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The Horde Framework is the glue that all Horde applications have in common.

There are many applications that run on this frame work. Calendaring, mail, task lists, contact management, and more.

Will it work for law practice purposes? I don't know, IANAL :-), but it looks good.

The Horde Framework is the glue that all Horde applications have in common.

There are many applications that run on this frame work. Calendaring, mail, task lists, contact management, and more.

Will it work for law practice purposes? I don't know, IANAL :-), but it looks good.

These guys have great webmail(Imp) ; nice web based file managers (Gollem); a nice CVS viewer.

From their FAQ

Horde is both a piece of software and a project. The Horde Project comprises a set of Web-based productivity, messaging, and project-management applications, each of which is described below. The Horde Framework is a common code-base used by Horde applications, including libraries and a common user interface.

The Horde Framework doesn't do anything on its own; as a user, you will always be interacting with a Horde-based application.

You should also check out the Horde Project which has a calendaring module called kronolith. You can view remote calendars, have multiple backends for storage, repeatable events, e-mail reminders, integration with tasks and notes, shared calendars for meetings and meeting scheduling. They have even started introduction SyncML for syncing with your phone/palm

A lot of hosts come with webmail access included (Dreamhost gives everyone webmail.[domain].com, for example).

If you want to install your own, have a look at SquirrelMail, Open Webmail, or Horde IMP. I've only used SquirrelMail, and it's pretty good.

That said, you'll be hard pressed to find anything with an interface anywhere near as good as Gmail. Cheap hosting is also likely to be slower and less reliable.

ourbrisbane.com's webmail supports all the nifty features, ie. multi-select, drag'n'drop, preview pane, automatic mail checking, realtime search ala iTunes, right-click menus, shortcut-keys, export to zip, etc etc, its free and fully compatible with Mozilla.

It uses horde for the message viewing, and the addressbook but the rest I wrote. ourbrisbane.com even agreed to release it back to horde as opensource, but no-one on the list even got back to me...

I wanted to have something similar, but one of my prioirities was global accessibility. I tried notebooks, daytimers, postits, etc, but invariably it would always be at home when I was at work, or vice versa, or left behind when I travel.

So my first step was an online note tool called NoteToSelf that I use to keep all those interesting articles, recommendations for movies, homework assignments, job descriptions, consumer ratings, etc. I wrote it in PHP and love it. It's pretty primative as I haven't put any extra work into it since I got it functional. But it's great for me and I use it throughout the day.

My next step is the to-do list. As an interim, I just use a note in NoteToSelf to keep the tasks, but really want something with priorities and reminders. So I've looked at various ones, and I think I'm going to integrate Horde's Kronolith for calendaring and Nag for task lists. They're all PHP and MySQL so I can integrate or tweak as much as I feel like.. With those 3 things I think I have most of my "PIM" needs met and accessible from any internet-connected device around. I've been mulling over a PDA, but only to act as an offline copy of those 3 apps, and not for their own native PDA apps.

I wanted to have something similar, but one of my prioirities was global accessibility. I tried notebooks, daytimers, postits, etc, but invariably it would always be at home when I was at work, or vice versa, or left behind when I travel.

So my first step was an online note tool called NoteToSelf that I use to keep all those interesting articles, recommendations for movies, homework assignments, job descriptions, consumer ratings, etc. I wrote it in PHP and love it. It's pretty primative as I haven't put any extra work into it since I got it functional. But it's great for me and I use it throughout the day.

My next step is the to-do list. As an interim, I just use a note in NoteToSelf to keep the tasks, but really want something with priorities and reminders. So I've looked at various ones, and I think I'm going to integrate Horde's Kronolith for calendaring and Nag for task lists. They're all PHP and MySQL so I can integrate or tweak as much as I feel like.. With those 3 things I think I have most of my "PIM" needs met and accessible from any internet-connected device around. I've been mulling over a PDA, but only to act as an offline copy of those 3 apps, and not for their own native PDA apps.

I wanted to have something similar, but one of my prioirities was global accessibility. I tried notebooks, daytimers, postits, etc, but invariably it would always be at home when I was at work, or vice versa, or left behind when I travel.

So my first step was an online note tool called NoteToSelf that I use to keep all those interesting articles, recommendations for movies, homework assignments, job descriptions, consumer ratings, etc. I wrote it in PHP and love it. It's pretty primative as I haven't put any extra work into it since I got it functional. But it's great for me and I use it throughout the day.

