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German Government Commissions KDE Groupware System
tankengine writes "The German government has ordered a full-blown open-source groupware solution for KDE, to be delivered by the end of this year. It will consist of a server made of standard OSS components (Apache, Postfix, LDAP, etc) called Kolab, and a KDE client. The contractors are aiming for functional equivalence to MS Exchange and Outlook 2000."
My big chance at karma whoring:
More info available at kroupware.kde.org
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Yes, the KDE client will be GPL'd. It will re-use a lot of code/components from KMail, KOrganizer etc
Look in :* Architecture Paper 1.0
Search for point "5. Windows Client".
As far as I read on kde mailing lists , resulting software will be Free Software ( GPL/LGPL ) and afaik they will give a win32 port too , but native kde port will be first.
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
The Windows client application to cooperate with the Kolab server and the KDE client is Outlook 2000 with the Bynari Insight Connector 1.09 plugin installed.
No modifications are made to this proprietary software.
Perfect. Would prefer no plug-in at all, but will certainly leap at what's being suggested so far.
Cheers,
Ian
It'd be great if this KDE effort were also compatible with Apple's current efforts (Address Book (LDAP, vCard), iCal (iCalendar), Mail (IMAP).
mbbac
Oh, but they have. This project is being pulled together by utilising existing projects, each of which have been running for considerably more than a few months. This seems to be a 'tying-up loose ends' affair, rather than a push to develop things from scratch.
True there's plenty of tying up to be done, but then that's why this project exists. The situation doesn't appear to be as bad as you believe it to be however.
Cheers,
Ian
I'm not fully confident that stringing together Postfix, Cyrus, OpenLDAP, etc. is really going to produce a cohesive groupware server. Yes, it'll work, but it'll be difficult to install.
The real value here, though, is that the KDE project will now be defining a bunch of standard interfaces by which open groupware will access its back end services. Even if they don't get the back end perfect the first time around, by the time they're done they will have a very detailed set of specifications for the rules by which an open groupware client will talk with an open groupware server. Sure, there are standards for the basic protocols -- IMAP, SMTP, etc. -- but there are no standards for things like, which IMAP folder contains your task list? What's the URL to find another user's free/busy times?
I think this is a big step forward, but it can be done even better. (Full disclosure: I am a developer on the Citadel project, which aims to provide an easy-to-install groupware server; we're doing it as a single integrated server instead of stringing together multiple existing unintegrated packages. So my view on this is admittedly subjective.)
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Have you tried Evolution? The only thing remaining I'd consider useful would be new posting and shared calendars/busy-free schedules. Apart from that it interoperates with Exchange very well, though only via IMAP/SMTP. If you want the calendar etc. as well, Ximian have a (proprietary) solution for that.
I still see a problem. How many companies run plain generic Exchange? Even my small company doesn't. We use things like BlackBerry devices and other plugins. Without those most companies will still run in to issues when migrating.
I agree with you. I have a Pentium III 933 Mhz, 128MB, 20GB 7200 RPM disk. KDE has the same exact performace as Windows 2000 on this machine, which I find not slow, but not fast either.
I have found that with a crappy video card, things really slow down. The refresh rate settings must match the exact performance of the monitor, otherwise, everything will flick. This is due XFree86.
Perhaps compiling your own KDE in a separate directory using options like -Os or -O3 would help the final binaries performance.
Indeed, I can't understand why the execution of kdeinit a couple of times is capable to consume more than 130 MB of RAM.
I dont fully expect KDE to deliver the entire product free to everyone
:)
You should.
It's going to be completely (L)GPL, just like KDE. Development is taking place on KDE CVS (in its own branch), which is publically available for anyone to see and participate in.
However, note that it isn't a volunteer project; Germany contracted a company to deliver the product by the end of the year (I'm pretty sure there are some KDE guys employed there). This is a great thing; some KDE devs get paid to deliver a really useful project for any and all to use! Bravo, Germany!
Oh, and they aren't starting from scratch; they're starting from kdelibs, kmail and korganizer.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Looking at the road map Aethera is due for release any moment
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
If it wasn't for governments subsidizing software development, we wouldn't have the internet, the web, HTML, MP3, JPG, MPEG...
All of these things came from government funded projects. I know that many people find it hard to believe, or don't want to believe it, but it is actually government funded projects which drives most of the innovation in the software industry, not Microsoft, Oracle, etc. This is why I believe all the recent government interest in Linux and Open Source is really the death knell for most "off-the-shelf" software.
This book was reviewed here.
*
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
we do that by creating a resource, named something like... "7th Floor small conference room".
Then it's just as simple as inviting that item as a resource, and voila, it's booked. this seems to work well with little to no intervention required by any receptionist, who used to have to juggle scheduling.
EOM
but as has been gone over ad-infinitum on this site the calendar side is completely lacking at present.
Not quite. I just had something pop into my inbox this morning announcing this:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/jicalFrom the project summary:
So there you have it, calendering without Exchange. While not a perfect solution, it's a nice hack and can surely be developed.
iCal isn't open source, but it does all its communications using standard protocols, so it's the next best thing. In theory it would be very easy to integrate iCal with a (yet to be built AFAIK) open source server. Just thought it was worth noticing.
Many posters have argued that government intervention into private software markets is bad, and that Europeans are foolish not to see how bad this really is
We already have government intervention into US-produced software. Europeans know full well about this, and are wise to push open source solutions.
Having another country's government spy on your citizens IS a proper concern of one's own government.
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
An open source replacement for Exchange's calendar store could eliminate a lot of Windows Server installations. Thousands of businesses are tied to Windows Server because Exchange works exclusively with Windows Server and Outlook works (almost) exclusively with Exchange.
Exchange calendaring replacements have been developed by HP and Steltor, and acquired by Samsung and Oracle, respectively. Those products generally don't integrate with Outlook's calendar as well as Exchange does, but they prove the viability of the Exchange-replacement market, and an open source product would have a big pricing advantage over those commercial alternatives.
The tough part is persuading the end-users to switch from Outlook to a new calendar client. If IT can do this, the odds are good that IT could convince the users to switch from Microsoft Office to Star Office.
Maybe it's premature to short-sell MSFT, but this initiative could be a crack in the wall.
Steltor (www.steltor.com) had a CorporateTime Plugin that looked a little nicer, but Oracle bought them, so I don't know if you can buy their plugin separately anymore.
If you distribute source code (or source with binaries) to your customers, thats true. If you don't provide source code with the binaries, then you must provide source to anyone who asks for it.
> They are only obligated to provide the
> source code to their buyer.
Correct. But although they are not obligated
to do so, development of the KDE parts will take
place in KDE CVS and the intention is to feed
everything back into the KDE mainline. I guess
for KDE 3.2 or so.