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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."
Just to be clear, will the finished product be freely available to all? I read the article, and it seems that way to me, but I'm unsure & don't want to get my hopes up too much.
It certainly seems a little farfetched to expect that out of the blue we'll get an Outlook/Exchange replacement at no cost.
My first reaction what that they're reinventing the wheel. Then I saw that they're going to be using and extending many current KDE components. *IF* the KDE teams takes these changes/modifications and uses them to build a new base, great. If, however, this becomes essentially a fork of current Kmail, Korganizer, etc., I don't see this as a good thing.
And yeah, why not take Aethera and build on that - it's already more integrated with itself and other things, and I'm sure the Kompany could have used a nice gov't contract just as much as the team that got it (maybe moreso).
creation science book
Look at the history of cars and paved roads for example. Once there was enough cars on the road, the need for well paved roads became a public utility. Same is true for gas, water and electricity. Once it starts going that way, people's tolerance for non-standard ways becomes a huge issue.
then again, I could be smoking crack and this is just more PR bs.
There's something about the Germans that makes them good at software engineering, in fact any type of engineering. Of the open source projects I've seen, some of the best ones have been German. They should make a good job of this.
I've been thinking that the Mozilla project should do something like this. They have the resources to handle an Exchange replacement. Imagine "Mozilla Server" which is a single-install replacement for Exchange/IIS; it uses existing OSS components like Apache but ties them together and simplifies configuration. The Mozilla client would be very well integrated into the server, able to access web pages, email, and newsgroups, as well as LDAP contacts, scheduling, and other groupware features.
Of course since the source and the standards are both open, many other clients would be able to access the data as well. But I think Mozilla/Netscape is enough of a force in the OSS world to set the standard for a project like this. I'm not sure KDE is.
From the kroupware koncept:
...
"ProFTPD offers good security features such as change root environment and a fine granular access configuration.
It's only functionality on the Kolab server is the legacy mode to enable Windows clients to publish their free-busy lists via anonymous FTP on the server."
Anonymous ftp access? Kiddies, start your pub-scanners!
You'd think komputer konsultants kould kode up a more sekure solution.
They do say its disabled by default, but since we all know there will be "legacy" systems around for years, they'll have plenty of wide-open boxes. Why FTP anyways?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Why when people say, "Oh, let's make a replacement for Outlook/Exchange?" do they so readily forget about Public Folders... It wouldn't be so hard for me to convince people at my job to move away from Outlook/Exchange, but we have massive business rules written into the Public Folders, that we can't just "do away with".
As others have mentioned, the Bynari connector will be needed for windows access. This sucks. I mean seriously. Bynari is bad enough that nearly nobody is using even now to do groupware, HENCE THE DAMNED PROJECT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
I would much rather just have a seperate application, nearly exactly like the KDE client, ported to windows. It will/would hopefully have an outlook importer (not hard, I can offer services in that regard), but it should not be outlook. If it looks and acts just like the KDE version, then it'll be much easier to move users over to *nix after they've used it elsewhere.
Public Folders, Blackberries, and integrated fax solutions. I.e., the corporate messaging system.
Aethera is in the Debian unstable packages list
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
About a year ago, I decided not to use "closed" and the word "standard" together anymore.
"Closed specification" versus "Open Standard". That's what I use now. Sounds clearer, better, doesn't it?
Unfortunatelly, that is standard procedure for theKompany
They are extreamly optimistic on their shipment dates
I've been waiting for an update for BlackAdder, its been "in a few weeks" / "end of the month" / "after the weekend" and similar, changed at random for well over a year....
Last I hered on the mailinglist was "End of August" (said around august 15)
>>The Mozilla client would be very well integrated into the server, able to access web pages, email, and newsgroups, as well as LDAP contacts, scheduling, and other groupware features.
>Isn't this how we got into this mess in the first place? The OS needs, IE, which you can't remove, and Outlook requires IE, and everything is integrated into these two applications and their support subsystem. Look at the trouble it's given the Windows users.
True enough, but is that arguement supposed to support the KDE alternative approach? That comment applies equally to KDE, does it not?
Just TRY decoupling Konqueror from KDE... you can't even (EASILY) build KDE without all the theme stuff.
Personally, I think 70% of this is backend, desktop/OS-agnostic stuff... and should be worked out in a desktop-neutral manner. I'm not saying everything would be built with KDE dependencies, but it would not surprise me either.
We really need some cooperation and coordination between KDE & GNOME... I'm not putting forth the "one desktop" concept, but surely we can get cooperation on things like calendaring. If GNOME has a calendaring concept (Ximian's commercial Exchange plugin doesn't count), then all the open source folks should leverage what they have in common.
Just today I was talking about how Linux really needs this sort of thing (well, that and a decent network filesystem; NFS is vile and AFS is ... idiosyncratic. Coda is apparently not particularly suited to real world needs and Intermezzo is something completely different)
The LDAP integration is actually something they could really lever here, KDE could seriously do with a graphical LDAP admin system (ie one specifically designed for managing users in particular). That and they would do well to stick Kerberos up every concieveable orifice too - Single Sign On is a good thing, and I dont mean one controlled by a company with the letters M and S in its name.
I'm not fully confident that stringing together Perl, Apache, MySQL, etc is really going to produce a cohesive Web server. :-)
Isn't that really the Open Source Way(tm)? Why build some monolithic beast when most of the parts already exist?
The difficult-to-install issue is a function of your distribution. Debian unstable (possibly stable and testing too, I'm not sure) carries all of those programs (including the most current Cyrus).
Even Microsoft's stuff (most of it, anyway) is just a bunch of pieces created to do certain functions and configured to communicate with each other to perform specific tasks (the biggest difference being that Microsoft usually designs the smaller parts with the larger purpose in mind, whereas this is sort of like repurposing existing components).
All they really need to do once they've figured out how to get this to do what they want it to do, and done whatever coding and configuration is needed, is to put together a clean installer to make it happen. Check versions of existing components, prompt to find whether existing components should be replaced or new components should be installed in a different location (with info on any differences between 'standard' components and the ones in the 'kroupware' package), configure, and then drop to an options dialog. Easier said than done, perhaps, but if even Microsoft could get it right people would be a lot happier with their software.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
I'm not sorry to see that many /.ers can see the economic reasons for one government to stop paying money hand over fist on a continuing basis to a foreign company - a company which, as a result, exerts some degree of power over that government's electronic and information policies. That money isn't on loan - it's gone from that country forever, into the coffers of another country.
In this case, you've got a nation-state building and using something for and by itself - something that will compete with products that private market workers and investors in another country far away are, in some cases, making large fortunes from.
If this is a problem, maybe the American government shouldn't have produced the Internet in the first place. Imagine how much better-off we'd all have been if that had never happened. Or maybe not.
Sorry but a nice hack aint going to cut it for all but the smallest of installations. Exchange as busted as it is has a wonderfull calandering solution that many people love. Once we complete our exchange rollout and the imap/pop3 servers we have now are decommision I plan on running mozilla mail in imap mode for email and outlook for calandering (currently on win2k later on linux with crossover office)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.