Frequently Asked Questions

about Open-Xchange Community Edition

What is Open-Xchange?
Open-Xchange Community Edition delivers Smart Collaboration™.  Smart Collaboration simplies everyday life, work and social interactions.  It is based on AJAX, open source software and open standards and offers reliable and scalable messaging and advanced collaboration solutions. Specifically, Open-Xchange Community Edition offers email, calendar, contacts, tasks, documents, bookmarks and knowledge entries.  Unique features of the Open-Xchange Server are: Infostore: a common repository of documents, bookmarks and knowledge entries; Documail: the integration of email and document sharing/version control; Smart Links between all collaboration objects; Smart Privacy that let’s users define read and write access to all collaboration objects; and Universal Access: the ability to access the server from the widest variety of browsers, clients and mobile devices. Organizations use Open-Xchange’s web-based administration module to add, delete and change user roles and entitlements.

What license does Open-Xchange use?
Launched in August 2004, Open-Xchange’s open source project licenses these copyrights to the general public under four license forms: GNU General Public License (copyleft) for the server source code, the “serverpack” ; Creative Commons License Version 2.5 for the digital content and trademarks, the ‘webpack”; a traditional copyright for the technical documentation and user manuals; and an end-user software license agreement for the OXtenders. To see the full text of all relevant licenses, please visit Open-Xchange's legal website.

If you decide to purchase the commercial offering of the Open-Xchange Server, you receive maintenance directly from Open-Xchange Inc. This includes regularly scheduled fixes, patches and updates through a subscription key to the Open-Xchange Maintenance Portal, plus a license key to use non-open source software products that generally operate in proprietary environments (such as Microsoft Windows®). Many business users license our connector for Microsoft Outlook®, which is licensed under an Open-Xchange end-user license agreement. Open-Xchange maintenance, delivered through the Open-Xchange Maintenance Portal, guarantees users long-term quality assured fixes, patches and updates.


What is the signifigance of the Open-Xchange Creative Commons license?
The Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 allows members of the community

• to Share - to copy, distribute and transmit
• to Remix - to adapt Changes to the Open-Xchange digital content may be executed under the following conditions:
• Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
• Noncommercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
• Share Alike: If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

This requires that resellers, system integrators, ISPs and web hosting companies that offer products or Software as a Service using Open-Xchange intellectual property must enter into a reseller agreement with Open-Xchange.


What is the current Open-Xchange community project?
Open-Xchange codename Hyperion is the latest open source project to feature Open-Xchange's next Community Edition and next generation Smart Collaboration products. It was developed to be an easy to use, inclusive and highly scalable collaboration platform. Open-Xchange Community Edition is the fundamental element of the Open-Xchange Hosting Edition, the design used to create 1&1 MailXchange.


Where and how do I get the source code?
One of the key principles of the open source movement is access to source code.  All interested parties are encouraged to download the source and subject it to “peer review”. The core Open-Xchange developers believe in transparency, and are very interested in your assessment of the source code. Open-Xchange welcomes every criticism and suggestion. Please submit your comments via Bugzilla and flag them as ‘source code’. You can download Open-Xchange Community Edition from our public CVS. Simply follow the instructions in this tutorial: Click here


What are the system requirements to use Open-Xchange Community Edition?
For more information on this topic, please follow the link below: http://wiki.open-xchange.com/wiki/index.php?title=Open_Xchange_Installation#II._Requirements


What is the development process behind Open-Xchange Community Edition?
Open-Xchange Community Edition will receive enhancements from the community and from Open-Xchange core developers. The community is kindly encouraged to drive the development of Open-Xchange Community Edition by providing bugfixes, new features, extensions and translations. All community contributions are appreciated, and will accelerate the development of the project.


Where do I get documentation and support to install and configure Open-Xchange Community Edition?
All relevant information to install and configure Open-Xchange Community Edition are available in the Wiki. For additional help to install and configure the open source version of the Open-Xchange Server, please contact the Open-Xchange Forum. Please note: Dedicated and guaranteed email support by Open-Xchange Inc. is available only in combination with a maintenance subscription and based on the use of certified versions of the software and digital content available through the Maintenance Portal.


