Fosdem and future of SOgo

February 12, 2025

Dear SOGo community,

On the weekend of February 1st and 2nd, we attended FOSDEM and it was delightful. It was a pleasure connecting with so many of you, both regular faces and newcomers. We definitely enjoy the experience and hope to do it again next year!

During the event, we shared some exciting news: we are embarking on the development of the new version, simply called SOGo 6!

Why a SOGo 6?

As you may know, SOGo has been around for 20 years, and its current technology stack - AngularJS for the frontend and Objective-C for the backend - has become outdated and difficult to maintain.

As a consequence, it is difficult and time-consuming to implement new features and even the simplest bug is a headache to investigate and fix. The existing architecture also makes it hard to introduce enhancements that weren’t originally anticipated and scheduled. Additionally, these older technologies are completely repulsive for anyone that would like to contribute, refraining the community contribution

For all these reasons, SOGo 6 will be a complete overhaul with a modern stack:

• Backend: Python
• Frontend: React.js

What to expect with SOGo 6?

All the core features you know will remain: email, calendars, and address books with collaborative capabilities. Synchronization with software like Thunderbird and Outlook will also be preserved. And of course, SOGo will continue to be open-source and free.

We also aim to make the transition from SOGo 5 to SOGo 6 as seamless as possible. Migration scripts and detailed documentation will be provided to ensure a smooth upgrade.

We are at the very beginning and we are making a complete review of all the features already available, and the ones requested by the community on the mailing list and in our bug trackers.

Our goal is to release SOGo 6 next year, though there’s a lot of work ahead. We’ll keep you updated throughout the process.

We will get back to you next time around the beginning of April to share our progress.

What about SOGO 5?

The current version will still be maintained but only for bug fixes and patches

The upcoming 5.12 release has been slightly reorganized to align with our new direction, so some roadmap features may be missing.

Additionally, a DevContainer will be introduced to simplify SOGo development.

We are very excited for this next chapter of SOGo and its community and hope you are as well!.

A quick note: We plan to leave X in 2025, so we invite you to follow us on Mastodon instead!

SOGo Team