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KDE GUI

Kroupware Komplete 310

Posted by michael from the enough-with-the-k-jokes-already dept.
sorinm writes "The three companies behind the Kroupware Project (Erfrakon, Intevation and Klarälvdalens Datakonsult) announced its successful completion today. This new groupware approach using only Free Software is now available in stable versions under the Kolab brand name. Commercial support on an individual basis is already offered with further support options to come."
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Kroupware Komplete More

Kroupware Komplete

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  • Hopefully this fulfills the Exchange Need (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rowanxmas ( 569908 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @12:24AM (#6538291)
    It seems that /. folk are constantly talking about the need for a FOSS collaboration thingy, and this seems like it should be it. So, for all you folks who are always writing in telling how "Exchange is so great...blah", it seems like this is the answer.

    • Re:Hopefully this fulfills the Exchange Need (Score:5, Informative)

      by afidel ( 530433 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @12:35AM (#6538321)
      Nope, you still need a commercial connector to use Outlook with this. We have had the ability to do that for some time (things like the old HP Exchange alternative and the suite from Oracle, what most of us want is the equivilant of SAMBA, a free and FREE drop in replacement for Exchange that doesn't cost anything to implement so long as we don't need support.

      • So what (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Rhinobird ( 151521 )
        They aren't trying to make a drop in replacement of Exchange. They are trying to make a functional replacement of Exchange. Also I think the German's needed something for their spiffy linux desktops to do besides look pretty.

      • Re:Hopefully this fulfills the Exchange Need (Score:5, Interesting)

        by hdparm ( 575302 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @01:16AM (#6538442) Homepage
        But I do not want to use Outlook at all. Evolution or Mozilla will do just fine for say, everybody. Plus, talking about free/FREE - why is everybody prepared to pay big bucks to Microsoft or Oracle but not to some other company for said Outlook connector, if they really want to use Outlook? That would be heaps cheaper option.
        • Mozilla's calandering SUCKS balls. Sorry but it does. I've been using it since it first got released and it isn't even stable or usefull enough for a single person yet, let alone as the frontend to a groupware package. Evolution would be nice IF it ran on windows, but it doesn't, and unfortunatly I have to run windows at my employer on at least one of my desktops because of various proprietary apps that don't run under WINE. Also it's not that we won't pay big bucks, we will, but there are tons of instances
          • I guess the question is how well does the Kalender match up? There is no reason to use other programs if all the KOffice stuff works...unless you are like us and like options.
            But in terms of being locked into software I would prefer Kroupware, including "Kolab" which is what this is actually called (RTFA?), over M$Office.
            also why would you need to pay for licenses for a FOSS product?

          • Re:Hopefully this fulfills the Exchange Need (Score:5, Informative)

            by metamatic ( 202216 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @09:14AM (#6539373) Homepage Journal
            You could replace Exchange servers with Domino servers using iNotes Access for Microsoft Outlook.

            Rather than the ~3,000 users per server max of Exchange, you can load up to 100,000 simultaneous users on an iSeries machine running Domino...

      • Re:Hopefully this fulfills the Exchange Need (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Jeremiah Cornelius ( 137 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @01:32AM (#6538486) Homepage Journal
        Pardon me French, but here goes:

        Outlook is a shithole of bugs, incompatibilities, dangerous security flaws and second rate patches which obfuscate its vulnerabilities instead of repair them.

        The quicker Evolution lives up to its name, and departs [ximian.com] from an Outlook-style UI model, the better. There are real performance issues they need to work on as well. Big IMAP stores are slow.

        Anybody really interested in moving AWAY from outlook/exchange should dig Open Groupware [opengroupware.org], forked from a stable commercial implementation that uses Cyrus, Postgres and OpenLDAP. They even have a ready-to-run Knoppix CD-ROM image, for evaluation testing:
        "The OGo Knoppix is the fastest way to get a running OGo demo, as it requires no installation - just boot from it and you get a working system, including a Cyrus IMAP4 server."

