14.1 is a huge step for EGroupware and beside all usability improvements and features, we also changed what we define as community edition (CE):
1.8 was a copy of our 2009 subscription version EPL 9.2, that ensured there were many reasons to buy our subscription, which in turn is how whole EGroupware development is financed.
But it also had a couple of drawbacks:
- bugfixes and necessary additions like support for new iPhone versions took a lot effort to backport and were therefore either delayed or sometimes not possible at all
- EGroupware popularity was decreasing as old community version looked quite old-fashioned and lacked features in comparison to alternatives
With 14.1 we are going to change that and community edition will be same software version as our subscription version EPL.
This does not mean all EPL features will become available in the community editions, many have, some have not. We still need to found constant development of EGroupware. Therefore we introduce an other differentiation between CE and EPL version:
The new administration app in 14.1 will no longer include managing of groups!
To elaborate a bit on that: all existing groups stay, but new installations come with only two groups, one for all users (Default) and one for administrations (Admins). Users can be added or remove from groups via user management and ACL or app run-rights can be changed via new ACL management.
This is necessary to ensure a sustainable development of EGroupware, which is in everyones interest.
We will make EPL’s group management available to our longtime community users, as they are important for us! When you submit your next usage statistic, you will receive credentials to install it. *)
Website
We just finished EGroupware’s new website for 14.1 release:
/
Please check it out, share it with friends, like it on Facebook and let us know what you think 🙂
Developing our beautiful new website took a little longer and we need to send release announcement to press in advance. Therefore final release date is move one last time to Thursday 10th July next week.
Keep on testing and translating 14.1 🙂
Ralf
****
Ralf Becker
Director Software Development, Stylite AG
*) EGroupware Community Edition transition period for group management has ended October 2014. Installation credentials are not any more issued according to wiki.egroupware.org/wiki