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That's a nice long explanatory answer... for the first question! ;). Do you have an answer for the 2nd?

I might even add... do you have suggestions?

I have already checked out a few of 'em (not necessarily OSS):

• Zimbra
• Scalix
• eGroupware
• PHP Groupware
• Communigate Pro
• Citadel
• Kolab
• Open Groupware
• Open xChange

...of which many of them have a great potential, but I always end up having some trouble somewhere or find 'em not user-friendly/admin-friendly enough.

Does anyone have any experience with phpGroupWare? Is it mature? Applicable to OP's needs? Just thought I'd add it to the discussion since I didn't see it mentioned yet, and thought it might be worth considering. But I don't know how capable, full-featured an effort it is. They do provide a list of references/users. http://www.phpgroupware.org/

I use eGroupWare which was forked from phpGroupWare. Both of these have a utility called "eTemplates" which does all the HTML for you. Try it, you'll like it, productivity is awesome, something like several pages of working, tested, debugged, HTML per day.

If you read TFA, it says "Ruby on Rails (aka Rails) is a Ruby framework for database-backed Internet applications". My point was that, for this particular niche, it isn't any better than PHP using either phpGroupWare or eGroupWare which was forked from phpgw.

Developing new applications in these frameworks using the eTemplates system is a really quick and painless procedure. In that context, I mix SQL and PHP, using whatever language is best for a given operation. For the example you mentioned SQL works fine, although one could do it in PHP in a much shorter way than the code you presented, using "sort(array_unique($array))". Check the PHP standard library functions for array manipulations.

Of course, the application mentioned in the article is rather specific, for other type of work I wouldn't use PHP, I prefer Perl for smaller applications without too much number crunching or C/C++ for large ones.

Ruby reminds me of languages like Smalltalk, created in the academic world by professors for the delight of professors. The "everyhting is an object" concept is fine for the classroom, but in the real world I fail to see real advantages in it. OO offers some advantages in a very large project where you must coordinate the work of different programmers, some of which are less experienced than others. For smaller projects OO can be rather a hindrance than a help.

I have browsed the /. comments on this article and am still unconvinced by Ruby. Unfortunately, most of the arguments are like "Hey, Ruby is great, you should try it!", without real substance behind. OK, the one-liner you showed is cool, but the PHP counter example you presented shows that you don't know PHP that well to do an objective comparison between the two languages.

Instead of using EGroupware or PHPGroupware, we should just start using using silent communications like cockroaches...
 
"...So does that mean I'm #1, or ....HEY!"

What about phpgroupware? Here's a demo. I'd link to the main site, but it looks like Sourceforge is having some issues right now; at least, I can't connect to anything hosted on it. Weird. Maybe some router broke between there and here. *shrug*

Browsing down the list of packages brought up by searching for "calendar" in Synaptic on my Ubuntu install here at work, Hula and Egroupware look like possibilities, too. I wouldn't know, I've never used either, but they might be worth a look.

As a bonus, all of these will work with any OS that can use a modern web browser. Kickass, no? Got a dev doing some embedded QNX work, so he's got that installed for his desktop? He can still use the groupware app, without having to have a separate machine. Some users still on Windows? No problem. All the grunt work is on the server side. And hell, you can run the server on just about any OS. I think the only requirement for PHPgroupware is Apache, PHP, and some kind of SQL--and I'm not entirely sure about the Apache part, I bet it could be made to run on any PHP-enabled web server, and anyway Apache runs on almost anything. So you could use, Linux, Windows, *BSD, OSX, or whatever else you want for your server.

...but it will be worth it. The goal, of course, is standards-based functionality for PIM (Personal Information Management) software. Yes, people really do want a replacement for Outlook, and the open source community would do well to offer complete, end-to-end solutions. Combine the Lightning client with standards-based servers and you've got a good shot at finally getting people to dump Outlook and Exchange.

Here's the thing, though: everyone seems to assume that we need an "Outlook Killer" and an "Exchange Killer." This is, in fact, not true. "One size fits all" only works for Microsoft because Microsoft forces that model. In an ideal world, everyone will select the products that fit them best, and those products will all work together. That means some folks might choose Lightning, some might choose Aethera instead, and they'd still be able to interact with each other's calendars. On the server side, the dozen or so open source groupware servers such as Kolab, OGo, Citadel, and PHPgroupware would all be able to speak common protocols with Lightning and other clients. Users would choose based on other features; for example, one organization might want strong support for forms-based workflow, another might want rich real-time communications, another might want a large selection of third-party plugins. The idea is to allow people to choose their software based on the feature set, rather than by being locked into one choice because, for example, only Exchange supports all the features of Outlook.