        • The quicker Evolution lives up to its name, and departs from an Outlook-style UI model, the better.

          Hate to tell you, but it looks like they're going in the same direction [microsoft.com], as far as UI goes...

          I've been using Outlook 2k3 for months now, and that UI is definitely better...unfortunately, Outlook is still a buggy mess, especially in beta.

          I have high hopes for this new Exchange wannabe, but like someone else said, to sell this I know dozens of users who will huff and puff and cry about "having to learn somet
    • God, another crappy name. Kroupware? Does absolutely everything have to begin with a "K"?

      If my boss asks me the software I recommend, will he be more keen to something called Exchange or to something called Kroupware?

      Why are so many projects so lazy with their names? Believe it or not, there is a bit of brand recognition that comes into play, and even if it is something trivial and meaningless when it comes to technical merits, it's a lot more friendly and accessible to actually come up with a nice pro

  • Has anybody tried it yet? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @12:29AM (#6538303)
    How well does it do compared to EX-change?

    IOW: is it a "Komplete" software product, or the usual 90% GNU solution?

    Does anybody care to write a compairison feature and integration wise?

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @08:18AM (#6539225)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Kolab and Kontact, I'm confused. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by $calar ( 590356 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @12:35AM (#6538316) Journal
    OK, so the KDE project started Kontact, which merges KMail, KOrganizer, KNotes, and KAddressBook. I was just at the Kontact web site and it doesn't mention Kolab. My thought was that Kroupware was supposed to merge at some point with Kontact, is this true? But Kolab screenshots look different than Kontact's. Is this going into KDE?

    http://kolab.kde.org/

    http://kontact.kde.org/

    In other words, is Kontact dead?

    • Re:Kolab and Kontact, I'm confused. (Score:5, Informative)

      by falonaj ( 615782 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @12:56AM (#6538391) Homepage
      OK, so the KDE project started Kontact, which merges KMail, KOrganizer, KNotes, and KAddressBook.

      That's right. Kontact is currently in development, and will be released as part of KDE 3.2. Kontact is the way official KDE development has chosen.

      In other words, is Kontact dead?

      No, not at all. Kontact will merge all Kolab functionality that has been developed by the kroupware project.

      Until the KDE project has released Kontact, you can use the KMail-based Kolab client offered by the kroupware project.

      The kroupware project is sponsored by the German gouvernment. Because of the requirements of the German gouvernment offices, they chose to release a KMail-based Kolab first rather than waiting for Kontact to be finished.

    • OK, so the KDE project started Kontact, which merges KMail, KOrganizer, KNotes, and KAddressBook. I was just at the Kontact web site and it doesn't mention Kolab. My thought was that Kroupware was supposed to merge at some point with Kontact, is this true? But Kolab screenshots look different than Kontact's. Is this going into KDE?

      Koh kmy kod!
    • From "http://kontact.kde.org/faq/":

      Kontact, Kolab, Kroupware... I get confused. What's the deal?
      Kolab is a groupware solution consisting of a server and a client part as well as an optional binding for Microsoft Exchange, Kolab was developed by a consortium of the three companies Klarälvdalens Datakonsult (Kolab Client), Erfrakon (Kolab Server) and Intevation (project management, QA) which were contracted by the german Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) after winning a formal bid for a

  • Enough with the goddam 'K' names (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 26, 2003 @12:35AM (#6538317)
    Stop the insanity! 'Kroupware' sounds like a brand of German kitchen-utensils or something.

  • K's not always funny. (Score:5, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @12:36AM (#6538325) Homepage Journal
    I thought Killustrator was funny, but Kroupware? Ugh. Very krappy.

  • This is a big step forward. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by James A. A. Joyce ( 681634 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @12:36AM (#6538326) Journal
    Now we have a proper, KDE-enhanced groupware solution for all sizes of organisations. Unfortunately, even if it is better than Exchange, those organisations are still going to stick with Exchange just because it's what they're familiar with. Hopefully we can try and get this stuff supported in the workplace, and if we contribute code and offer support to the companies we work for if they use this, we can get more widespread adoption.

