deals, and I can submit a proposal for you.

Kind regards,

Ben Duncan

Thomas Bruederli wrote:

Hi everybody,

Just wanted to forward a mail I've got yesterday and would like to hear your opinions about this topic. Either this could make RoundCube grow faster or atmail just wants to get rid of some (more and more serious) competition.

Don't panic, I didn't decide anything yet and I don't want to get rich anyway :-)

Regards, Thomas

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Ben Duncan Date: 25.07.2006 09:06 Subject: Roundcube merger - Ideas from atmail To: roundcube@gmail.com

Hello Thomas,

Ben Duncan here, I emailed you earlier this year about doing some consulting work for @Mail in Australia but it seemed you were busy.

Just as a quick intro, I'm the founder of @Mail, a WebMail/Email-server project I first started in 1998. We are based in Australia and run a business with about 6 people, supporting the @Mail product as our main focus. Our site is at: http://atmail.com/

We'd like to propose a business deal to merge Roundcube with our @Mail product. In summary we'd like to fork an open-source version of @Mail, and use the current Roundcube product as leverage for the open-source offering. We would then continue developing @Mail as the full commercial copy with added features; while running a decent quality open-source version as incentive for people to use our commercial copy.

We can offer you a reasonable fee to purchase the license of Roundcube, the site, and for the effort you have contributed to the project. We'd also be very interested if you could spear-head the development of our open-source @Mail product that would be merged into Roundcube and offered to the open-source community.

If you are available we'd love you to consult our company in Australia for 1-3 months on the development of @Mail and merging the two products for the open source offering. We could propose a deal for the merger and pay you for consulting our company for the desired time you'd like to visit Australia.

Let me know if you are open to any business deals, and I can submit a proposal for you.

Kind regards,

Ben Duncan

Wow.... that's all I can say.... This stinks to high heaven to me.... and it looks like something Microsoft would do to Linux ;) I personally love Roundcube, and I've tried @mail (just to gauge the competition) and @mail has some nicer features that aren't in Roundcube yet. So it *could* be beneficial for RC to move that way. On the other hand, there is stuff like too much junk in the interface that makes it terrible to use, and just plain slow.

I would hate to see RC be "bought out" even though it technically can't. Just the brand can be bought. The code is solidly GPL. But if they buy the brand, we start a fork, and we change domain names... no big deal. Although I'd be ticked after getting the forum up and running having to switch names, themes and such.... :(

Thomas, you do as you want. But to me, it seems like they see you as being a true competitor when RC reaches it's first real release. While we won't have the feature list they have (POP, Customization) we've got a leg up on them: 30gigs.com is using RC as their webmail. I don't know anyone that uses @mail currently.

Don't think too lightly on this one.... really weigh out what would happen to RC... I see nothing good coming of this....

~Brett

On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 09:49:34AM +0200, Thomas Bruederli wrote:

We'd like to propose a business deal to merge Roundcube with our @Mail product. In summary we'd like to fork an open-source version of @Mail,

Ok, fork @Mail and make it free software. Sounds great! (Just be careful to define "open-source." ;)

and use the current Roundcube product as leverage for the open-source offering. We would then continue developing @Mail as the full commercial copy with added features;

Wait--this sounds like the @Mail brand is just the commercial fork?

while running a decent quality open-source version

"decent quality?" Warning flags go up ...

as incentive for people to use our commercial copy.

So the business reason behind the open source version is to create an "incentive" for people to use the commercial fork. Ok, you could still give him the benefit of the doubt here, this is not a unusual business model. Ghostscript for example ...

We can offer you a reasonable fee to purchase the license of Roundcube,

Hmmm ... "purchase the license". How do you purchase a free software license? I think what they want is the right to re-license the code.

But can you even sell this? I would think you need an agreement from anybody that has contributed code ... unless you have required copyright assignment from the get-go.

the site, and for the effort you have contributed to the project. We'd also be very interested if you could spear-head the development of our open-source @Mail product that would be merged into Roundcube and offered to the open-source community.

(>

If you are available we'd love you to consult our company in Australia for 1-3 months on the development of @Mail and merging the two products for the open source offering. We could propose a deal for the merger and pay you for consulting our company for the desired time you'd like to visit Australia.

Let me know if you are open to any business deals, and I can submit a proposal for you.

This sounds like an opportunity for you to work full time on RoundCube and get paid for it.

