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What other favorites from the past could be contributed to a UserLinux distribution, making it irresistable? How about Clipper, isn't that dead yet? Couldn't its corpse (implementation) be examined for clues in how to improve ReKall? I like the idea of integrating Coda into UserLinux, a product from 1987. I wonder, has IBM bothered contributed portions of OS/2's object-oriented GUI to either GNOME or KDE? Also, let's not forget the hundreds (thousands?) of games cast aside by their developers. I for one, would love to see an Open Sourced version of a game like Elite.

= 9J =

However, it seems like one of the big things in Longhorn will be the WinFS--which I understand to the the database-as-a-filesystem.

Not a new idea. MS will be the first to try to put it into a popular OS, though.

Sorta. It keeps a normal file system, but until recently the "files" were databases. Given the power of the original Palms, it was a necessity for applications to be able to efficiently access data, and, given the applications the Palm ran, databases were a good match. (One notable exception is the Memo Pad, which is stuck with a 4K limit due to this format, which can be frustrating [but can be fixed with a Doc editor].) Recently they have introduced a File Stream API, which allows software to create "regular" files.

Personally, I think the solution to all of this is for someone to write a shell application that doesn't replace the normal OS shell, but just runs as an application. The ability to assign keywords and other metadata to files, or have it detected automatically, would be the main source of data. Customization to allow it to create, open, print, and understand any format of file (by launching the program in some cases) would allow it to at least understand the "tasks" you might want to perform; the way it presents them could be user-customizable. An included set of file type descriptions would allow it to find all your files and allow you to work with them without having to put in the locations of all your programs.

Side note: I actually once wrote a program for my TI-89 that was basically a small memo pad with a list of categories. When a second program was run and the calculator was given a couple minutes, it would update a word frequency list with any newly-categorized memos, and that information would be available to the memo pad. Once enough information had accumulated, it would select a few consistently representative words and put them in a separate list, so the memo pad program itself would categorize a memo when you close it if you hadn't yet.

I could really use something like this, since making deep directory structures and navigating them like a maze is not my idea of fun.

Exact prices have not been decided as yet, but this is an excellent opporunity for non-coders to help opensource programs, and earn a bit of money too. Specifics to be announced on the mailing lists in the coming weeks.

Official announcement here

Raves for the product are universal among those who've met it.

Unfortunately, NetManage bought Arabesque (a brilliant Microsoft billionaire's spinoff--one of the original "Baby Bills"), and then unfortunately NetManage managed it right into shelf-ware, unwilling to open source the product, sell it, or give it any sort of life.

Why can't more companies do something more socially worthwhile than relegating a first-rate winning product to a slow death on the shelf when they are worried about not being financially competitive? It's been like 7 or 8 years since the last release. Sheesh!

I try to keep the number of installed programs to a minimum, like say half a dozen, maybe a dozen.

Err, yeah, right. Let me count the apps that I absolutely *need* in order to do my job.

Things from your list:
* SSH client. Yep, agree with that one
* Web browser / email client (one program)

OK, that's two. What I also need:
* Other web browsers, for compatibility testing
* Graphics editor (for designing web sites)
* Text editor (for editing web sites and programs)
* Word processor (for writing letters & other
documentation that'll need printing)
* Spreadsheet (for doing occasional organisational
tasks)
* C++ compiler (for the obvious)
* Java compiler (ditto)
* Version control system front end
* Various 'back end' admin systems for web sites
that I manage
* Antivirus software (I sometimes send compiled
programs directly to clients; company policy is
scan-before-send).
* CD writing software

OK, that's 13 absolute essentials. Then there are the things I'd find it hard to live without:

* File sharing client. Currently only one although in the past I've used more than one at once.
* Media players. Winamp, MS media player, Real One.
* Productivity utilities: file compression, a fast image viewer, a task scheduler & reminder program
* Video editing & conversion software in order to be able to stick my home videos onto VCD.
* Things that I'm playing with. The odd piece of free-software-du-jour that I might find useful and have downloaded recently to see if its any good.

That makes 24. It doesn't include any of my own projects (which probably adds a further 10 separate programs to that figure at any one time).

And, I haven't had any problems with my Windows 2000 system since I installed it 9 months ago. I don't think I'm "insane". I'm just trying to use my computer as the tool that I want it to be.

It's a freaking diary, keep it under your bed. What makes you thing the rest of the world gives a damn.

See, there's lots of reasons for blogging. As for the term, the beauty of it or the need for a new term: it's discussible, naturally, but I believe weblogs differ from journals enough to deserve a new term. They're more like open letters than diaries.