  • Exchange answers... (Score:5, Informative)

    by exhilaration ( 587191 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @12:38AM (#6538330)
    A little karma whoring never hurt anyone... :)

    From the FAQ [kroupware.org]:
    How can I make Outlook talk to the Kolab Server?
    You need a Plug-in called InsightConnector from http://bynari.com [bynari.net]. This is proprietary software and you need to aquire a license. Demo versions are available. A second company, konsec.com, announced to make a similiar plug-in offering in Q3 2003.

    Later on it states:
    Is there no Free Software Outlook plugin? Will you create one?
    We are not aware of an existing Free Software plug-in for Outlook. Within the Kroupware project we have not been contracted to create such a plug-in. "Kervin L. Pierre" announced to work on it and started sourceforge.net/projects/otlkcon [sourceforge.net].

    • otlkcon status (Score:5, Informative)

      by kervin ( 64171 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @01:23AM (#6538466)

      http://otlkcon.sf.net [sf.net] is mine.

      I've been working on it from about Nov'02, and was pretty much trying to keep things on the down-low until I had a proof-of-concept to show. You see, ironically, I did this to not have yet-another-vapor-project out there :)

      The a simple connector plugin would not have taken this long. But I've decided to take a solid stab at solving the root problem, that is, an extendable MAPI message service, and the tools needed to program for/with this set of MAPI providers.

      First part of the Message service, is the message store. That's the DLL in MAPI responsible for actually saving your mail to the filesystem, amongst other things. The second most important service provider, the transport service provider, is responsible for sending the mail off, basically.

      I've been focusing on a sub-project at http://sapimapi.sf.net [sf.net]. Don't let the stats put you off, I've been putting a decent amount of hours on this one ( sf.net CVS stats are broken right now ). This testing utility has a built in scripting language, and common MAPI routines, to make it easy to configure the behavior of MAPI clients for testing the service providers. I also intend to fit in TNEF routines and info on much of the undocumented MAPI properties I've collected from/at various places. The testing utilitly is early, early alpha; I have the language lexer/parser done, and I'm working on the built in MAPI library calls. Extended MAPI from C# is a bitch. Funny they forget to mention stuff like that in the brochure.

      Open source connector will get done soon. I've heard of at least one other group working on the problem. I suspect it's only a matter of time till one of the unprofitable companies, selling a MAPI connector, releases it as open source. There are a lot of them.

      The important thing, I believe, is that we get a complete extendable toolkit, that would spark the continued development of extensions. Eg. address book, chat, voicemail, etc.

  • What's with the name? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 26, 2003 @12:39AM (#6538334)
    Kroupware? There is an Open Source product whose that is going head to head against major proprietary mail server packages, and someone actually thought to call it 'Kroupware'?

    Is that like 'HackingCoughWare' or, perhaps, the more subtle 'ScreamingInfantWare'? Ok, perhaps this is a troll, but I've historically had a hard enough time selling open source stuff into various enterprises. ("MySQL? Aww, what a cute name. Now go get us something that sounds professional." I've heard that. Literally. Twice.) I realize we're all smart enough to know better.

    Selling a product is as much (if not more) selling an image than it is selling features, reliability, etc. At least for the PHBs I've had to sell to in the past. Trying to bring a mission critical piece of software in that's named after an anoying childhood malady will, before anything else, elicit a bunch of laughs from the powers that be, and then there's that much more of a hole to dig out of.

    • this is very true. i've worked for and gotten mass adoption of bugzilla where i work, but i still have to fight that image problem of it being called "bugzilla".

      everyone admits it works great...but "IBM/Rational ClearQuest(tm)" sounds so much more professional.

      argh.
    • "MySQL? Aww, what a cute name. Now go get us something that sounds professional." I've heard that. Literally. Twice."

      Holy shit. You'd think you could anything to somebody that dumb.

