Aethera 1.0

gatch writes "theKompany.com released version 1.0 of their cross-platform PIM suite Aethera. KOrganizer is included as a calendar and todo list component. Check out these screenshots. According to Shawn Gordon, theKompany president, 'Actually we are about 2 weeks away from having Aethera work with Kolab [groupware server] - at least that is our sense of it at the moment.' Interesting discussion at KDE.news."

alternatives..

[njan]

..this is looking like a viable alternative to evolution, which aside from raising the level of development for this sort of software, should be beneficial to the desktop linux market; having a viable alternative to outlook is one thing, but having a community in which more than one are being actively developed to compete or provide more choice for companies migrating to different operating systems is excellent. :)

The interface certainly doesn't look as pretty as evolution (although it's hard to tell; after 5 posts, the server is treacley already), but I'm not really into KDE interfaces. *shrug*.. it'll be interesting to see how much of a userbase it builds..

Re:Looks too much like XP

[Seth Finklestein]

That's a very naive assessment of the Open Source community. The goal of Open Source has always been to create high-quality software and distribute it for Free As In Speech. Compare this to closed-source crapware like Micro$oft Outhouse, which is driven by marketing alone. Micro$oft creates new versions of their closed-source crapware every year, expects people to pay $300 to upgrade, and forces the upgrade by breaking backward compatibility.

Open-source file formats, on the other hand, never change. I can take a LaTeX file from 1989 and create a beautiful PostScript file using Free As In Speech software. Try doing that with Micro$oft "software."

Re:Looks too much like XP

[bogie]

" because the Open Source movement has never, EVER been about innovation"

Don't be such a stupid Troll. At some point everything is built upon something which came before it. Your examples are like looking at a Porsche and saying "Yep no innovation there", its just a copy of a Model T.

Re:Looks too much like XP

[zog karndon]

So why don't people apply the same insight to Microsoft? There's got to be a thousand people who say that "Microsoft doesn't innovate - every single one of their products was based on .

I think the parent has a point. Open Source has to be held to exactly the same standard as everybody else.

No Palm support?

[chipster]

Doesn't look like it integrates with Palm OS devices, as Evolution does (and some other KDE PIM apps).

Re:Looks too much like XP

[Dot.Com.CEO]

Mozilla with an LDAP server runs rings about Micro$oft's closed-source ass. You obviously have no idea what the hell Exchange is and what it is designed to do. Also, I find it ridiculous you make fun of the NAME of "Outlook" while juxtaposing it to "Mozilla". Please... I mean, I have never heard of anyone resorting to namecalling a piece of software in order to win an argument... It takes all kinds, I guess...

"I don't recall ever having to install "CRITICAL SECURITY UPDATES" for Mozilla because of some worm going around." Please give me your IP addy. Check this out: one [internetnews.com], two [secunia.com], three [debian.org]. I can go on if you want...

Access sucks. So spake the wise Seth. Why? Please grace us with your obviously paramount knowledge of everything software related. And what, pray tell, is the Open Source alternative? Text files indexed through a bunch of perl scripts outputting LaTEX? Sure.

But you go on, saying Honestly, LaTeX has been superior to that piece of closed-source crapware for 15 years. It appears to me that, frankly, you have no clue what Word is since you insist on comparing it to Latex.

Finally, please grow up and stop writing "Micro$oft". It is idiotic. Trust me on that.

I don't mean to be a troll..

[FryGuy1013]

..but the menus on their web page don't render properly on Mozilla Firebird, which is standards compliant. It looks fine in IE, and I'm sure in Konqueror. I wonder if the developers fell into the "Our web page looks good in the 95% of the world that use IE (and Konqueror), so that's good enough."

I would validate the page and look for the error, but it's been slashdotted since I viewed the page for the first time.

Competition

[Synn]

This is normal in the open source community and actually fairly healthy. What happens is that the community in general sees a need and then you'll have several solid solutions developed in response.

For example, 4 years ago Linux wasn't "Enterprise" enough because it didn't have a journaling filesystem. Today we have several: ext3, reiserfs, jfs, xfs and probably others.

Before that we needed a decent GUI toolset to replace Motif(which was commercial-only). Several sprung up and today we have 2 really solid and widely used ones, GTK and QT.

So while it's confusing today to have so many choices, typically a couple will dominate the "market" once everything settles down.