It's going to take a lot of cooperation but we'll get there.

Funnily enough, one is called OpenGroupware
Then there's PHP groupware
And Amphora

Finally, always check Freshmeat. It happens to return 76 results for "groupware".

phpgroupware uses all free and open software. Printer friendly output.

Check it out here

One possibility would be to always use some sort of groupware suite (e.g. phpGroupWare), but:
- they are focused on groups, not individuals

On the backend, it probably doesn't make much difference if the product is focused on groups or individuals.

In the Web UI, you could probably clean up the interface a bit to remove some of the more group-based features (We don't really need "Discussion Groups", etc.

However, it doesn't seem that there is a simple way to sync your handhelds with PHPGroupWare or eGroupWare (It still lack a complete implementation.

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.

Why dont you check out php PHPgroupware

I used it a year ago and was pretty happy with it. You will need an apache web server (or similar) with php and mysql to use it.

Good thing for you that all those things are free. If you are looking for a system to host it on, why not try gentoo

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.

From the main page of thePHP Groupware site, two minutes ago:

Fatal Error: It appears that you have not created the database tables for phpGroupWare. Click here to run setup.

Not a very encouraging advertisement...

Many people have become familiar with using services such as hotmail or yahoo as their main form of email.

You could take this oppertunity to use something like http://www.phpgroupware.org/ which will replicate all the mail/collabaration/task/meeting scheduling functions of Outlook.

Also its free and open sores software, take a look at some of these screenshots or try out the live demo and see for your self how great it is.
I'd like to mention that I have no affiliation except having a linux server hidden somewhere at work running this and allowing many people who get stupid outlook viruses an account on it too see if they like it, so far I'm getting a great response.

Many people have become familiar with using services such as hotmail or yahoo as their main form of email.

You could take this oppertunity to use something like http://www.phpgroupware.org/ which will replicate all the mail/collabaration/task/meeting scheduling functions of Outlook.

Also its free and open sores software, take a look at some of these screenshots or try out the live demo and see for your self how great it is.
I'd like to mention that I have no affiliation except having a linux server hidden somewhere at work running this and allowing many people who get stupid outlook viruses an account on it too see if they like it, so far I'm getting a great response.

Many people have become familiar with using services such as hotmail or yahoo as their main form of email.

You could take this oppertunity to use something like http://www.phpgroupware.org/ which will replicate all the mail/collabaration/task/meeting scheduling functions of Outlook.

Also its free and open sores software, take a look at some of these screenshots or try out the live demo and see for your self how great it is.
I'd like to mention that I have no affiliation except having a linux server hidden somewhere at work running this and allowing many people who get stupid outlook viruses an account on it too see if they like it, so far I'm getting a great response.

Try PHProjekt. It's actively being developed and supported.

I installed it at a client's site, after looking at alternatives, such as PHPGroupWare (which also looks quite good, albeit a tiny bit immature and others, and PHProjekt was the most robust of the bunch.

I don't know how well it will scale if you ever expand REAL BIG, but as it just relies on a standard SQL backend, you should be able to import/export data anywhere.

You might want to check out PHPGroupWare. Calendar, mail, project management, etc. in one web service system. If I were a corporation, I think I would be interested. If only Free Software projects reached the attention of the people who need it.

It might help if you were clear about what you were trying to do. Might the phpGroupWare project be something to base your project on?

There are a couple of web-based solutions available - try phpGroupWare or TUTOS.

• All the mail stuff, subject, addressing, message
• Groupware Apps Info(look at phpgroupware, they have a good thing going for them)
• For files, such as attachments, a file path would be all that's needed, and it can be abstracted so that if an attachment is sent to 15 people on the server, it's only stored once. When a person removes it, their link in the db is removed, not the file.

Might check into that for calendering. Yeah, it's web based, but that works OK, and as an added bonus you don't need to be on your network to get to it!

Link

Mozilla would probably fit the bill for e-mail. And with Mozilla you also go to PHP Groupware. So it's *kind of* integrated. :)

I don't really see the point in having all that embedded in the office suite anyway.

I'll bite.

1) How do you work around the complete lack of server-side productivity software on Linux servers?

Check out phpGroupware. http://www.phpgroupware.org/ It works. Well.

2) How do you work around the lack of group policy controls in SAMBA?

