The long memory of lightweight software
In tech, software is too often treated as disposable. Features are bloated, frameworks are abandoned and codebases are discarded in the name of the next big thing. At Krosoft, we tend to look at it differently. We believe great software can stand the test of time through care, maintenance and thoughtful change. This is the story of how a small app survived multiple eras of internet history, what its journey taught us about the craft of development and where we are taking it next: RSVP for Confluence.
What is RSVP for Confluence? A lightweight, frictionless event management tool, making event registration simple. Available on Marketplace for Cloud and Data Center.
Small app, long history
RSVP for Confluence has a surprisingly long history. Its journey began nearly two decades ago, around 2007, deep inside Atlassian. A developer named Jens Schumacher, who today runs Released.so, built a simple macro. He just wanted an easy, lightweight way for colleagues to sign up for movie nights and internal social events. It was simple, sharp, and focused.
“Honestly, not sure the use case is quite there for it. Back then I wrote it because we organised movie nights or other social events at Atlassian, and I was looking for an easy way to get people to sign up. No idea how much it was actually used by customers.” — Jens Schumacher, original developer
Over the years, as the Atlassian ecosystem grew into a global powerhouse, this small macro quietly moved through the ecosystem, passed from one hand to another.
Its next chapter involved Stefan Kohler and Ron Smeets, co-founders of Kensas. The app helped shape their work in the Atlassian ecosystem. Kensas later became Prepend, which is now Communardo Netherlands.
Asit van der Heijden at ASD Apps safeguarded the Cloud app’s compliance and security.
It experienced a brief, caretaking chapter on the Data Center side with Jeffrey Peeters and Martijn Dull at Yiraphic.
Finally, in March 2025, it came home to us when Stefan Krooshof took over the app for Krosoft. The app gives us a concrete product, a customer, momentum and a platform for learning.
To us, these names aren’t just entries in a historical changelog; they are role models. They kept the software alive across decades of shifting corporate and technical landscapes.
A lesson in migration
Maintaining an active app across multiple decades means confronting the brutal reality of platform shifts. In 2023, RSVP for Confluence hit a historic low point: an unnoticed Marketplace requirement temporarily delisted the Cloud version, wiping out almost the entire user base. Then, on 15 February 2024, Atlassian ended support for Server. The app was nearly gone.
But successive maintainers kept it going. Since taking it over in 2025, we have continued their work. For the customer, for the craft and for the story. Today, managing this single tool across three historical variations has provided us with a surprisingly thorough understanding of how Confluence has evolved under the hood:
Data Center (self-hosted)
The app originally started as a Server app and was later published for Data Center. As more teams move to the cloud, Krosoft also re-released the app for Data Center clients in 2025, making it available to self-hosted teams again.
RSVP now provides an automated migration path from Data Center to Cloud.
Cloud (the Connect era)
Back in 2014, Stefan Kohler ported the app to Confluence OnDemand, making it one of the absolute earliest Atlassian Connect apps in existence. Quietly, RSVP became part of the shift from Server to Cloud.
Cloud (the Forge era)
To secure the app’s survival, we migrated RSVP for Confluence Cloud from Connect to Atlassian’s Forge framework. Following Atlassian’s approval, the Forge version became publicly available on Marketplace on 1 June 2026.
Tracing RSVP’s journey from an early Server macro to its 2026 Forge version has given us a solid, hands-on understanding of the platform. We don’t just know how to build apps; we understand how users and data interact within Confluence, and how that has changed over time.
Built for today
It’s lightweight, but it’s solid. RSVP for Confluence is growing up. While customers love the simplicity of a clean, uncluttered interface, they also need the app to hold up under real pressure. We have re-engineered the app’s core to support larger events, while keeping the sign-up experience simple—from an internal movie night to a company-wide gathering.
In Cloud, custom RSVP questions also let teams collect the extra information they need when people sign up.
What’s next in time?
With the Cloud app now running on Forge, we are building the next chapter. We are transitioning RSVP for Confluence into a more capable event management app, without losing its simplicity. The starting point will always be the simple “I’m attending” button. We also want to make the app available outside of Confluence, providing standalone web registration pages for external guests.
Honoring the past, engineering tomorrow
RSVP for Confluence has been passed from one hand to another. It has changed platforms, lost customers and nearly disappeared more than once. But somehow, it is still here. It is living proof that software can outlive its original moment, move through different generations of hands and still stand as a proud foundation for future innovation.
Maintaining this app gives us a place to learn from real use. A way to start shaping our own ideas and our own products. RSVP gives that next chapter a practical starting point: a focused tool that makes one part of everyday work simpler. As we work towards the next generation of time-saving tools, we keep one eye firmly on where we came from. After all, you can’t master time tomorrow if you don’t respect the time that came before.
Krosoft builds and maintains Jira and Confluence apps, integrations and internal tools that make everyday work simpler. As we shape our own products, time is becoming a stronger thread: helping teams spend less of it on repetitive work and more on what matters. That’s why we engineer tomorrow’s solutions with a deep respect for the past. Krosoft. Tools for time.
Written with Sander of iets Sanders.
