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Mitch Kapor's Outlook-Killer
Kent Brewster writes "In the San Jose Mercury this morning: 'For more than a year, [Mitch] Kapor and his small team have been working on what they're calling an open-source "Interpersonal Information Manager." The software is being designed to securely handle personal e-mail, calendars, contacts and other such data in new ways, and to make it simple to collaborate and share information with others without having to run powerful, expensive server computers.'" Kapor explains his intent in his own words.
Or did anyone else read the headline and think there was yet another outlook vulnerability?
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Why not build on the success of evolution?
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Kinda disappointed... For a second there, I thought it was another email worm that uninstalled Outlook on its way out...
=)
But as long as I do not see at least some screenshots it is just vaporware for me.
:-)
Perhaps this is a bit exaggerated but I've simply experienced too many disappointments with software which does not exist yet.
Anyway, still I wish good luck to this project!
It would be possible to make mozilla act as described, wouldnt it?
The mail functionality is there and the calendar is getting there, although it is very basic right now.
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Good thing. I despise outlook. I work at a tech support department at a medium sized college, and we officially support netscape (not much of a better choice) but outlook attracts email worms like a neon light attracts bugs. After the hundreth box that I had to zero or get our net engineer to block I'd love to see something more secure. I'm using Eudora right now.
Also, I'd love to see popular email programs support background encryption, something that happened behind the scenes without the users notice, so even the most inept id10t could handle it. It's ridiculous that 90% of the world is sending it's email around in cleartext. Are we just begging the FBI or the NSA to read our minds?
Code-named ``Chandler''
At least it wasn't named after the same character from 'Friends'...
People might have worried that the software would take after the character... get a bit bloated and be a bit sarcastic. :)
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
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
... is Exchange =)
Mozilla is already open source why do these guys need to re-invent the wheel when they could take the mail and news client already exists and expand on it to make it infinately more useable?
I mean isn't that the whole point of open source, not having to re-invent everything but to expand and improve on what's already out there?
Maybe I'm missing something.
Linux ( FreeBSD, etc...) already has many small single purpose cool apps, but not many large ( mozilla scale) cool apps. Agenda spawned a whole wave of business users to the DOS world and could do the same for Linux.
From the feature list, this takes care of 80% of the needs that keep business people using windows just to have Outlook calender functions. Agenda was replaced by Symphony and Symphony wasn't the simple freeform database/calendar app that Agenda had been.
Agenda was allowing complex datamining from freeform databases before the term 'datamining' existed. If this is going to be an extension of Agenda, then much coolness is ahead and many people will be interested in trying Linux just to run the new Agenda.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
If they're not careful, they very well could mimic outlook even moreso. Under Feature Summary:
-user-scripting capabilities
This might not end well...
I guess they can't screw things up worse than Outlook though.
Under http://www.osafoundation.org/technology.htm, they mention the parts of Mozilla they're planning on using. Mainly just the Gecko engine and the development tools. From the looks of things, they'll be using Jabber quite a bit, maybe that model doesn't fit as well directly to Mozillas PIM features.
Jason
So far the only info on the site are a rundown of the technologies they've "evaluated". However, they talk about using Jabber as a P2P transport - but Jabber is server based. I've not seen any demos of a p2p version of jabber either. Have they actually thought this through?
It's not necessarily sensible to encrypt non-
sensitive material. There's a performance cost,
a risk of future unreadability, there's the key-
distribution problem, and of course the difficulty
of making everyone's implementation compatible.
There are good reasons to encrypt everything, too,
I'm just saying it's not black and white.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
No. It said, "Outlook KILLER," not "Outlook Express clone." :)
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
I've seen a number of responses asking why doesn't Mitch and his group put their efforts into (Evolution||Mozilla||etc).
... if I wanted to use Outlook, I'd install Outlook. I don't like the interface of Outlook and Evolution seems to be a rehash of the same.
... that is to be -better- than what Microsoft has currently locked most work desktops onto rather than just replicating those interfaces and functionality on a different OS.
I may be in the minority, but I hate the Mozilla mail client. It just doesn't work for me.
I refuse to use Evolution
In fact, right now I use Palm Desktop for my PIM (even though my PDA has been without batteries for 9+ months due to inactivity) and Eudora for my email. I would love the -functionality- of Outlook including reliable synchronization with integration with a good email client.
If I had that, I would switch to Linux as my primary work machine (currently I experiment with several distributions and my off-hours machine is Linux, but my work desktop still runs Windows).