You don't. You get rid of the Windows desktops and replace them with UNIX desktops. You then stop worrying about 'Virus Updates' and Outlook exploits. If you have a legcy app the only runs on MS-DOS, or Windows, then you get Microsoft Terminal Server and Citrix. Or you get a Sun desktops, and plop in one of their Intel-PC-On-A-Pci-Cards and run Windows at native speeds. There are other options.

I do think both are very cool, but when I'm away from my personal computer, I find stuff like phpGroupWare and TWIG to be most helpful. Basically, both are still in the useable but not yet completely polished phases of development. When phpGroupWare is done, I have fairly high hopes for it.

In addition to allowing me to keep working when I don't have my own laptop with me or it's out for repair, I find the whole idea of Web Gateways much better for real "remote" work.

XTerminals are best (IMHO) if your looking for a single server, multiple user points on a fast network. But on a slower network, or more remote, I think web gateways would be better.

I guess I'm missing why VNC is the ultimate solution here....

• Calendar
• E-mail
• Addressbooks
• Project Management
• To Do Lists
• File Manager
• Plus a lot of other modules

The Open Office org people are working on that with the PHPGroupware people. Links are here (Check the mail archives), here and here. Keep in mind that the SO 5.2 groupware features couldn't be open sourced, so these guys are starting from scratch and a long way behind.

The PHPGroupware project has pretty much finished creating an open XML-RPC (and SOAP soon) groupware protocol specification and server implementation. The Open Office people plan on a quick port of the Mozilla calendar project to this protocol, and later on build a native Star Office groupware client. Hopefully the Evolution people will pull their heads out and start looking at this for the server back end.

The intention is that one day any groupware client that follows this protocol will talk to any groupware server, and give the ability to mix and match every layer of the solution. This would let you choose a web interface or an integrated client (eg Outlook/Evolution) or seperate mail and calendaring clients. And on the backend, choose your storage (eg filesystem or SQL database), choose you IMAP server, your directory, your iCal server etc etc.

It is ambitious, but a sorely needed to break the IT world out of MS lock-in. I'd love to see future groupware built on open standards rather than the proprietry Exchange/Notes/Groupwise ones.

Have you tried php groupware ? I believe it can do shared calendaring.

There are several projects in this direction. I will mention the ones with web-based interface. The one with (apparently) higher number of features is indeed PhPGroupware. Most of the modules are usable (e.g. Calendar, Address book, Trouble Ticket system, File Management, Chat, ToDo, etc.). Some of the modules are quite advanced but show some problems (e.g. Project Management, Inventory).With a little custom setup this looks the best choice at the moment. There is also Twig that is also quite mature but does not have as many modules as phpgroupware. Another project that claims to be Production/Stable is PhProjekt. The modules are much simpler than the ones in phpgroupware, it looks more like a viewer. But it has time cards, calendar, chat, e-mail and others. Another project is the Horde project, quite at the beginning. These are only the php - sql projects, you may find other approaches too.

Sorin M

For calendaring and such, take a look at phpGroupWare. They are listed on SourceForge as well. It may not have everything you want, (What does?) but it's a start. Keep in mind that it is still beta (though getting close to release) but most of the obvious bugs have been fixed.

Finding something Open Source that does payroll is going to be harder. It's often said that OSS comes about because someone was scratching their own itch. Most programmers have very little need for HR and Payroll stuff. (phpGroupWare had an HR mod back in the day, but it's not in the more recent versions. If you get the urge one day, write up a mod for phpGroupWare (or whatever) that does what you want.)

As an aside, when we wanted to switch away from our old, manual time clock, we setup an old Win95 laptop with some shareware punch clock SW and then put the numbers from there into Quickbooks to print the checks. The moral is: use what works best for you. Even if it runs on Windows and is Closed Source.

PerlStalker

I can see some logic in what you are saying, but I have to disagree with the groupware point.

The "usefulness" of exchange can already be replaced with a nice install of send/q mail, Apache, and any one of a number of opensource groupware products (Like PHPGroupware)

For the small/medium enterprise, the power of opensource is astounding. Costs are lower, branding is easier, support is as close as Usenet, and the list goes on. Sure for the forutine 500 MS stuff is better, but most of the companies in the world are not on that list.

And don't bash Apache which "does something simple".. show me *ONE* thing IIS does that Apache won't. C'mon, I dare you.

looks like someone already started the project.. check it out http://www.phpgroupware.org/ i like it

But if you're going that route you may as well help out phpgroupware.org ($0.02)

There's also MCAL - Modular Calendar Access Library