Statement regarding the upcoming version 5.2 of the Univention Corporate Server
In early summer of this year Univention published first information about their intention to release UCS 5.2 as the successor to UCS 5.0, while UCS 5.1 shall be only a stepping stone during the upgrade process.
Since UCS is based on Debian, re-basing it from Debian 10 to Debian 12 by this decision is in general a good call. It prolongs the viability of the base, as Debian 11’s EOL is already expected to take place in summer of 2024.
Unfortunately Kopano Groupware is not available for Debian 12. This is due to the fact that software requirements can not be met on Debian 12. The most prominent candidate (but not the only one) of such technical dependency is PHP, which was already discussed here. So there was reasonable suspicion, shipping Kopano Groupware on UCS 5.2 might not be possible.
With the availability of the alpha release of UCS 5.2, which is aimed to be a testing foundation for app providers, we can now confirm the technological requirements of Kopano Groupware and it’s components can no longer be met on UCS 5.2.
Therefore we hereby announce the NON-availability of the following apps in the upcoming UCS 5.2:
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Kopano Core
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Kopano WebApp
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Kopano WebMeetings
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Z-Push for Kopano
In a nutshell: UCS 5.0 is going to be the last UCS version these apps will be available on.
At the time of writing UCS 5.2 is still in an alpha stage. It’s actual release date is yet to be determined / announced – and so is the EOL of UCS 5.0. According to Univention’s Maintenance Cycle UCS 5.0 will be supported at least for 12 months after the next release was made available.
As Kopano Groupware itself is becoming EOL on the 31st of March 2025, we recommend anyone, who wants to adopt UCS 5.2 to focus on migration of your email / groupware needs first in 2024.
If you are a satisfied customer so far, we encourage you to check out the succeeding product Kopano Cloud, which is available in various forms for different market segments – be it as a service or an appliance by our OEM Partners.
Kopano Cloud can easily be used alongside an Univention Corporate Server. Using the Kopano Cloud AD Connect tool, an Univention Corporate Server can remain the primary identity provider for your organisation – no apps from the Univention App Center are required.
At the time of writing, the OEM Partner linudata GmbH recently released a new version of their Kopanion appliance. It incorporates AD Connect and explicitly supports the sync with an Univention Corporate Server.