How can I contribute?
Open-Xchange appreciates the community's contributions of source code, object or binary code, digital content and documentation. Before you contribute, you must create a Bugzilla Account and enter into an Attribution and Assignment Agreement ("AAA"). This "AAA" agreement will protect your rights to Attribution and grant you a license back to the contributed copyrights. Read the attached pdf carefully, add your Bugzilla account name and Bugzilla e-mail adress, and sign it and fax it or mail it back to Open-Xchange Inc.

For all forms of contribution - enhancements, patches or optimizations - please use Open-Xchange's Bugzilla system with your account name and e-mail adress, listed in your "AAA" agreement. To contribute code and patches, please attach it to your Bugzilla entry.

Upon receipt of your enhancement, patch or optimization, the core Open-Xchange development team will review your contribution, and provide you with feedback about the inclusion in the Open-Xchange source code. You will be granted Attribution in that file affected by your contribution.


How can I report bugs?
One of the best ways to contribute to Open-Xchange is to share your experience. Please help us and report the bugs you detected in our Bugzilla system. If you have enhancements, patches or optimizations, provide them via Bugzilla and attach your code to the bug or enhancement. Bugs can be fixed by both the Open-Xchange core development team and members of the community.  Please contribute your bug fixes via Bugzilla after you have created a Bugzilla account and entered into an AAA agreement.  Bug fix' will be very carefully vetted by the Open-Xchange core developers via peer review to make sure that no 'contaminated’ code is entered into the code base and no APIs are broken.


Where can I post my ideas around Open-Xchange?
The Open-Xchange Wiki and the Forum are the ideal places to go to exchange ideas and meet the Open-Xchange core developers and product managers. Open-Xchange is pleased to support a vibrant community that helps driving innovation for all Open-Xchange users. To make sure those ideas will make it into the development roadmap; they have to be entered into Open-Xchange Bugzilla.


Is there a roadmap for Open-Xchange Community Edition?
Yes; please find our roadmap information by clicking here.


Will there be additional user functionality for Open-Xchange Community Edition?
We were eager to share Open-Xchange Community Edition code as quickly as possible with the community. Therefore, not all components of our previous project, Open-Xchange Server 0.8, such as the Forum, Projects and Pinboard, are currently available. We are planning to release these additional aspects of the project to the community as they are completed; please see our project roadmap for more information on expected dates.


Is there an administration module and installation tool for Open-Xchange Community Edition?
We currently offer an administration framework and command line tools for administration, as well as a script for installation on Ubuntu Linux. The first complete version of the administration module and full installer for Ubuntu Linux will be released soon. The community is kindly invited to spread the adoption of Open-Xchange Server by contributing support for other operating systems, e.g.: openSUSE, Fedora, Gentoo, MacOS.


What happens to Open-Xchange Server 0.8?
All information and code of the Open-Xchange Server 0.8, which is the origin of the current (commercial) version of Open-Xchange Server 5, is available in our archive. We will continue to maintain Open-Xchange 0.8 and make updates available to the community.


Is there an update or migration tool available to move up from Open-Xchange Server 0.8 or Open-Xchange Server 5 to Open-Xchange Community Edition?
Not at the moment. We built Open-Xchange Community Edition with optimized server architecture and started the new AJAX-based user interface from scratch. We look forward to the community support to implement those migration tools. Once products built on Open-Xchange Community Edition are ready to be shipped, migration tools for Open-Xchange Server 5 will be available.


Will OXtenders for Open-Xchange Server 0.8 or Open-Xchange Server 5 work with Open-Xchange Community Edition?
No. The new server architecture and AJAX user interface requires us to use a new set of OXtenders with Open-Xchange Community Edition.


Is there a online demo available?
Yes. An online demo of Open-Xchange Server 5 can be accessed by clicking here.
An Online demo of Open-Xchange Community Edition will be availabe soon.

Is there an IRC channel?
The server is irc.freenode.net and the channel is #open-xchange