Berlin, November 29th, 2023 — Roundcube, one of the most deployed webmail apps in the world, joins Nextcloud, home of the most popular open source content collaboration platform. The projects offer decentralized solutions for groupware and online content collaboration, and their alliance offers organizations and their users a road towards digital autonomy.
With the historic partnership the two projects aim to reshape the email landscape. While 50 years old, email still occupies 30% of the day for the average office worker. By joining forces, Nextcloud and Roundcube offer a strong counter-balance to the threats to modern-day email, namely the centralization forces that have plagued other communication platforms like messaging services.
The merger not only underscores the collective strength of the open source community but also highlights our enduring commitment to privacy, security, and user empowerment
explains Frank Karlitschek, CEO and founder of Nextcloud GmbH
Over the next year, Nextcloud will invest in Roundcube, accelerate development and work with its community. Features as well as security improvements are planned and together the two products will offer a more complete offering to a wider range of users. Improving the existing integrations will be explored and the projects will look for synergies at a technical as well as deployment and community level. There are no short-term plans for merging, however, and Roundcube will not replace Nextcloud Mail. Beyond technical impact, the collaboration also strengthens the Coalition for a level playing field, which under leadership of Nextcloud has filed an anti-trust complaint with the European Union and the German government.
Both projects share the same ideology about the role and importance of free software as an independent alternative to the big cloud services.
Thomas Brüderli, Roundcube founder
Nextcloud is looking for developers to join the Roundcube project, and calls on interested developers to reach out. For users and customers of Roundcube and Nextcloud, no changes beyond improved integration and accelerated development is expected in the short term. We invite all users and contributors to join the conversation on help.nextcloud.com/c/roundcube/
About Roundcube
Roundcube is a widely adopted, open-source web-based email client known for its user-friendly interface and robust functionality. With a commitment to privacy and data security, Roundcube has been a trusted email solution for both individuals and businesses. Roundcube is deployed as a webmail interface at thousands of universities from Harvard and Cambridge to the Tata Institute in Mumbay, as well as governments like that of India and the European Commission. Through CPanel, Roundcube is offered by tens of thousands of internet service providers like OVH, Telekom Italy and GoDaddy. On hardware it is the default on the popular Synology NAS devices.
About Nextcloud
Nextcloud Hub is the leading open source platform for communication and collaboration with a strong focus on data protection. The platform excels in ease of use and complies with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) while operating outside of Chinese and American clouds. We place the highest value on security and offer an open, modular architecture that enables organizations to optimize their file storage both inside and outside their organizational boundaries.
Nextcloud has an installed base of many tens of millions, with over 400K installations across the globe at federal and local governments and businesses, with many more deployments in collaboration with major hosting providers like Deutsche Telekom, OVH and IONOS.
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