But to me, it seems you must be _very_ smart/careful about defining the terms of the deal. One risk I see is they purchase, re-license pay you, then in six months say "things have changed" and poof your consulting contract is gone. To mitigate this, you could negotiate for a long-term contracting engagement (three-years) with a significant penalty (1.5 years full-time pay, including benefits?) for them if they cut you early. And no non-compete clause if you get cut. And paying you comes before paying off any bank loans. (Good luck with that one. ;)

<swag> Let's see six people, with benefits that's probably a payroll of $400k USD, if you figure payroll is 75% of total expenses then total expenses are roughly $550k. If you they have a profit margin of 10%, then they are making $55k profit a year. Probably more. </swag>

Another risk is that the pace of open source development is faster than their proprietary product. How can you ensure that the free software fork will stay less full featured than the proprietary fork? Maybe you will end up hacking on @Mail more than RoundCube. :)

If you have good counsel, _maybe_ you can build a deal that avoids these risks and you still get paid for. Trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, it may be a way to really advance RoundCube (as long as you keep more features in @Mail. ;)

I would suggest contacting the Software Freedom Conservancy [1]. They might be able to tell you who to talk to. Eben Moglin is a sharp guy. Maddog Hall might also reply to an inquiry.

Good luck!

m

[1] http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/

Okay, I've read the e-mail a few times and I think I understand what's going on here. @mail realizes that no matter what they'll always have to compete with RC, so what they want to do, in essence, is put an @mail t-shirt on RC, so that wherever RC goes it will be advertising their competing product. And they want to pay Thomas to allow them to put that t-shirt on, and to integrate some of their feature into roundcube (or vice-versa - doesnt' really matter since they'll be the same thing)

This is all up-side it seems to me. Thomas get's some money, and free trips to Australia. RC get's renamed (who cares?) and get's some new features.

If @mail would be willing to pay you to rename and rebrand RC and the website, and then have their engineers submit patches to you the same as anyone else, I think that would be great. On the other hand if you're going to rebrand RC for cash, you might as well offer the same deal to @mail's competitors and see if you can get a better deal!

If @mail wants to take control of the source and community with the purpose of choking and killing it, then as has been suggested, roundcube will simply pop back up with a new name.

In conclusion, don't be afraid to make a buck off of all the hard work you've done, but get a lawyer and consider the real possibility of a set-back in the project if @mail doesn't work in good faith.

-Charles

Paul Waring wrote:

On 26/07/06, Thomas Bruederli roundcube@gmail.com wrote:

...

Just wanted to forward a mail I've got yesterday and would like to hear your opinions about this topic. Either this could make RoundCube grow faster or atmail just wants to get rid of some (more and more serious) competition.

Their home page reads:

"Filtering out the white noise of growing open-source options, @Mail is a reliable and complete messaging platform that includes full source code for complete control."

Doesn't sound as if they're terribly keen on open source to me...

Anyway, if they want the advantages/features of Roundcube, they can take them, provided they abide by the terms of the GPL. I don't see why they'd have to license the name or buy the domain if they just want to improve and open source their existing product. There's also nothing to stop them offering commercial support for Roundcube if they want, as far as I'm aware that's perfectly legitimate under the GPL.

Paul

Just a link to show they have a leg up on RC, they're not so small it seems... take it how you will.

http://atmail.com/client_portfolio.php

On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 09:17:49 -0400, Brett Patterson brett@bpatterson.net wrote:

Thomas Bruederli wrote:

...

Hi everybody,

Just wanted to forward a mail I've got yesterday and would like to hear your opinions about this topic. Either this could make RoundCube grow faster or atmail just wants to get rid of some (more and more serious) competition.

Don't panic, I didn't decide anything yet and I don't want to get rich anyway :-)

Regards, Thomas

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Ben Duncan Date: 25.07.2006 09:06 Subject: Roundcube merger - Ideas from atmail To: roundcube@gmail.com

Hello Thomas,

Ben Duncan here, I emailed you earlier this year about doing some consulting work for @Mail in Australia but it seemed you were busy.

Just as a quick intro, I'm the founder of @Mail, a WebMail/Email-server project I first started in 1998. We are based in Australia and run a business with about 6 people, supporting the @Mail product as our main focus. Our site is at: http://atmail.com/

We'd like to propose a business deal to merge Roundcube with our @Mail product. In summary we'd like to fork an open-source version of @Mail, and use the current Roundcube product as leverage for the open-source offering. We would then continue developing @Mail as the full commercial copy with added features; while running a decent quality open-source version as incentive for people to use our commercial copy.

We can offer you a reasonable fee to purchase the license of Roundcube, the site, and for the effort you have contributed to the project. We'd also be very interested if you could spear-head the development of our open-source @Mail product that would be merged into Roundcube and offered to the open-source community.

If you are available we'd love you to consult our company in Australia for 1-3 months on the development of @Mail and merging the two products for the open source offering. We could propose a deal for the merger and pay you for consulting our company for the desired time you'd like to visit Australia.

Let me know if you are open to any business deals, and I can submit a proposal for you.