      Come to think about this dunce probably drives a car whose name is es450 or 750i or something like that. Just tell him it's database ab800. Thell him it's much better then the 500 series because it's faster and gets better gas milage. If he starts asking questions just tell him you have to go put the token back into the token r

    • Re:What's with the name?-The "K" server. (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well lets be kute; how about:

      The server.

      Say what?

      The server.

      So what does it serve?

      K's

      K's?

      Yes K's.

      What kind of K's?

      Krunchy K's.

      Krunchy K's?

      Krunchy Krispy Krackly K's

      On a Kaiser bun.

      OK now that's just Krazy.

      Not at all. It's much better than anyone elses Krap, and it will not Krash.

      Uh Huh. You stay there while I kall someone to kome and karry your krazy ass out of my kondo. Kapish?

    • Agreed on the unfortunate tendency to use cute and/or silly names for Open Source products. Another example: there is a framework for persistent PHP objects under development which is called PHP Bananas [sebastian-bergmann.de] (warning: PDF link; Google HTML version [216.239.39.104] here).

      Hanging on to these silly 'geek inside joke' code names is not helping adoptation of OSS.

      JP

      • I agree, but don't forget a lot of proprietary products have wierd names too... Java? Java Beans?

        Well, ok, that's all i can think of, but you get my point :]

        • a lot of proprietary products have wierd names too... Java? Java Beans?

          I think there is a (slight, but crucial) difference in this case. 'Java' is something people are used to by now, and 'Java Beans' is a more or less expected 'extension' of the whole 'Java == coffee' thing. 'PHP Bananas', on the other hand, comes out of nowhere. And even the word 'Banana' itself has (in this context) a much more silly/unserious 'feel' to it than 'Bean'.

          I wish it wasn't so, but names like 'Kroupware' or 'PHP Banana

    • Kolab is the name (Score:3, Informative)

      by twener ( 603089 )
      You only proved that you didn't read the announcement. The server is called Kolab, the project name was Kroupware.
    • Ok, perhaps this is a troll

      Do people who don't read articles (including the original reporter, BTW) count as trolls?

      It's named Kolab, not Kroupware. There is even a nice shiny logo for those literally less unfortunate who have problems with longer texts (like the window title)...

      Jeeez.

    • If people are laughing at the name "MySQL" and telling you to get something more professional, use PostgreSQL. It's a much more feature rich DB too (has many basic things that MySQL still lacks such as enforcement of referential integrity, triggers etc.)
    • Seriously, blame the /. editors. Kroupware was an initial working name, sure. But the current name is Kolab, which IMHO is pretty good.

      On a lighter note, I think kr*pware to replace cr*pware (i.e. Exchange) would be kind of appropriate.

    • and a lot of developers write Open Source code because it allows them to do what they want WITHOUT having to deal with the "marketing types."

      We all should learn to respect and appreciate these individuals as they are, because they have earned it.

      Now, you seem more "marketing concious." Good news! There is nothing stopping you from completely changing the name when you sell, say, kroupware. You might need to pay someone a couple of bucks to change all references to the orginal name, but that really isn't a

  • O"K" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 26, 2003 @12:39AM (#6538335)
    The project isn't just O"K", it's GREAT!

    Seriously though, integrating the K elements is great. However, I noticed that Korganizer doesn't like a HUGE file (takes forever to load). Also, Kmail's LDAP feature is not integrated with the mail client (it's part of the address book and requires the user to start the address book instead of integrating LDAP with Kmail (as implemented in Mozilla)).

    Anyone know if this project fixes those problems?

  • To bad Evolution probably wont support it (Score:5, Informative)

    by Plix ( 204304 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @12:39AM (#6538336) Homepage
    According to the FAQ (and from ximian.com) it appears as if Evolution doesn't support Kroupware and wont be supporting it anytime soon (see this [ximian.com] post to the evolution mailing list). This is a real shame considering that outside of the KDE camp most people aren't using K-Mail in favor of Gnome clients like Evolution and Balsa.