My next step is the to-do list. As an interim, I just use a note in NoteToSelf to keep the tasks, but really want something with priorities and reminders. So I've looked at various ones, and I think I'm going to integrate Horde's Kronolith for calendaring and Nag for task lists. They're all PHP and MySQL so I can integrate or tweak as much as I feel like.. With those 3 things I think I have most of my "PIM" needs met and accessible from any internet-connected device around. I've been mulling over a PDA, but only to act as an offline copy of those 3 apps, and not for their own native PDA apps.

Anyone who uses email frequently cannot live without threaded messaging once exposed to it. This and this alone will keep me off of webmail forever (sure, you *could* thread in webmail, but it would either result in many trips back / forth to the server to expand / collapse the threads, or it would need fancy JS and DHTML magic which I have never seen in a webmail app.).

You don't really need to make it complicated, it can be simple too. The latest IMP from Horde has a threaded display mode. All the threads are expanded all the time and you view N messages per page (with the N of your choice). It works pretty well for me as far as threaded views in webmail are concerned.

Anyone who uses email frequently cannot live without threaded messaging once exposed to it. This and this alone will keep me off of webmail forever (sure, you *could* thread in webmail, but it would either result in many trips back / forth to the server to expand / collapse the threads, or it would need fancy JS and DHTML magic which I have never seen in a webmail app.).

You don't really need to make it complicated, it can be simple too. The latest IMP from Horde has a threaded display mode. All the threads are expanded all the time and you view N messages per page (with the N of your choice). It works pretty well for me as far as threaded views in webmail are concerned.

The Horde Project does the same thing. They have bounties for writing specific features for their framework.

So long as the project is very narrow and specialized, I don't think it's a bad thing. This particular example, though, is very broad and we as the end users may not end up getting good code from the "losers" incorporated into that driver.

Give me a break ... where do the disclaimers stop? I mean, the software's being given away for free for non-commercial use, and I think it's of interest to other techies. Notice I didn't submit anonymously.

And don't start spouting "open-source this, open-source that" to me ... I do my bit there as well. But noone cares about that stuff, so why bother talking about it instead of stuff I think is fun?

Not trolling here but all of the options you mentioned were java based ones. Java is not the be all and end all of languages, php has its place, just as java does. If you want to see PHP really in action, check out the horde project, yeah they have a forums/portal system, but on top of that they have a tremendous framework which can be used to add tremendous functionality to your website, ranging from FTP and NNTP gateways to a great calendar and contact manager app.

Despite the efforts of the Apache Foundation, IBM, the JBoss people and others, Sun maintains a stranglehold on java standardization and API's, which can be (and have been) changed on a whim.

<span class="rant">What pisses me off is the failures of JVM's to degrade gracefully, we have a management app for a device that is java based, but written to what appears to be Java 1.2/AWT, which JVM 1.4.* + moz 1.6 or NN4.8 pukes and crashes over, IE6 somehow stays alive, but throws exceptions all over the place. The product has been EOL'ed by the vendor but it is critical to our opperation and is the only reason I load IE ever</span>

just as I'm pulling an all-nighter at this moment trying to embed a custom search engine into an app for use on an intranet.

Actually what is more interesting is Nutch and Mozdex, which seems to be based around Lucene (what I am using to build my own search engine embedded into a Horde framework app). Although probably a lot simpler than the industrial grade stuff, for someone who has been used to throwing a word at an input screen and magically getting back results, the insight into the inner workings of search engines is very interesting.

According to the details I've seen on the exploit, it's not just Hotmail and Yahoo that are vulnerable but most webmail interfaces. Has anyone tested this against Horde and SquirrelMail?

SquirrelMail? Why not just use IMP?

I have tried many of them. SquirrelMail was VERY slow when it came to parsing, creating a list of messages, etc. Horde/IMP is much more polished, and MUCH faster, more efficient PHP code...

I can't really comment on the whole HORDE project but their webmail system is excellent and has been working in production at Georgia Tech for quite some time without a hitch. If IMP is any measure of the rest of their application suite, it's quality.

You might want to peek at OpenGroupware. My colleagues and I have skimmed though what was available and it seems to be the most impressive for at least the customer management side. Though the look of the web interface will not amaze your artist friends, it seems to work well. You can interoperate with Evolution, Mozilla Calendar and some other programs - even Outlook should you want to buy the driver.

I'd strongly suggest not to be impressed by eGroupWare's feature list and cute themes (I know WE've been fooled). Seems like these guys, though talented, are not really working towards stabilizing the tree, so you see frightening changelogs - like code rewrites between 1.0RC2 and 1.0RC3. They forked from phpGroupWare lately but I can't tell if it's a more serious project.