Kind regards,

Ben Duncan

Wow.... that's all I can say.... This stinks to high heaven to me.... and it looks like something Microsoft would do to Linux ;) I personally love Roundcube, and I've tried @mail (just to gauge the competition) and @mail has some nicer features that aren't in Roundcube yet. So it *could* be beneficial for RC to move that way. On the other hand, there is stuff like too much junk in the interface that makes it terrible to use, and just plain slow.

I would hate to see RC be "bought out" even though it technically can't. Just the brand can be bought. The code is solidly GPL. But if they buy the brand, we start a fork, and we change domain names... no big deal. Although I'd be ticked after getting the forum up and running having to switch names, themes and such.... :(

Thomas, you do as you want. But to me, it seems like they see you as being a true competitor when RC reaches it's first real release. While we won't have the feature list they have (POP, Customization) we've got a leg up on them: 30gigs.com is using RC as their webmail. I don't know anyone that uses @mail currently.

Don't think too lightly on this one.... really weigh out what would happen to RC... I see nothing good coming of this....

~Brett

Michael Bueker wrote:

On a side note, here's something more on how Calacode regards the OSS community and its software:

"[Atmail is] a well rounded Webmail package that goes the extra mile over the sea of free/half-finished and unsupported packages out there."

http://www.digg.com/linux_unix/AJAX_Webmail_-_interaction_like_thunderbird#c...

Cheers, mtu

In fairness to them, I wouldn't expect them to praise their competitors, and calling RC half-finished is only underestimating by a couple dozen or so percentage points at most. As for support, they're pretty much right-on the button in terms of how corporations define "supported."

As for the other comments about them on freshmeat, I would take the accusations about root access, etc with a huge grain of salt. None of that post made a whole lot of sense to me.

What I'm trying to say is that there are plenty of reasons to be wary of this deal just based on common sense. There's no reason to bash what seems like a perfectly legitimate business.

-Charles

-Charles

richs@whidbey.net wrote:

On Jul 26, 2006, at 12:49 AM, Thomas Bruederli wrote:

...

Hi everybody,

Just wanted to forward a mail I've got yesterday and would like to hear your opinions about this topic. Either this could make RoundCube grow faster or atmail just wants to get rid of some (more and more serious) competition.

Don't panic, I didn't decide anything yet and I don't want to get rich anyway :-)

Regards, Thomas

Their webmail interface seems like a nice RoundCube skin (with a few more mature features, and a few missing ones). It would make sense that they wouldn't want to duplicate efforts.

If @Mail wants to inject some funding and/or code into RoundCube, in exchange for packaging it with their product, I wouldn't see why not.
Many companies do this, such as Lyris MailShield who uses SpamAssassin in their product.

But, it sounds like they want to "take over" RoundCube, and turn it into a commercial product (with an open-source "lite" version?). I think the GPL states that all derivative sources must be made available "as a whole at no charge".

I'd rather see RC stay as it is; an independent open-source project compatible with a variety of mail systems. @Mail should be welcomed to contribute like other companies involved, but RC shouldn't become an "@Mail"-biased solution.

Rich

If Roundcube had plugin support, atmail could package a branded version of Roundcube and then sell value-added plugins. If the plugins actually add value to Roundcube, then ISPs will pay for them. Perhaps the reason why they want to control Roundcube is to prevent their plugins from being reimplemented in the free version.

Mark Bucciarelli wrote:

...

We can offer you a reasonable fee to purchase the license of Roundcube,

Hmmm ... "purchase the license". How do you purchase a free software license? I think what they want is the right to re-license the code.

But can you even sell this? I would think you need an agreement from anybody that has contributed code ... unless you have required copyright assignment from the get-go.

Yeah, my understanding is that AtMail would need to own the copyright to the product in order to have the commercial/closed-source version in addition to the open-source "lite" version. Either that or AtMail would need to have the product re-licensed under an open-source license that lets them take w/o giving back (e.g. a BSD license would work).

This does sound like something that all the current copyright holders would have to agree to either way. The only other concern would be making sure that all dependent packages are licensed in a way that is compatible with that dual-license scheme.

Just my .02 as a casual observer (and not [yet] a contributor).

Hans

On Fri, 04 Aug 2006 14:46:06 +0200, Thomas Bruederli roundcube@gmail.com wrote:

Thanks a lot for all your responses! I see that most of you don't like to see RoundCube being sold in any way. Neither do I. I still don't know exactly what the real intention of atmail is but as Charles said, I guess they want to put a "t-shirt" over RoundCube and get the brand in order to make it disappear. In case that they seriously want to maintain and deploy an open source product based on RoundCube, there's no reason for them not to do so, even with the current licensing conditions.

I'm very, very happy that you agree with us on this :) Now let's do some free as in beer work ;)

mtu