Roundcube Community Forum

News and Announcements => General Discussion => Topic started by: SimbaLion on September 24, 2015, 01:19:22 AM

Title: Roundcube Next, what happened?
Post by: SimbaLion on September 24, 2015, 01:19:22 AM
After a successful crowdfunding campaign raising over $100,000 dollars, they have apparently vanished. All activity on their twitter stream has ceased, and there have been zero anouncements in 84 days since the campaign ended. Some backers have started commenting and tweeting asking for progress and they've been getting ignored.

So what happened? Does anyone on this forum have some insight? It won't be long before people will say the campaign was theft, if some kind of progress doesn't become apparent.

I hope it's okay to discuss this here since there is no place else to talk about it, and the subtopic for the forum says anything and everything.. I checked that before posting.
Title: Re: Roundcube Next, what happened?
Post by: alec on September 24, 2015, 03:58:48 AM
It wasn't a theft. There is a serious company behind the campain. I know they work on this, but I don't know the current status. Probably vacations delayed it a little bit, but I'm sure they will give us something soon.
Title: Re: Roundcube Next, what happened?
Post by: SKaero on September 24, 2015, 11:12:34 AM
I complete faith in the project since its backed by Kolab who been working in the open source community for a long time. I've attached the last update that was sent out from August 27th in case you didn't get it.

Code: [Select]
Hello!

We wrapped up the Roundcube Next Crowdfunding campaign the othermonth
and our funds have arrived! We are now busy getting all the perks ready to go
... and that includes the Backstage Pass area.

The forums area is set up, but we're still populating with the initial
content. As soon as that is done, you will get another email with the address
and your login information.

In the Backstage area you'll gain access to developer updates and progress,
participate in polls to help direct our Roundcube Next effort, and an open
area to discuss with each other and the developers anything and everything to
do with Roundcube. As pre-releases emerge, this will become an especially
important area for all of us to gather feedback, help with initial deployment,
etc.

... and if the Backstage proves to be the vibrant community mixing spot we
hope it will be, then when Roundcube Next starts getting stable releases for
production use we'll open the forums up to the broader community and use them
in ongoing basis for this sort of community-developer interaction.

We are very excited to get this all moving forward with you, and we've been
busy at work on the Roundcube Next foundational / core design, and can't wait
to share our progress with you in the Backstage area!

I do apologize for the lengthy delay in getting this email out (it has been
sitting in my outbox for some weeks now ...) but the volunteer admins that
oversee the Roundcube servers (which includes the ones hosting the mailing
lists) had a number of interruptions and hurdles on the road to getting some
new infrastructure set up for this mailing list so we can reach out to you all
more easily ... but now that's finally done and we can start bringing you all
into the loop on a regular basis as to Roundcube Next progress.

p.s. If you also grabbed the Kolaborator perk, you will receive a Kolab Now
credit to use with the Kolab Now account of your choice with your Backstage
Pass login info.

--
Aaron Seigo
Roundcube Team Member
Title: Re: Roundcube Next, what happened?
Post by: SimbaLion on September 24, 2015, 01:07:52 PM
That's great news! I am very excited about the project. I only started questioning it when I saw posts from backers saying "Where is the backstage forum?" a few days ago.

I think they need someone to handle communications because ignoring people on twitter is a disasterous approach to crowd-funding. Crowd-funding has been around for a few years and the 'correct' way to do it has been tempered in that period. Frequent communications are practically mandatory, they shouldn't be considered a 'backers' perk.

A lot can be accomplished in a day, and a whole lot can be accomplished in 30 days, so there's really no justification for having nothing to say after a month, and it's nearly been 3 months. If they would simply communicate with people there would not be fears that they were taking the money and running, which is exactly what some are thinking.

An e-mail is great, but it's backers only, which is not great, it doesn't offer any details, and it makes excuses for being late, and I've never met a person who says "Thanks for making excuses! I was hoping for that!"
Title: Re: Roundcube Next, what happened?
Post by: bburg on November 30, 2019, 05:28:33 AM
No news for more than 4 years. Can we conclude that this project https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/roundcube-next--2#/ (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/roundcube-next--2#/) is dead?
A pity for the backers. :'(