One of my friends is completely sold to the Horde Project so you might want to try it.

All of these will not solve all your issues but no application does and as these three above are open source, you can do the linking as you like.

sometimes it is useful to have web-based email addresses

So run your own mail server and install IMP/HORDE or Squirrelmail.

horde.org

Gotta use the CVS code for photo album, etc. but it's pretty stable.

While its not 1 or 2 developers, the Horde Project has a group of 4 core developers (who I see regularly contribute) and on my Horde installation there are 163k lines of php code. And that does not include the static HTML which has been split into .inc files. And I dont' even have all the applications installed so this number is more like 200k (or more)

we had the same problem about 2yrs ago. we ended up rolling our own, i strongly suggest you dont do that. its pretty much dead now and only used for generating time sheets. TUTOS is one that we've looked at several times, unfortunatly it too isnt complete yet, but it is progressing. Another one we are looking at is the project management modules being built into the latest CVS version of Horde. While the CVS versions of the framework, email client, filtering system and to a lesser extent the calendar are pretty stable the other stuff is a quite quickly moving target.

Similarly, IMP does the same job. I use it on my ADSL box so I can access my email via https (self-signed certificate; basically I have to accept the cert each time) from anywhere. At home, I have IMAP access via local LAN.

You have obviously never tried to use IMP for any amount of time.

IMP cannot even handle multiple addresses in one contact and filtering is non-existant.

I like this combo
Qmail (pick a mirror)
And
Horde/IMP
The Horde site also has calendar modules and other cool stuff as well. (You can use it with Courier IMAP too)

I like this combo
Qmail (pick a mirror)
And
Horde/IMP
The Horde site also has calendar modules and other cool stuff as well. (You can use it with Courier IMAP too)

Good idea.

There's probably a dozen or so postings already here (including your own PHP testimonial).

Granted, they're not random in the strictest sense (/. sure seems random), but it's a start.

I've been impressed with PHP (seems ideal for rapid application development) and have to wonder why projects like Pear and Horde don't have a greater uptake than they do.

Recurring security issues with PHP would make me nervous deploying in the context of financial transactions, though. News portals, blogs, calendars, mail and miscellaneous web tasks are nicely handled by PHP.

Speaking of webmail, IMP seems to be the most advanced of all the webmail apps written in PHP. Don't know how it solves the non-persistent imap connection problem, but there it says U of Penn is using it after evaluation of different systems. It didn't quite put performance into consideration however..

Like I mentioned in the parent post bluebottle supports hotmail accounts so you can transition into a new account while still checking your old account (from within bluebottle). This of course adds the benifit of the TMDA (like) support to your existing hotmail account as well.

Squirrelmail has a plugin that does this too (for running on your own server) as well as support for other existing pop accounts (I think bluebottle does too, but its based on Horde not Squirrelmail)

UW-IMAP is great, if you're running a small organization and like to run garbage.

Try anything that supports the Maildir format, like qmail or Courier-IMAP. At my current job, we use qmail for SMTP, POP, and IMAP, and it works well. I don't really like it, but it gets the job done.

At my old job, we used Courier-IMAP and Postfix. This matches my at-home setup pretty closely, but they one-upped it by using the IMP webmail client, available at www.horde.org along with a whole slew of other web-based apps.

IMP is nice. It's in PHP, it's very slick, and it does everything fairly nicely. That said, it can be pretty slow.

The key part is the Maildir support. One message per file just makes sense. Locking issues don't exist, NFS suddenly becomes an option, and shared accounts are viable.

My distaste for qmail is just a personal opinion, though. It's a solid package, I just don't like half of djb's stuff, as it feels like it's reinventing the wheel, then adding said wheel to an already working car without removing the old ones. If daemontools were a full replacement for init, I'd be more interested, but so far, it's not.

• Rock-solid FreeBSD base
• qmail + CourierIMAP + qmailadmin (for easy web-based admin of e-mail accounts) + tie-ins to tarpitting, SpamAssassin or other anti-UCE measures
• Very secure -- Matt has set the whole thing up to be more secure than what most users would configure on their own. E-mail accounts don't have corresponding system accounts, POP-before-SMTP is enabled and a host of other lock-down measures are in place.
• Works with both IMAP and traditional POP services
• Comes with either SquirrelMail or SqWebMail as a default webmail client, although I've gotten it to work with Horde's Imp project as well.