OSAF will out in force be at OSCON, the O'Reilly Open Source Conference, July 7-11. We'll have a session "Chandler: An Open Source Personal Information Manager" with Mitchell Baker, Katie Capps Parlante, Andy Hertzfeld, and Chao Lam on Thursday, July 10 at 2:30 (my keynote is Thursday morning).

We'll also be having a BOF Thursday evening "Chandler -- An Open Source Personal Information Manager" at 7:00pm. If you're at OSCON, come see us.

There are two definitions of groupware in the industry. The Microsoft one: groupware consists of email with some additional productivity: Calendar, Mail, and basic forms(which are hardly ever used). And the IBM Lotus one: groupware consists of database forms for routing and document management and email.

Competing with the Outlook definition:
OS foundations Chandler (Calendar focused)
Mozilla Mail (+calendar proj)
Evolution
Open Groupware
kmail/KGroupware


And from the Lotus Perspective:
www.phpgroupware.org
zope
OpenACS
And Lotus Domino which runs on Linux. The client works fine in wine or crossover - but is not officially supported.

Chandler is what you're looking for. go help develop it.

As a result quite a few Universities are dumping CT and throwing their efforts behind the open source Chandler calandar system.

• Chandler, and
• ProChange

try to involve EVERYTHING
like moz (nav, mail, irc, composer, address book, calander), evolution et., al. I hope you can use the calander by itself w/o firing up the whole app.
alpha alpha ... does not give any functionality
new users read this to get a high level view.

however I did see that you can at least get to the app via python. maybe possible to export data -> pilot etc.

The primary idea here is that chandler will let you arrange your data in a way that is meaningful to ~you~ not in a preconceived view so to speak, such as the Outlook model.

Chandler's decentralized, server-optional architecture, which permits easy self-management of collaborative environments is highly appealing to people in a wide variety of work-related settings.

Actually Chandler is planned to be agnostic about p2p vs. dedicated server. You decide what works best for you. Hidden in the wiki there is this document with pretty pictures which dhows various deployment scenarios.

kolchak writes "Very promising news is Chandler 0.1 (the Open Source PIM) has finally been released. 'While we are still very early in the design and implementation process, we intend for this 0.1 release to make us a more fully open project. We have made the release available for download, opened up our bug tracking database, and opened our source code repository.'" This is Mitch Kapor's attempt to offer an alternative to Microsoft Outlook, especially to small (under 100-person) organizations, last mentioned in December.

kolchak writes "Very promising news is Chandler 0.1 (the Open Source PIM) has finally been released. 'While we are still very early in the design and implementation process, we intend for this 0.1 release to make us a more fully open project. We have made the release available for download, opened up our bug tracking database, and opened our source code repository.'" This is Mitch Kapor's attempt to offer an alternative to Microsoft Outlook, especially to small (under 100-person) organizations, last mentioned in December.

They're using some strange ugly wxpython (http://www.wxpython.org/screenshots.php) widget set... why not gtk2? It looks so much better (not to mention integration with themes and gnome), it's also cross platform.

I know it's only 0.1 but the ui is very ugly, the ions and buttons need to be cleaned up and spaced out.

These UI things may sound trivial but ugly, difficult-to-use programs will not be adopted by the masses.

I do hope these things are sorted out, I'm rather disappointed.

...is of course Chandler, from the Open Source Applications Foundation.

This was featured earlier on Slashdot: Mitch Kapor's Outlook-Killer

...is of course Chandler, from the Open Source Applications Foundation.

This was featured earlier on Slashdot: Mitch Kapor's Outlook-Killer

A creative, original, important open source project is here .

The heading of the linked page is 'Vista: a prototype for OSAF's Networked Personal Information Manager'. It is a prototype. Quoting from the linked page:
Vista doesn't attempt to address all aspects of the eventual product, so please don't conclude that if something isn't mentioned in this description that it will be absent from the product (or the inverse as well - not everything in Vista will be in our first or subsequent releases). In particular, there wasn't much emphasis on a polished visual appearance, it didn't deal with the calendar at all, and we didn't do much involving outlines within views like we intend to.

Further on, it goes on to say:
Vista is written entirely in Python, using the Tkinter toolkit, augmented by Pmw, a widget framework written in Python. Since our real application will be based on wxWindows, most of Vista's code can't be used directly in the real thing. Since it's based on Tkinter, it runs on Linux, Macintosh and Windows.