  • It's cute and all... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @12:46AM (#6538358) Homepage Journal
    ... but all those apps that begin with K become a real nuisance to find on KDE's version of the start-menu when you're a Linux newb such as myself.

  • again not quite there (Score:4, Insightful)

    by scottking ( 674292 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @01:07AM (#6538419) Homepage
    once again the open source community releases an exchange killer, and once again it is missing the most important component...

    native integration with outlook.

    i said this before in another post, but i am going to say it again. businesses aren't ready for desktop linux, which means server side solutions (no matter how brilliant) MUST work with the desktop apps that employees use. no one wants to relearn their e-mail client; and yes i am aware that evolution is almost identical to outlook at the interface level. but the truth of it is, the perception of any new desktop software is "now i have to learn everything all over again". it's the illusion of difficulty, so we as developers (and by we i mean you :) ) should make it our primary goal to lessen the difficulty of the intgration with newer, oss technology where ever we can

    • Re:again not quite there (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @01:48AM (#6538516)
      If you want an Outlook connector, go write one yourself.

      This product was not written by some vague "open source community" at large. It was written by two consulting companies who were contracted by the German government to provide a very specific solution using open-source components, and that's exactly what they did. The German government will not be using Outlook on their client machines, so they sure as hell are not going to fund development of anything to do this. If it's so important to you or others, you're free to write it yourself or fund development with your own money. Or you can buy an existing solution from Bynari for a lot less than an Exchange system.

      • Building such a connector is clearly a monumental task. I oversaw a test deployment of Bynari Insight Connector a while ago, and I was disturbed to see how kludged together it was. Not only was it a major pain in the ass to configure on a given workstation, but the end product clearly behaved differently than regular Outlook. Needless to say, the project was a non-starter.

        I've been meaning to check out Samsung Contact to see if their Outlook integration is any better. It doesn't seem like anyone in the
    • I think you're exaggerating the difficulty of learning to use a new groupware client. There are office workers out there who used to use typewriters and mechanical accounting machines. Most of them adapted just fine to ascii terminals, faxes, email and spreadsheets.

      Integrating apps with proprietary sw is as difficult as the proprietor wants it to be. Look at the hoops the Samba project has had to jump through. It would appear that in some parts of the world they've reached a critical mass where compati
    • once again the open source community releases an exchange killer, and once again it is missing the most important component...

      native integration with outlook.

      What is it with these people?

      "Either I'm having it for free or I'll pay lots of money to Microsoft for Exchange."

      What's wrong with the middle ground? The various connector's you can buy are not expensive. Not in comparison to further Exchange licensing.

      If you're so bothered about things being free, remove that OS that runs Outlook, and
    • ... and expected to be released in September according to this blog entry [kdedevelopers.org].

  • Khat? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Feztaa ( 633745 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @01:07AM (#6538421) Homepage
    Kon't Kou Kust Kate Kt Khen Kll Khe Ktupid Kords Ktart Kith K?
  • Ja, das namen "Kroupware" ist untercompatible mit der "marketing" und "salez". Ve haf zehr lang geflamed unt gechat mit keine success. in Deutsch, "kroup" en "group" ist blinkindentic.
    Ja, Slashdot namentrollz, genough mit dem "kind und kroup" joken. Ve asken zie einen gutten namen te finden. We zen unterserious. Das winner mit deze bestes namen ist kandidate fur ein Freiexemplar gewinnen. Achtung, frei als in "freies Bier"! Ja, ja. Ist Kool, nein?

  • Namecalling (Score:5, Insightful)

    by skurken ( 58262 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @01:48AM (#6538514)
    It's interesting to find that most comments thus far has been about the name of the app. Is there really no more to say or are people just looking for cheap Funny-karma?

    I'll chip in for the ante then:
    This seems to be an intreresting product for hybrid companies (like I've worked with) where the engineering part is using Linux and the manager part is using Windows/Outlook. This way there is a serious player for interconnecting the two of them that (unlike Evolution) doesn't rely on an Exchange server. If now Evolution just could start working with this as well and we'll have real interconnectivity. Good.