I know you spec'd Gentoo, but this is a great solution backed by an active user community/e-mail list. It's worth a look.

Even better, there's already a HOWTO available. It was written with a UPS in mind, but should work just fine for this guy's mains box...

1. It's the easiest to administer and support.
2. In my experience, consumer/home users prefer web mail anyway.
3. It's easier to secure. Just use HTTPS, which everyone knows how to use. No need for IMAP/POP3 over SSL.
4. Users can access their mail through their browser (doesn't IE == internet? :)

Since lazy people don't like to see alternatives:
pop/smtp - qmail
webmail - horde/imp
calendar - horde/kronolith
IMAP - courier
tasklist - horde/nag

Oh it can also do many other things as well(mind you for free without expensive plugins).

I can do an installation in about 5 minutes. Here's how:

The first install I do is all the software.
Then make a simple app to change the variables in the config files to each installation.
Compress the whole thing and burn to a CD.
(This takes about 3-4 hours)

Every subsequent install:
Extract from cd.
Run program and type in parameters.

Very simple, free, secure (what's that?), robust, and configurable.

Qmail can be everything Exchange can and more, it just depends on how knowledgeable the person is setting it up. My bad assuming people would have a clue as to the capabilities.

MIT's Athena stations run Solaris 8 or Red Hat 7.3. The default graphical mail client here is Evolution (using IMAP) but everyone still has the option of using pine, *mh, or a webmail interface based on IMP from the Horde Project.

Mozilla's mail client is available, but it does not have a large following at all at my campus.

Well, since we're pimping open source web based groupware...

I'm a big fan of Horde, it's a bit of a PITA to get setup the first time round (lots of config files around the place), but once that's done, it's fabulous software.

1. SCO confirms in this letter that SCO is selling Linux.
2. The GPL sections 6 and 7 seem to restrict use of the GPL if they are affected by (their own) restrictions on GPL-protected tools.
3. The IBM Public License terminates the license if patent litigation takes place.
4. Item #2 in the letter says SCO is suspending sales of Linux.

Well, what SCO Products might be affected by the GPL and IPL?

• SCO OpenServer 5.07 - there are some GNU tools there. (GNU coding standards!)
• Postfix Horde, IMP (SCO doc server down: IMP GPL), in SCOoffice Mail Server [Several SCO Documentation pages have bad LICENSE or COPYRIGHT links].
• (Can't check more products - the SCO documentation server stopped responding to me.)
• RPM is under the GPL.

"about 8" means 7 firm pilots (i.e. bought and paid for by a customer as pilots) and one was really a pilot, but not officially so. I am not saying that Red Carpet or GNOME don't work, I am questioning "fitness for purpose". Virtual Folders are neither new nor unique, and extensive search capabillities are available to me all over the place.

I am neither spreading FUD, nor do I use Outlook (I use Horde ) And please point out the difference between FUD and opinions that are not the same as yours. And yes, I have used the g-conf editor. I have even architected an application around GConf. (involving CVS, RSYNC, LDAP and a lot of other stuff).

Based on your website, I would never let you near any of my datacenters.

To plug bluebottle.com. Their 'smart' spam filtering system includes a challenge-response type system to verify the legitimacy of the account and an allowed list. I've been using it for about 2 weeks and like it so far (I get over a hundred pieces of crap a day at my old account).

Couple of nits are it is slow as hell to log into (they are in Australia and supposedly upgrading their system to fix this) and it uses Horde as the actual email interface (I'm a much bigger fan of SquirrelMail and always thought Horde needed a serious facelift).

Of course the upside is I haven't had a single piece of spam and I really like logging in and knowing that if I have new mail its from people I want to hear from.

Here's their marketing spiel:

Bluebottle stops spam.
Bluebottle's open-source technology is 100% effective in blocking unwanted email. It is the only system that can effectively protect a user from spam while ensuring all legitimate email is received.

Bluebottle is easy to use. When Bluebottle receives an email from an address or domain not on your âAllowed' list, a verification request is sent asking the sender to verify themselves in one of two ways. The required response to these verification requests automatically places the sender's address on your âAllowed' list, and the email is delivered to you without delay.

Once the sender's address is on this list, they can email you as they would normally. The advantage is that you ONLY receive email from allowed senders.

Effective.
To avoid identification, spammers commonly use forged or fake addresses. Consequently, the verification request is never seen or responded to, so spammers can't infiltrate your allowed list. That means you'll no longer receive annoying, unwanted email.

