Zarafa groupware now available with AGPL3 licence

Zarafa is to release the full core of their Linux groupware product under a dual Affero GPL3/commercial licence. The European software vendor has often been criticised for its licence policy. Designed as a competitor to Exchange, its eponymous Linux groupware contains open source components such as MySQL, PHP, Apache,and gSOAP. Zarafa combine this open source software with their own proprietary components.

Last October, Zarafa tried to placate their critics by releasing Z-Push, an Active-Sync implementation under the GPL. Now, the company has taken a second step; apart from the MAPI provider for Outlook, Zarafa has released all proprietary components under AGPL3, (Gnu Affero General Public License). This is the network version of the GPL which grants users a right to the source code of an application made available as a network service, also known as SaaS (software as a service).

The parts now made public include the Zarafa server with MAPI4Linux, a PHP-MAPI extension, the Ajax web client, and Z-Merge for the real time merging of servers. The vendor's dedicated community website provides details and packages to download. Zarafa wants to ensure that other projects remain compatible with theirs, and to that end, plans to work intensively with the Openmapi project along with other European companies such as Topalis, Vipcom and Wilken.

(djwm)