Kopano Introduction to Kopano Collaboration Platform
Channel: FOSDEM
Date: 2018-03-11

by Jelle van der Waa

At: FOSDEM 2017

This talk will introduce Kopano, a fork of Zarafa which aims to provide afully AGPLv3-licensed collaboration platform. The Kopano backend offers ICAL,POP3 / IMAP connectivity. Our Kopano-webapp web-based front-end offersfunctionality similar to Outlook. It also comes with optional WebRTC and Filessharing integration. Mobile device and outlook connectivity are provided bythe Z-Push project which implements the ActiveSync protocol.

Kopano is a fork of Zarafa and a full AGPLv3 collaboration platform.

Kopano implements the MAPI specification and uses a MySQL database forstorage, attachments can be stored on disk or in S3 to reduce the size of theMySQL database. Administrators are free to choose any MTA to be used incombination with Kopano.

The core of Kopano is one (or multiple) kopano-server('s) which providestorage and authentication via various supported user backends: LDAP / AD / DBand PAM. All other functionality is implemented in MAPI clients, which areclients of the server and can be written in PHP or Python through use of ourown bindings. These clients communicate MAPI over SOAP, which means that theserver can not act as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Exchange since thekopano-server does not implement the wire-protocol.

The 'MAPI clients' provide the rest of the collaboration functionality:

  * kopano-gateway IMAP, POP3 server (conversion of IMAP ❮=❯ MAPI, POP3 ❮=❯ MAPI)  * kopano-ical ICAL server (conversion of ICAL ❮=❯ MAPI)  * kopano-webapp An web-based front-end which offers functionality similar to Outlook  * z-push PHP ActiveSync implementation, adds connectivity with Mobile devices (IMAP, Maildir, MAPI =❯ ActiveSync)  * kopano-dagent Interface between MTA / MAPI. Converts EML's to MAPI Messages. Python plugins for administrators  * kopano-spooler Interface between MTA / MAPI. Converts MAPI Messages to EML's. Python plugins for administrators

## Upstream support

The project is working with Debian maintainers to get Kopano packaged inDebian stretch.

https://wiki.debian.org/Groupware/Kopano

There is an Open SuSe Build service repository.

https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/server:mail:kopano

## Python-kopano

Since the rewrite of search from C++ to Python, there has been a lot ofdevelopment towards a high level Python API for Kopano. Which allows aprogrammer to interact with Kopano as a client without MAPI knowledge. Abackup tool has later been build on this high level API and we hope to removemore low-level C++ with Python and maybe eventually rewrite the whole serverin Python and interact with components using a JSON protocol.

Project page - https://www.kopano.io Git repository -https://stash.kopano.io/repos?visibility=public


Room: H.2215 (Ferrer)
Scheduled start: 2017-02-05 09:20:00