Zimbra OSS - what are you using to install/upgrade?

[adrian.gibanel.btactic]

I've used Zimbra since it first came out in beta, I've deployed it to companies, I've run it personally, I've bought NE, I've bought Zextras, but I've really lost all confidence in Zimbra recently - even in the paid versions. It just all seems such as mess. And there are serious security vulns coming out quicker than I can process them.

Anyone else feel this way, or just me?

If you take a look at what new features have been added to the OSE/FOSS version that were previously part of the NE version you will notice that not too much has been added from Zimbra 7, specially in the zimbraAdmin part. So Zimbra OSE/FOSS has been stagnant from Zimbra 7.

It's only that now, with the addition of the NE-exclusive modern UI that the divergence has been made obvious for many more users.

As I say this has been going on for ages. Unfortunately final users were not concerned at all because the main base was updated and, more importantly, Zimbra provided official Zimbra OSE binaries and its associated packages repos. Let's be honest, Zimbra admins haven't cared so much about Zimbra being more or less FOSS but about Zimbra just working fine.

My point is that after 5, 8, 10 years (Synacor should pick a number of years and stick to it) of development some of the NE features, even if they are targeted at professional deployments should be released as FOSS. You can spare the MAPI or Activesync components because of Microsoft licensing but not too many more features.

Here there is my favourite list from features added in 2015 (9 years ago) or before that year:

- 2FA
- zmmboxmove
- backup
- Advanced role management

.

And I'm not even asking to release any of the current source code. A source code snapshot from 2015 for any of the features above should be fine so that Synacor shows some commitment towards source code.

[adrian.gibanel.btactic]

A major concern I had and I believe they also had was that we have had companies jump in and claim they will support the FOSS builds and then it was silence and they never seem to share the build process they used.

Regarding Maldua we have a howto on how to replicate our Github actions based builds so that anyone can replicate the project if ever needed.

When everything is setup the build just consists on just creating a tag and sending it to the Github repo so that Github actions deals with the rest of it.

I invite anyone to fork the repo.

[adrian.gibanel.btactic]

In other words, we have tools that can generate reproducible FOSS builds.

I think you mean that anyone can reproduce the same steps as the builder to build their own version.
Reproducible builds actually mean to build the same source code twice and getting the same equal binaries as an output twice.

If you are interested you can check Debian reproducible builds.

[JDunphy]

I think you mean that anyone can reproduce the same steps as the builder to build their own version.
Reproducible builds actually mean to build the same source code twice and getting the same equal binaries as an output twice.

Agreed. A better term might be "repeatable." In this context, it means that if you’ve successfully built a release, you should expect to do so again with a high degree of confidence. This observation comes from cases where builds would be successful using the available documentation but then fail unexpectedly when reattempted later using the same steps. The current FOSS builds and their publically available & documented tools hopefully have eliminated this concern. Not to diminish the work by Synacor who have made building your own FOSS release also a reality.

Jim

[CSylvain]

I've used Zimbra since it first came out in beta, I've deployed it to companies, I've run it personally, I've bought NE, I've bought Zextras, but I've really lost all confidence in Zimbra recently - even in the paid versions. It just all seems such as mess. And there are serious security vulns coming out quicker than I can process them.

Anyone else feel this way, or just me?

If you take a look at what new features have been added to the OSE/FOSS version that were previously part of the NE version you will notice that not too much has been added from Zimbra 7, specially in the zimbraAdmin part. So Zimbra OSE/FOSS has been stagnant from Zimbra 7.
............................................

I agree with you completely, even if Barry de Graaff remains a key player to continue the interest in using Zimbra FOSS.
Apart from a preference for the classic Template, I no longer really see any interest or even sense in staying on a FOSS version, knowing that an alternative exists and is following its path with developments, or other more evolved solutions.

Zimbra NE remains despite everything the best choice with many developments on its side : https://pm.zimbra.com