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I wonder if Chandler will have a plugin for it.

Have any of you seen Chandler. It looks promising...

Answer me honestly: Does PulseAudio have that feature because they heard it would be in Windows Vista? Honestly, now, please give me an answer.

Because if PulseAudio implemented the feature after seeing that it was in a Longhorn beta, or hearing stories of Microsoft developing it, then I'd say "that thing that Microsoft is doing" is a pretty good definition. (At least as far as this case goes.)

A better example would be something that Microsoft or Apple *hasn't* done. Do you have one?

Has a client and server, open source, server runs on Tomcat... http://chandlerproject.org/

Compatible with OSX, Windows, Linux (I believe the client is Java based)

You can also use the client with a Darwin calendar server... or you could use a CalDav client, like iCal or Sunbird w/ the Chandler server.

Exactly, there's even a book about the biggest most heavily funded effort: Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software but download it and try it out!

Exactly, there's even a book about the biggest most heavily funded effort: Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software but download it and try it out!

This is the alternative:

http://chandlerproject.org/

This comes from the Open Source Applications Foundation; OSAF was founded in 2001 by Mitch Kapor. They are building a PIM but the calendar is an integral part of the software.

Here is what that software has to offer;

Calendaring with Chandler Desktop

        * Overlay multiple calendars
        * Get a summary of what's on your schedule in the Preview Pane
        * Navigate the calendar with the Mini-Calendar
        * Get a sense of how full your days are with the mini-calendar Busy-Bars
        * Use the Quick Entry field to create events, type event dates in plain English
        * Create recurring events
                    o Daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly events
                    o Manage recurring events in the Triage Table
        * Set alarms for before or after events
        * Use time zones; or
        * Manage your calendar without time zones

One of my big problems with Hula was the refusal to embrace existing standards. They should have used Postfix instead of Netmail as the hub, and they should have built plugins for all the popular mail clients (Thunderbird, Mutt) instead of just Evolution.

Now we have the Bongo and Chandler projects. Both leave something to be desired in rate of progress. Hula was announced in 2005 and still is not usable, Chandler is almost a joke having been announced in 2001 and just now reaching Preview stage. They both leave something to be desired in features as well, mainly in the "works with $my_favoite_MUA" area. Is there a possibility of merging the projects? Or are the philosophies too different?

"Look Ma! The ferocious mountain lion is really a big kitten!"

Perhaps. What worries me is that Microsoft recently vowed to start buying open source companies. Most of the work on standards based collaboration software and related technology that I'm aware of (e.g. Chandler, Bedework, etc.) (exception: Apple's iCal server) is done by a few small tight groups. Are any of them going to withstand millions of dollars in cash for the sake of principle? I'm a die-hard F/OSS advocate myself, but if someone were to offer me a few million to abdicate my principles; money I could use toward my children's education and otherwise bettering my family's life - well, that would be a hard pill to swallow. I have other principles too, like maintaining my marriage for example.

I really hope a large corporation that buys the F/OSS vision (Are you listening SUN?) steps in to preempt such a hostile maneuver. If they do, everyone wins. I'd take a million dollars from SUN before taking 50 million from Microsoft any day; and I bet most F/OSS developers feel the same way. If the big players sit on their hands, we all lose, as there will never be an answer to Microsoft's dominant collaboration suite.

You can have a better OS, but you really need to hit all of the important application targets in order to present customers with a viable alternative to Microsoft hegemony.

It's not just the collaboration suites we should be worried about, BTW. Microsoft could buy UNIX IP as well (SCO is dead, but Novell is alive and well, and already getting cozy). The big F/OSS players better get their ducks in a row fast, or MS may very well soon act to back up their empty bluster with real products, real patents, and real lawsuits.

Actually the Chandler project (basically the source of the CalDAV standard) -- provides both a CalDAV server and clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux. See http://chandlerproject.org/ -- they just released their beta. I very much look forward to the day that calendaring benefits from competition and interoperability as we have with HTTP, SMTP, etc., as opposed to everyone being locked into Microsoft's weird/patented/no-competition calendaring island. Anyway, real open calendaring is just getting going, and CalDAV is a big part of that.

Chandler Server is also a CalDAV server: http://chandlerproject.org/Developers/DownloadChandlerServer

Lots of people have pointed out that Outlook is much more than an e-mail client --- it's really an Exchange client, and the killer app there is shared calendaring and, more generally, shared resources. This is far from trivial to implement. If you are wondering why, I'd suggest reading Dreaming in Code, which follows the Chandler project. (Chandler has often been touted as an "outlook killer".)

Love or hate Microsoft, the simple fact is that no one at the moment has a good response to Exchange and Sharepoint.

Remember Chandler? Anyone use it yet? Any thoughts?

I've been using Thunderbird with Lightning for about a year now to try and manage my calendar, and it's kludgey at best. There's minimal integration between the two, other than they run in the same "instance". Group sharing is almost non-existant, or a PITA to set up.

I don't understand why the Thunderbird camp doesn't get with the Chandler camp and create a real alternative to the OSS PIM options out there. Thunderbird needs a better calendaring/task management part, and Chandler needs a real email client.

Yeah, replying to myself...

Penelope is the Thundora name. It's got a Talk page, mostly full of wishlists.

The great news is it looks like the entire Qualcomm team went with Eudora, so it's skilled coders well familiar with the territory. How they interact with the Tbird team is hard to tell from a cursory lookover.

Frankly I'm betting their value is as a team of experienced email developers, and any code they can reuse from Eudora is just gravy compared to their skillsets and understanding of the problem space.

Tho, they do seem awfully quiet. From a quick glance it looks like they're busy figuring out bridges, compatibilities, etc. Hopefully they don't get stuck in a Chandler quagmire.