Tkinter provides what is is by no means a nice looking interface, but one that works, and does so relatively well across platforms. The controls look out of place simply because they are being drawn by Tk, not a 'more standard' widget set such as GTK or QT. Switching to wxWindows for the final product will provide a nice consistent look and feel on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows.

Vista is a prototype, nothing more. It is designed to test their ideas on and is not intended to be a fully functional or 'professional' looking.

It's not gonna succeed if they keep ripping off Microsoft's Exchange Icon :-)

example

{ What a coincidence! I was just browsing their site for the last 2 hours & came here to check out if there were any articles about them. }

This is one OS project I am definitely looking forward to contribute to, big time.

I would recommend you to subscribe to the mailinglists here ;
or atleast to the "Major announcements from OSAF" here.

Link to prototype:

People working on it: (Impressive list)

{ What a coincidence! I was just browsing their site for the last 2 hours & came here to check out if there were any articles about them. }

This is one OS project I am definitely looking forward to contribute to, big time.

I would recommend you to subscribe to the mailinglists here ;
or atleast to the "Major announcements from OSAF" here.

Link to prototype:

People working on it: (Impressive list)

{ What a coincidence! I was just browsing their site for the last 2 hours & came here to check out if there were any articles about them. }

This is one OS project I am definitely looking forward to contribute to, big time.

I would recommend you to subscribe to the mailinglists here ;
or atleast to the "Major announcements from OSAF" here.

Link to prototype:

People working on it: (Impressive list)

{ What a coincidence! I was just browsing their site for the last 2 hours & came here to check out if there were any articles about them. }

This is one OS project I am definitely looking forward to contribute to, big time.

I would recommend you to subscribe to the mailinglists here ;
or atleast to the "Major announcements from OSAF" here.

Link to prototype:

People working on it: (Impressive list)

One must always be careful in praising vaporware, but the prototypes on the OSAF web site sure look impressive. I am particularly glad they place such a strong emphasis on security! That is an even better reason than MS-loathing to urge Outlook users to switch. OSAF will do the Internet a great service if Vista can cut down the number of Outlook viruses flooding my emailbox every day!

One must always be careful in praising vaporware, but the prototypes on the OSAF web site sure look impressive. I am particularly glad they place such a strong emphasis on security! That is an even better reason than MS-loathing to urge Outlook users to switch. OSAF will do the Internet a great service if Vista can cut down the number of Outlook viruses flooding my emailbox every day!

One must always be careful in praising vaporware, but the prototypes on the OSAF web site sure look impressive. I am particularly glad they place such a strong emphasis on security! That is an even better reason than MS-loathing to urge Outlook users to switch. OSAF will do the Internet a great service if Vista can cut down the number of Outlook viruses flooding my emailbox every day!

Mac
Macs have a proprietary hardware (Score: -1), have only just become moderately stable in the lastest release 10.2 (Score: -1), which now doesn't have a customizable GUI (Score: -1) and have an incredibly restrictive amount of both available OSs (Score: -1) or software (Score: -1). OS X is vulnerable to the same problems affecting BSD whereas the totally lame non-threaded, single-tasking Mac OS 7.5.5 / Open Transport was completely (i.e. thoroughly tested) secure (Score: -1). It's just not enough to buy another Mac.

X86
My x86 boxes cycle between OSes (Score: +1). I have a substantial choice - Sun x86, BeOS, RedHat, Mandrake, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Darwin, Windows, DOS, even Lindows, etc. (Score: +10). My x86 hardware is not affected by proprietary OS upgrades like 68k -> PPC --> OS X (Score: +1). I can stay behind the curve with the latest patches or run pre-alpha compilations (Score: +1). My main production software (or a killer Open Source equivalent) doesn't yet work on Linux - including Eudora, Powerpoint, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Pro Tools & GigaStudio (Score: +1).

Linux
It works (Score: +1). It doesn't run everything I need (Score: -1).

The Wish List
You want to get me really exited. Give me choice (Score: +10). Give me complete (API, Kernel & GUI) compatibility all across my choices (Score: +10). Port all my Mac and Windows apps (Score: +10). Give me a decent GUI that is fully customizable (Score: +10). Give me unrestricted video and audio to create original works (Score: +10). Give it to me on any hardware platform - anyone remember CHRP? (Score: +10) And don't waste my time, CPU, or bandwidth with emulation running crash-prone inferior code (Score: +10).

