The history of OTRS

OTRS was born as Open Ticket Request System. Then it became Open Technology Real Services, then just the four letters. What has not changed in twenty-five years is the core: Perl, queues, email becoming tickets. In 2026, the commercial name belongs to EasyVista; the free code lives on in forks. Below is the timeline, without the folklore of “free German ITIL.”.

STTS, SUSE, 0.5

At the end of the 90 decade, SUSE had an internal ticket system called STTS. It worked. The source belonged to the company. Martin Edenhofer joined that team — then moved to Lufthansa, which would become one of the first large customers of what he would write. In September 2001, in a German shared apartment, the conversation about “what we would do if STTS were free” became a project. The name OTRS, according to those in the room, existed mainly because the four-letter domain was still available. GPL, no discussion.

The first public release is 0.5, 9 April 2002: the core runs. Version 1.0, 14 February 2003, after two years of Perl, is the stable release. CGI, MySQL, queues. A ticket gets a number; an article is the email, phone call, or note. Anyone who has used /opt/otrs recognizes the feel.

GmbH, the Perl of Kernel::

In 2003, Edenhofer, André Mindermann, and Burchard Steinbild (SUSE co-founder) establish OTRS GmbH. BSI — Germany's federal information security office — becomes a customer; that leads to SIRIOS, the CERT built on the framework. The code remains Perl. It was not a “web app with a little Perl”: it was Perl from floor to ceiling.

The tree admins still find in Znuny follows the same idea as in 2003:

# /opt/otrs/Kernel/System/Ticket.pm
package Kernel::System::Ticket;
use strict;
use warnings;

sub TicketCreate {
    my ( $Self, %Param ) = @_;
    # Queue, Customer, Priority, State — o ticket nasce aqui
}

Kernel::System::* is the core. Kernel::Modules::* is the agent's screen. Kernel::Output::HTML renders it. The frontend started in plain HTML; JavaScript came later and could be disabled. From 4 onward, the template engine is Template Toolkit (.tt). Database: MySQL on day one, then PostgreSQL, Oracle, Db2, MSSQL — 4 trimmed it to MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and Oracle. In front, Apache with mod_perl. Email comes in through PostMaster (Postfix, Sendmail, procmail). The GenericAgent.pl closes spam in the queue at three in the morning. Extra packages install through Package Manager, OPM format — the CPAN of the helpdesk. Running multiple PHP versions on the same host does not apply here: the runtime is Perl 5.

From 2.0 to 6: ITSM, AGPL, the stock exchange

Version 2.0 (1º Aug 2005) brings PGP, S/MIME, 19 languages, and the package web depot. Version 2.2 (2 Jul 2007) adds Service and SLA; that same year brings OTRS::ITSM 1.0, the first open source ITIL ITSM with commercial support. The GmbH becomes OTRS AG. On 23 December 2009 the stock debuts on Frankfurt's Entry Standard. Version 2.4 (22 Jul 2009) changes the license to AGPL-3.

Version 3.0 (15 Nov 2010) redesigns the interface. The Wikimedia Foundation uses OTRS as its Volunteer Response Team — the “Wikipedia OTRS” editors know. Version 4 (2014) drops the leading zero, adds Object Manager and flat design. Version 5 (2015) is responsive, gains the Daemon, and Windows ceases to be a platform. In 2015, the AG launches OTRS Business Solution (paid modules on top of the free core) and counts 150 thousand installations. Version 6 (21 November 2017) is the last Community Edition major: 38 languages, proper time zones. The AG's final patch in this line is 6.0.30, 25 September 2020.

Edenhofer leaves the AG at the end of 2011. In 2012/2013, he founds Znuny GmbH in Berlin — consulting on top of the product he had invented. In 2016, another ticket, another stack: Zammad, in Ruby on Rails. Perl stayed with OTRS.

Community Edition, Christmas 2020

In April 2018, the AG announces the shift: what was OTRS + Business Solution becomes ((OTRS)) Community Edition (the free one) and OTRS (the paid one). New features ship first to paying customers; CE would receive them with a delay of roughly two years, then security fixes only. 7 (18 Nov 2018) already follows this line: SPA, Vue.js in the customer portal. 8 (27 Mar 2020) brings the SPA to agents too. Perl remains in the backend; the browser now speaks REST.

