Kopano Groupware – EOL FAQ
The following lines are written in anticipation of questions, which the End-Of-Life announcement might cause.
FAQ
What does end of life mean in general?
It means the life cycle of a product is coming to a conclusion, which can include availability of the product and/or it’s adjacent services.
What is a life cycle of a software product in general?
A typical software product is improved over time, until issues in fields like maintainability, expandability (features) and/or scalability (performance) become limiting factors for future development.
Some products even have a predetermined life cycles, and therefore fixed EOL dates, which are announced several years upfront, and some do not. EOL dates can not only be applicable to entire products, but to a specific version of a product.
And sometimes a software product will be phased out because a successor has been implemented, offering a newer architecture, better features or even both.
The time period covered within a life cycle can be understood as the time frame, in which usage of the software should take place, as it is supported by the vendor and can be executed in a supported environment / operating system.
I’m a customer, what do I have to do now?
Take your time to assess the situation – there is plenty for any steps you might want to take.
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.
There is no need to rush things, but getting accustomed to the general idea of a migration in H1 / 2024 and execution of it in H2 / 2024 might be advisable.
I’m a customer and I want to extend my current subscription until the EOL is reached – what does this cost?
Subscription renewals can be purchased at proportionally reduced prices. To calculate the applicable price it needs to be divided by 12 and multiplied by the amount of full months to be covered by the subscription.
Example:
You have a pro subscription for 50 users, which would end on the 15th of July 2024. The delta to reach the EOL on the 31st of March 2024 is eight month. The price calculation looks like this:
( ( 50 * 30,- EUR / 12 month ) * 8 months ) = 1.000,- EUR / 8 months
Does the EOL effect Kopano Meet / Web Meetings as well?
Yes, this is the case. Kopano Meet, also referred to as Kopano Web Meetings (as Kopano Meet is it’s successor / replacement), is an additional component / service, which provides video conferencing functionality. After the EOL is reached, the TURN servers, which are required to initiate the connection between participants, will go offline.
Does EOL mean my system is going to shut down or refuse to work?
No, the EOL itself does not effect running Kopano Groupware systems. However, due to the technological aging process and the increasing risk of security issues over time, it is not advisable to continue using an unsupported system beyond the announced EOL date.
Which operating systems are recommended to be used until the EOL?
Currently, the latest Kopano Groupware packages are available for the following operating systems (OS) – you’ll find a short recommendation regarding each of these:
Debian 11
Debian 11 is expected to become EOL in Summer of 2024, well before the EOL of Kopano Groupware.
If a migration to a Kopano Cloud based product/service can not be achieved until summer 2024, we recommend a temporary change of the OS to Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS as an interim solution.
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS (with Standard Support) will reach it’s EOL in April 2025, after the EOL of Kopano Groupware.
It is a reasonable choice to be used until a migration to a Kopano Cloud based product/service took place or the EOL of Kopano Groupware is reached.
Univention Corporate Server 5.0
Univention Corporate Server 5.0 is very likely to be a supported OS until early 2025. At the time of writing, the final EOL of UCS 5.0 is not yet determined/published, as it is depending on the upcoming release of UCS 5.2, which is still in an alpha stage.
Given the current information available and according to Univention’s Maintenance Cycle, which states that each minor release of UCS remains supported for at least another 12 months after the next release was made available, we expect UCS 5.0 to be a reasonable choice as well.
Older / other operating systems
If you are still running Kopano Groupware on any older versions of the operating systems mentioned above or on other operating systems (like RedHat, CentOS, SUSE), we recommend to focus solely on migrating towards a Kopano Cloud based product/service.
Any investment to move to a supported Kopano Groupware system would be very short lived and lead to a migration anyways. Time and resources could be spend better on a migration in the first place.
Related content
If you are a subscribed customer, please read the related posts regarding the EOL announcement and EOL timeline via the links below.