There are very few killer client apps out there, and they are all currently Mac/Windows. Fortunately, all the killer server apps are already on Linux. Hopefully the Open Source Applications Foundation will make some headway in fixing this. Right now there isn't anything that really makes X worth installing. vi still rules.

Here we have 1 Mac (exclusively dedicated to Pro Tools), 5 Windows boxes (various) and 7 Linux boxes (none of which run X). We also have a ThinkNIC which runs X but it doesn't actually do anything except ssh and Netscape. It is mostly used by our clients needing to reach Hotmail. Go figure.

Oh, goody! A list of features! Can that list remind me about my wife's birthday? Well, no. It can't do anything. It's not software. It's just hot air.

Do I smell JOS here? (I know that site vanished two or three years ago; that's the point).

Where's the product? I see an announcement, and I see a public discussion about what people might like to do, if by some quirk of fate they were to shut up and start writing code. I see an elaborate "Mission Statement" located on a slick-looking web site. But I don't see any code. I don't see any output at all.

A lot of people are going to jump into this and start arguing endlessly about features, programming patterns, methodology, licenses, and all manner of irrelevant crapola. No functional product will ever emerge, because they're doing it backwards. This is a truism, but people never seem to remember it: If you start with code, you may end up with something. If you start with a flashy web site, a vague 400-word mission statement (any "mission statement" longer than ten words is a death sentence), and a public call for sidewalk superintendents to gum things up, you'll never end up with anything. The latter approach is best described as Announcement Engineering. It's been tried, and it has failed, and it has been tried again, and it has failed again.

Why does it fail? Because if you start a discussion, you'll get people who specialize in discussing things. If you start a slick web site, you'll get people who like slick web sites. Both of those groups are self-selected for parasitism and uselessness. If, on the other hand, you start writing code, you'll get people who like to write code. If writing code is your goal, people who write code are the people you want. Not sidewalk superintendents. Not methodology-obsessed BS artists. Not visionaries, not self-appointed "philosophers", not "online community" addicts, not Open Source rock stars, spokesmodels, public figures, beloved elder statesmen, or opinionated teenagers -- all of which are going to descend on Kapor like a horde of locusts. For programming, you want programmers. But all the programmers are somewhere else, working on projects that actually exist.

Devil's Advocate Dept.: What about the GNU Manifesto? It does superficially resemble Announcement Engineering, but one crucial ingredient of AE is missing: Stallman never asked for anybody's goddamn opinion, and to this day he still hasn't. He doesn't want to discuss anything with anybody. When Stallman wants to know what you think, Stallman will tell you what you think. He never asked anybody for an opinion in that announcement; he just asked for code.

Yes, you will have access to their calenders if they allow it. Its all mentioned in the feature summary, which is here

It is going to have the ability to overlay calenders from different users.

Among the features the email client will have are "in-line viewing of attachments" and "user-scripting capabilities". (!)
In order to displace Outlook, I suppose people will demand these features. But let's hope the OSA Foundation does a better job on securing these features than MS!

Why? Of the terms on the block I knew, it seemed reasonable. Much easier to understand than a bunch of textual blather. With the diagram I can see that everything goes through Python & C bindings, even if I don't know what Jabber is.
architecture

Or did you have a specific gripe with the placement of wxWindows on the diagram or something?

No one has mentioned it yet - I'm amazed it wasn't in the headline. The project is going to be written mostly in Python.

Pretty neat. I've been meaning to swap some books in Safari and check out the Learning Python... I guess I finally have some reason.

This whole project sounds great - but why is there no code available? Supposedly a small group of core developers have been holed up for a year designing this thing... so where's the code already? Man, I can announce an Outlook Killer and throw some html up on the web too. But then again, I'm not Mitch Kapor...

-Russ

Being an evolution user (and former Outlooker) myself, I was curious to see what he plans on doing. But from what I see on his features page I only noticed a couple features that interested me. (Naturally YMMV)

Mail:

• auto-archiving of old mail

• integrated Instant Messaging and presence management (Jabber)
• remote peer-to-peer browsing of others' data
• flexible security model to control access
• file and document sharing
• remote queries, e.g., look up address in another person's contact list
• automatic updating of information from remote sources: receive new contacts, changes to existing contacts automatically (publish-subscribe)

• home and work PC's with complete automatic replication of data

Evolution seems to have all the other features already in place (although some may only be accessible via the Exchange connector). I'm sure they would be able to add the others without too much difficulty.

Apologies for the total cut & paste job.

I wasn't too impressed by his description and explination, so I found the page that had the real details, enjoy: http://www.osafoundation.org/our_product_desc.htm