  • Support CALSCH, CAP, and James (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kervin ( 64171 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @01:56AM (#6538534)

    Kroupware and the others are nice. But what we really need is for CALSCH http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/calsch-charter.h tml [ietf.org] to finish with CAP http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-cal sch-cap-10.txt [ietf.org]. As you can see CAP is on it's tenth public revision.

    We need a standard that specifies the transport of the calendar protocol, badly. We need CAP finished.

    The special folder in IMAP scheme will work. But is a little on the hackish side, and incompartibility between servers is a serious problem, even with standard formats, like iCal based schemes.

    Next we need a cross platform messaging server. Although, it does not support IMAP as yet, Apache James is my favorite, at http://james.apache.org [apache.org]. First of all it has a strong group endorsing it, the Apache group. That's going to be important for selling this thing to risk-adverse corporate types. Second, it's Java, so I trust it a little more in the buffer-overflow department. Also it would probably integrate nicely in current J2EE setups. I've heard people are doing this.

    James needs IMAP and CAP support. And then we will have a decent shot at the less entrenched sector of the exchanges market.

  • Spelling mistakes as usual (Score:3, Funny)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @02:47AM (#6538603) Homepage Journal
    Did anyone else notice that the /. story blurb is full of spelling mistakes? Anyway, here's the fixed version:
    "The three kompanies behind the Kroupware Project (Erfrakon, Intevation and Klarälvdalens Datakonsult) announced its successful kompletion today. This new groupware approach using only Free Software is now available in stable versions under the Kolab brand name. Kommercial support on an individual basis is already offered with further support options to kome."

  • Hey come back here with that! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) * on Saturday July 26, 2003 @02:58AM (#6538625)
    An aspect of Kroupware project I find really interesting is the "indirect funding" by the German government. The government said "we need features X, Y, and Z and be compatible with Outlook and Linux". The developers responded to those requests and won the contract to develop the software. I've thought for a long time this would be a really intelligent way for government agencies of any size to get the features they want out of software for a reasonable price.

    It'd be cool to see a larger group commercial group offer themselves as contract coders for government projects. They can offer a product with X features to the agency, get the money to fund the development, then distribute that software back into the wild under a Free license for everyone else to benefit.

    It seems a major issue with many government agencies and corporations adopting Free Software alternatives to commercial offerings is with support. No matter how good a coder a particular OS contributor is, they are not likely available 24/7 to fix a major problem or to add a particular feature. If there is a warm body at the end of a telephone who is paid to fix bugs or add features I think more institutions would adopt Free software solutions.

    In particular to Krappynameware's case, the German government is pretty gung ho about Free software to begin with. Their requirements actually included Linux support and interoperability. It'd nice to see a government agency apt to use non-proprietary solutions to their software needs. Such solutions only leed to vendor lock-in and wasting of taxpayer dollars or euros.

    What groups besides maybe the major Linux distributions like SuSE and RedHat and maybe Ximian provide the sort of support government agencies contract out? I obviously haven't seen many because I can only list three off the top of my head. Are there any vendors that provide those sort of services as a regular business plan?
    • An aspect of Kroupware project I find really interesting is the "indirect funding" by the German government. The government said "we need features X, Y, and Z and be compatible with Outlook and Linux". The developers responded to those requests and won the contract to develop the software. I've thought for a long time this would be a really intelligent way for government agencies of any size to get the features they want out of software for a reasonable price.

      Amazingly, this process, called a public tende
    • Part of the problem, at least in the USA, is that many companies do very extensive lobbying to get government contracts.

      This gets built into the price of course, and includes the normal range of influence-buying activities.

      It's very hard for Free Software groups to compete with that, since it's a capital-intensive game and the proprietary camp has a big head start in terms of relationships, legacy ware, etc.

      I think it would be interesting to specifically focus on individual elected officials responsible

  • All _I_ want (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jethro ( 14165 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @03:14AM (#6538659) Homepage
    I fon't care if Corporate decided to use Exchange. I'm not in charge of keeping it up, it's not my ass if it gets hacked, and I don't get paged at 4am when it goes down again.