In 23 December 2020 the AG's feed announces: Community Edition, including security fixes, ends on 1º January 2021. Eight days, over Christmas, with no CE 7. On 24 February 2021, the company confirms: CE remains suspended. The technical message in the release notes for 6 was “using this is high risk.” Wikimedia migrates the Volunteer Response Team to the fork in April 2021 and changes the name: from OTRS to VRT.

Znuny, OTOBO, KIX: the fork

The code was GPL/AGPL. The OTRS name was not. Those who kept Perl free had to change the sign.

• KIX (c.a.p.e. IT, Chemnitz) — the first major fork, 2015/2016, based on 5 + the KIX4OTRS package. Today it is hybrid: Light on GitHub, the rest commercial, much of the stack rewritten.
• OTOBO (Rother OSS) — 2020, based on 6. Docker out of the box, Elasticsearch, a new portal. In 2026, the stable line is 11.0 (11.0.17 in July); 10.0 ended on 1º Jan 2026. Still Perl — the official container has already tested 5.42.
• Znuny — January 2021, Edenhofer's own company. A bit-for-bit fork of 6.0.30, compatible LTS for those who did not want to rewrite packages. Then came the feature line (Znuny 7). On 19 August 2026 the stable release is 7.3.6 and the LTS is 6.5.24. Native SAML, outgoing email profiles, GPL-3. The git repository is github.com/znuny/Znuny.

In March 2021, a group of integrators forms the OTTER Alliance around Znuny LTS. OPAR (opar.perl-services.de), the Perl community's package repository, outlived the AG. In December 2024, the French company EasyVista buys more than 90% of OTRS AG (Oberursel) and, in 2025, redesigns the commercial logo. The paid product continues; free Perl does not return to that house.

What OTRS is — and what it is not

Queue, agent, customer, article, SLA, process, FAQ, CMDB if you install ITSM. It is the helpdesk that eats email. GLPI inventories the laptop and closes the asset ticket; OTRS/Znuny closes the ticket that arrived in Postfix. The Zabbix measures ICMP; the Nagios pages people. Neither replaces the queue.

The other famous Perl ticket system is Request Tracker (Best Practical, Jesse Vincent). OTRS won the European service desk market; RT stayed in the Unix-admin world. Both speak DBI. Only one became a stock-market AG.

Anyone still seeing ((OTRS)) Community Edition 6 on the screen: that is 6.0.30 without patches since January 2021. The compatible jump is Znuny LTS. For a new stack with the same DNA, OTOBO. For the AG's product, pay EasyVista. The three do not mix in the same Kernel/Config.pm.

Running today, on your Linux

The practical question from anyone arriving at this post is simple: I want an email ticket queue at my company — what do I install in 2026? Three honest answers, in this order.

Znuny is the path for those already running OTRS 6. It is the bit-for-bit fork of 6.0.30 made by the original creator, so migration is as smooth as it gets: the same Kernel/Config.pm, the same OPM packages, the same /opt/otrs.

# Debian/Ubuntu — dependências do Perl e do banco
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y apache2 libapache2-mod-perl2 mariadb-server   libdbd-mysql-perl libtimedate-perl libnet-dns-perl libnet-ldap-perl   libio-socket-ssl-perl libpdf-api2-perl libsoap-lite-perl libtext-csv-xs-perl   libjson-xs-perl libapache-dbi-perl libxml-libxml-perl libxml-libxslt-perl   libyaml-libyaml-perl libarchive-zip-perl libcrypt-eksblowfish-perl   libencode-hanextra-perl libmail-imapclient-perl libtemplate-perl   libdatetime-perl

# baixa e instala
cd /opt
sudo curl -fLO https://download.znuny.org/releases/znuny-latest-7.3.tar.gz
sudo tar xzf znuny-latest-7.3.tar.gz
sudo mv znuny-7.3.* otrs

# usuário do serviço e permissões
sudo useradd -r -d /opt/otrs -c 'Znuny user' otrs
sudo usermod -aG www-data otrs
sudo /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.SetPermissions.pl

Then connect Apache to mod_perl and open installer.pl in the browser:

sudo ln -s /opt/otrs/scripts/apache2-httpd.include.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/zzz_otrs.conf
sudo a2enmod perl deflate filter headers
sudo systemctl restart apache2
# http://SEU-SERVIDOR/otrs/installer.pl