Manageable.
Bluebottle is easy to manage. Simply add your known contacts to your âAllowed' list so they can avoid verifying themselves. And even if legitimate senders do need to verify themselves, it's quick and easy to do so.

If you're sending an email, Bluebottle automatically adds the recipient's address to your allowed list to avoid a request being sent when they reply.

Protective.
Bluebottle applies the verification process to your existing email, including Hotmail, by checking your accounts through its servers. Email from known senders is delivered to your account without delay. Unknown email is placed in the pending queue to await verification. You can access your spam-free email through Bluebottle's webmail interface or via pop using any email client.

I've been running PHP 4.2.3 with Apache 2.0.43+ and there haven't been any problems so far. I've kept the PHP options to a minimum to get Horde/Imp working, so there may be some adventurous settings that will still cause problems.

I've been running PHP 4.2.3 with Apache 2.0.43+ and there haven't been any problems so far. I've kept the PHP options to a minimum to get Horde/Imp working, so there may be some adventurous settings that will still cause problems.

If the software were tied to an SQL backend, then you could even offer a web enabled front end, perhaps even with a tie in to projects like IMP.

The Horde Framework (of which IMP is a sub-project) has it's own web-enabled calendar. The project is called Kronolith, and it's moving towards what you need.

While not all of its features are complete, it looks to include support for shared calendars, the iCal standard, and ICAP support through MCAL (other posts have addressed ICAP and it's not-quite-settled status). Thus, when the dust has settled, it should interoperate with other calendars. In the meantime, it's web-based right now, so that might provide what you need before all the formats are finished.

Disclaimer: I am friends with members of the Horde dev team.

If the software were tied to an SQL backend, then you could even offer a web enabled front end, perhaps even with a tie in to projects like IMP.

The Horde Framework (of which IMP is a sub-project) has it's own web-enabled calendar. The project is called Kronolith, and it's moving towards what you need.

While not all of its features are complete, it looks to include support for shared calendars, the iCal standard, and ICAP support through MCAL (other posts have addressed ICAP and it's not-quite-settled status). Thus, when the dust has settled, it should interoperate with other calendars. In the meantime, it's web-based right now, so that might provide what you need before all the formats are finished.

Disclaimer: I am friends with members of the Horde dev team.

If the software were tied to an SQL backend, then you could even offer a web enabled front end, perhaps even with a tie in to projects like IMP.

The Horde Framework (of which IMP is a sub-project) has it's own web-enabled calendar. The project is called Kronolith, and it's moving towards what you need.

While not all of its features are complete, it looks to include support for shared calendars, the iCal standard, and ICAP support through MCAL (other posts have addressed ICAP and it's not-quite-settled status). Thus, when the dust has settled, it should interoperate with other calendars. In the meantime, it's web-based right now, so that might provide what you need before all the formats are finished.

Disclaimer: I am friends with members of the Horde dev team.

I'll second the suggestion for IMP - it rules.
One other thing, though - as PHP doesn't support persistent IMAP connections, you'll find that it can be quite slow in some cases. The Horde project has recently released a Imap Proxy, which speeds things up a fair amount, and reduces load on the servers. It works very nicely, and is extremely simple to set up.

Oh, and I have heard of people having bad experiences using a PHP accelerator with Horde, although I've had it running with no problems here. YMMV, etc....

I've been using IMP for quite some time, and many large ISP's also use it. It's actually quite mature, and easy for end-users to learn. A post further down claims that installation is difficult, but I have not found that to be the case - in fact it only took about 20 minutes.

Note that IMP (email) is only one module of Horde. Adding the modules together and it trumps what MS WebMail offers by quite a bit.

IMP is the Internet Messaging Program. It is written in PHP and provides webmail access to IMAP and POP3 accounts.

Just in case you're not familiar with PEAR and what it might be useful for, look at IMP and Horde, a cool web-based IMAP interface.

I totally agree with this.

You should get a clause signed that any work you do on GPL or Open Source for yourself or the company can not be claimed by the company as well. You can explain that this will allow you to be much more efficient (by using open source tools) as well as being able to get improvements back to the Open Source world. I did this for example with changes to a groupware system (www.phprojekt.com), a web mail system (www.horde.org) and a content mgt system (www.postnuke.com).

You should be able to push this through either in the contract itself. Or if that doesnt work, you can get a separate amendment for you only signed (for those silly standard contracts).

For sample contracts you can check out this page on the SAGE Australia site.