At Kopano we love Christmas because Christmas is a time of sharing. And as an open source company, sharing is something we do every day. It’s in our veins. In 2017 we extended and optimized our own collaboration suite and in 2018 we plan to push the overall adoption of open source collaboration.
The Power of Open Source
We’ve believed in open source from the start. And although there are many ways to ‘do’ open source, for us AGPL was and still is the way to go. Why? Because we feel that open source should benefit everyone and that anyone who makes changes to the source code shares these changes with the community. In this way, we can learn from each other, benefit from each other’s skills, keep an eye on each other and act quickly when we see that something is not right.
What’s open source without community?
Open source software wouldn’t exist at this scale without its communities so I’m very happy that in 2017 we’ve been able to meet and work with many members of these communities. We started by participating in FOSDEM in February, followed by the Open Source Linux Days in Copenhagen, joined the OPEN!-Konferenz in Stuttgart and attended many more events. Next year we’ll be on tour again. Have a look at our event calendar to find out where you can meet us in 2018.
Kopano API on Kopano.io
At the request of the community, we redesigned our community website, giving it a better look and making it easier to navigate. In the course of 2018 you’ll find our new API here, which will allow more developers to integrate with Kopano’s stack.
Your Data on Your Terms
A hot topic this year was GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). With the new EU wide data privacy laws taking effect on the 25th of May 2018, companies are trying to figure out what it takes to be compliant. Good news for Kopano customers, because Kopano already gives you full control over your data. If you are interested in learning more about the (possible) consequences of GDPR and ePrivacy, we published a whitepaper by privacy expert Dan Shearer and a video interview with IT lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet on the topic which you can find our website.
Preparing for GDPR
As said, GDPR will come into force in May next year. I see it as our responsibility to educate our customers and community, showing them how they can protect their (data) privacy with Kopano. We will, therefore, continue to cooperate with experts in both privacy and technology fields, making sure that people who use our software stay in control of their data.
To facilitate the highest level of control we’ll continue to innovate for self-hosted setups. Think about flexible storage backends and authentication like OpenID Connect that will offer interoperability for users among applications.
Augmenting Teamwork
You might already have seen it popping up a few times: our motto for 2018 will be augmenting teamwork. We chose this motto because we live in a time of technological innovations. A time of disruptive technologies that let us work through barriers. At Kopano we take advantage of these new technologies, integrating them into our collaboration software suite, helping organizations augment teamwork.
In terms of technology, from January until now, our team delivered over 30 final releases. And not just any releases! Imagine how proud we were when earlier this year we announced the integration of Kopano and the Chat(Ops) solution Mattermost. Or when we joined the Advisory board of The Document Foundation and extended our open source collaboration suite with LibreOffice Online. To think this is only the beginning, the possibilities are endless.
Pushing adoption of open source collaboration
In 2018 we’ll push adoption of open source collaboration technologies to an even broader audience by adding document collaboration to our software stack for one. This new service, we call Kopano Documents, glues together existing storage solutions and LibreOffice Online. We’ll also help to make LibreOffice Online packages available for the community and customers. These customers will be offered enterprise support.
No People, No Technology
Last but certainly not least, there are the people. It’s people who make our software and people who sell it. Those who use it, and those who help others when they have questions. All these people get their energy and drive from interacting with others. They enjoy sharing knowledge in order to solve problems and find solutions. Working alongside such passionate, dedicated people is important for us. I could say, as an open source company, it is a fundamental part of our business model.
All and all it was a year of positive emotions and great results, so I’d like to say thank you to all those people that helped make our achievements possible. To our customers, our partners, our team and community: it has been a great pleasure working with you in the past two years and I look forward collaborating with all of you in the years to come.
For now, Happy Holidays and a Wonderful New Year!
