On Mon, Jul 17, 2023 at 10:30:32PM -0600, Michael Slusarz via dovecot wrote:
For a variety of software, maintenance, and (yes) business reasons, there comes a time when decisions need to be made to move beyond existing software. This is completely normal in software development, and there is no "open source" duty to continue to maintain software that is no longer useful (or, is broken or is unmaintained or is not longer best practices or is no longer commercially viable or is duplicative of other features that exist or ....) That decision is what is being done for a selection of longstanding Dovecot features. It is time to move on from them. There are valid reasons to do so.
You are breaking the social contract with your (unpaying) customers. Expect push back and loss of goodwill. And hope that loss of goodwill does not amount to much in the long run.
These Dovecot CE feature decisions are mine. If you are unhappy with them, I ask that you direct your vitriol directly (and privately) to me. The Dovecot Team does fantastic work and has provided software, under open source principles, that runs millions of email servers around the world. They continue to provide invaluable feedback internally in determining the proper balance between open and commercial considerations. They deserve to be thanked by the community, not vilified.
The people I interacted with working on Dovecot are passinate about the work they do. And those kind of people do not usually say "I dont care. I just work here". Whether voiced or acted upon or not, expect loss of goodwill in your developers as well.
-- Eray