    What I want is not to have to use Outlook.

    I _hate_ Outlook. I actually don't use it on a regular basis - I use fetchmail to grab Email and then read it with Pine.

    The problem is calendars.

    I figured out that Outlooks/Exchange have a nice little signature on Calendar items. They looks like regular Emails except they have a *~*~*~*~*~ pattern in them. So I can get Pine (or procmail or whatever) to grab them and stick them in whatever the hell I decided I want to use for calendaring.

    But I can't actually send out an "Accept" or "Reject", not can I maintain my calendar on the server. I need to run Outlook for those.

    I've found no software that'll let me do that. And no, Ximian and Bynari software don't work as they all require Outlook Web Services to be enabled.

    Anyone know of software that can do that?
    • I hear ya! The university that I work for uses Exchange like it was coded by Jesus Christ himself. I'd use pine but I have to access a shared mailbox and can't do that through pine.

      Outlook is slow, bloated, insecure, and 70% unused. I don't know about in big corporations but around here we NEVER use calendars and tasks are just for everyday things like "Patch Exchange server," "Reboot domain controller," or "patch 6,000 windows desktops from weekly killer bug"

  • Some more info (Score:5, Informative)

    by thorsen ( 9515 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @06:14AM (#6538995) Homepage
    There are quite a lot of posts here that asks some ligitimate questions, and I'll try to answer a bunch of them here.

    First of all: The "Kroupware" name. Don't worry, it doesn't exist at all anymore. Kroupware was the name of the contract development, and will not be used for anything else. The server is called Kolab, and the client is KMail, Korganizer, KAddressbook and KPilot. In KDE 3.2 these will come together in one bunch under the name Kontact. We are now porting the features to KDE cvs HEAD.

    Second: There are a bunch of people asking about features. For this project we had a list of requirements from BSI that we would implement. We implemented exactly this and not much more. When people say the word groupware, they immediatelly expect three thousand different functionalities, and if you in version 1.0 try to implement all of them, you will break your neck trying.

    The functionality is:

    Calendaring with iCalendar - send invitations between KMail and Outlook for example

    Addressbook - a global one by LDAP and a local one in vCard contacts

    Tasks - not groupware tasks though (only KMail to KMail or Outlook to Outlook, since OL doesn't understand iCalendar tasks scheduling :-( )

    Vacation mail setup - for vacation nag mails

    MDN

    Disconnected IMAP support

    Roaming support by storing the calendar/contacts... stuff in IMAP folders

    Resource scheduling (book cars, rooms...)

    I probably forgot a bunch of features. Clientwise, the most important are definately that you can invite between KMail and Outlook. On the server side, the interesting thing here is that this is the only truly free groupware server available, and will allow the Outlook people to continue working with it.

    In case you visit the Linux Developers Conference in Edinburgh next week, you can see a presentation/demonstration by me.

    Bo Thorsen,
    Klaralvdalens Datakonsult AB
    Project leader on the client.

    • Re:Some more info (Score:2, Insightful)

      by JanneM ( 7445 )
      With iCalendar and LDAP addressbooks, does it mean Evolution will work as a client as well? Have you tested it, and if so, what problems are there? And how about Apple's mail proggie?

  • ircII EPIC4-1.0 :P

  • big minus (Score:3, Interesting)

    by josepha48 ( 13953 ) on Saturday July 26, 2003 @01:40PM (#6540594) Journal
    no windows interoperability. There is no free plugin that works with Outlook. This is a problem is you want to get ride of exchange / msmail server and replace it with this, cause then you have to PAY for a connector to this. So then is it really worth it to management when they already have a licensed peice of software that works? Not in my company. yes there is a web frontend to it, but that is NOT a solution. This is close and if you can pull off an entirely linux / unix installbase then you are okay, but when your flagship product runs windows and management wont let the dev team rewrite it, your glued to windows.

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