And do not forget the daemon and cron — without them the system appears to work, but escalation, notifications, and email retrieval simply do not happen:

sudo -u otrs /opt/otrs/bin/Cron.sh start
sudo -u otrs /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.Daemon.pl start

OTOBO is the path for anyone starting from scratch who wants a modern stack. The reference installation uses containers, which resolves the struggle with dozens of Perl modules:

git clone https://github.com/RotherOSS/otobo-docker.git
cd otobo-docker
cp .docker_compose_env_http .env
docker compose up -d
# http://SEU-SERVIDOR/otobo/installer.pl

Zammad is the third option — the other system from the same Edenhofer, in Ruby on Rails instead of Perl. A much more modern interface, without twenty years of legacy. If you have no legacy to preserve, it is worth including in the comparison.

And the warning that closes this section: if you still run ((OTRS)) Community Edition 6, you are on a base without security fixes since January 2021. That is five years of unapplied CVE fixes in a system that, by definition, receives email from strangers and is exposed on the internet. Migration is not an improvement — it is urgent.

Timeline

• End of the 1990 decade — SUSE runs STTS, an internal closed ticket system; Martin Edenhofer is on the team.
• September 2001 — in a German shared apartment, the idea for OTRS is born; the name comes from the available four-letter domain.
• 9 April 2002 — 0.5, the first public release.
• 14 February 2003 — stable 1.0: CGI, MySQL, queues.
• 2003 — Edenhofer, Mindermann, and Steinbild found OTRS GmbH; Germany's BSI becomes a customer.
• 1º August 2005 — 2.0 brings PGP, S/MIME, and 19 languages.
• 2 July 2007 — 2.2 brings Service and SLA; OTRS::ITSM 1.0 ships that same year.
• 22 July 2009 — 2.4 changes the license to AGPL-3.
• 23 December 2009 — OTRS AG debuts on the Frankfurt stock exchange's Entry Standard.
• 15 November 2010 — 3.0 redesigns the interface.
• Late 2011 — Edenhofer leaves the AG; in 2012/2013 he founds Znuny GmbH.
• 2014 — 4 brings Object Manager and Template Toolkit.
• 2015 — 5 is responsive and gains the Daemon; OTRS Business Solution is born; the KIX fork appears.
• 2016 — Edenhofer launches Zammad, in Ruby on Rails.
• 21 November 2017 — 6, the last Community Edition major.
• April 2018 — the AG separates ((OTRS)) Community Edition from paid OTRS.
• 27 March 2020 — 8 brings the SPA to agents too.
• 25 September 2020 — 6.0.30, the last patch in the free line.
• 23 December 2020 — the AG announces the end of Community Edition for 1º January. Eight days' notice, over Christmas.
• January 2021 — Znuny is born, a bit-for-bit fork of 6.0.30; OTOBO had already been around since 2020.
• March 2021 — integrators form the OTTER Alliance around Znuny LTS.
• April 2021 — Wikimedia migrates to the fork and renames the service VRT.
• December of 2024 — France's EasyVista buys more than 90% of OTRS AG.
• 2026 — Znuny 7.3.6 and LTS 6.5.24; OTOBO on the 11.0 line. Free Perl continues in the forks.

Wrap-up

An STTS that could not be published, a four-letter domain, a package Kernel::System::Ticket. 0.5 fit in an attic in Oberursel; the AG's 8 is an SPA; Znuny's 7.3 is still Perl, still /opt/otrs, still PostMaster eating the mailbox. The free git repository: github.com/znuny/Znuny. If you are upgrading: read the scripts/Migration — the habit of running SQL from version to version came in the same package in 2002.

Linux-Magazin (STTS): Anfänge deutscher Trouble-Ticketsysteme · the AG's timeline: corporate.otrs.com/history · 2018 shift: Open Source Strategy Changes · Christmas 2020: Attention! Security risk with OTRS 6 · why the fork: Znuny — Why we forked · heise (Jan 2021): Znuny: Neues Leben für die CE · Wikipedia: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/OTRS · Znuny 7.3.6: download.znuny.org · EasyVista: December 2024 acquisition.