My point is, why should they contribute to projects they don't like? It's their time and it sounds like they have adopted project directions that many of us have been wanting for a long time
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Now I'm not familiar with wxWindows/wxPython, but the problem I see is that by writing using a cross-platform library, you can't take advantage of OS-specific features. You are stuck with the generic widgets that appear to work the same way accross platforms. For example, on windows, you cannot take advantage of COM functionality unless you isolate the code and make it windows-only. Yes python supports COM, but that code will crap out on linux...
Example: one of the worst interfaces I've seen is Ethereal. Excellent program, very useful, but the interface bites.
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
Me
now overwhelmingly dominated by Microsoft's inelegant but overwhelmingly dominant Outlook
This surprisingly clumsy phrase was clumsy but surprising to me.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
OK, now I know that I don't have to write a single line of code to get my project spalshed across the front page. Good. Now, what was it I was going to write...
:-)
(head scratching)
Oh yea. I remember. Hey, Taco, I'm going to invent a perpetual motion machine the day after tomorrow. For real. Not vaporware. Honest! I demand my story submitted.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
If the software is going to work without a server I expect it's going to need to share information between clients somehow, so my best guess is that it's going to use P2P technology to do this in conjunction with the Jabber stuff for messaging. But without a central server for replication this is going to mean that data will get out of sync if it has to be cached on other users machines, or otherwise a user will need to keep their machine on all the time they want to share their information such as calendars, etc.
Inter-operaterability with other systems would most likely be ignored whilst prefering to encourage transistion and migration from one system to another. That way they'll be able to get you to move your data over and use it right away, but not talk with the Exchange server requiring an Evolution like connector (which is not open or free).
I wish them luck. I can remember sitting in a bar discussing the pros and cons of coming up with a competing product to Exchange and Outlook around about a week before the first time I saw Evolution mentioned, which was on Slashdot.
I hope that they can pursuade the Mozilla people to allow people to use it if it's that much better.
/usr/bin/awake/too/long
A bit optimistic. Better hope that the organizer of events never loses a hard drive or leaves their notebook at home. All the technology and specs already exist to make an Outlook/Exchange killer. vCard, iCal, iTIP are all good protocols for PDI and can be used via e-mail and HTTP (defined in iMIP). The best part (and Apple realized this by picking vCard and iCal for their OSX PIM software) is that Outlook already supports auto importing of vCard and iCal data (no if they would auto-export it then life would be great).
Is there a standard PIM messaging format to interchange appointments, contacts, etc., between various apps?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
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!
I hope I shall not spoil any party!!!
1. Mr. Kapor is on Groove Networks board of directors, isn't there any conflict of interests...
2. IMHO the OSAF target features are quite similar to Groove's...never mind the spesific technology used...
3. MS had invsted $51 million in Groove, and to my best recall parts of Groove were integrated into Outlook (or at least there was intention for such integration)
One may only wonder if:
a)Mr. Kapor is looking for a silver bullet against Gate's embrace & extend strategy? as well for Groove financial status?
To make a long story short, why not open & port Groove Networks source code? would it not be simpler? Groove shall still be the best party to package it as well tailoring new business components...
Try this on a network of any size. 2 computers means 2 computers (1 for each), three means 4, 4 means 12, and so on-- the number of possible connections gets out of hand rapidly. If you have 100 peers, you have 9900 possible connections on your networks, with 99 computers that might need to be searched at a given time!
This is why we have servers (LDAP, email, etc.) but they don't have to be expensive... P2P doesn't scape THAT well for the corporate workstation, and instead, people tend to rely on networks of servers and networks of workstations instead.
So although this might be nice for the small office, I have serious questions about its scalability.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
what we need isn't a mail client that "LOOKS" like outlook but one that functions like outlook. Something for *nix desktop/workstation that can interact and use exchange server. That would be something else... not another look a like.
It would be possible to make mozilla act as described, wouldnt it?
No. Not even close. Not trolling here, just talking reality, my friend.
Think Ximian Evolution -- but that's such a verbatim copycat of Outlook that I'm very surprised that they haven't been sued yet.
If you are thinking of "rethinking the pim" go look at an old version ecco pro. That was one awsome pim that got buried for no reason.
War is necrophilia.
Note to reader: this is not a flame! I'm just joking around. It's funny, laugh.
From the article:
A couple of paragraphs ago, it became clear that I could not take all of Mitch Kapor's claims seriously while at the same time fully realizing my internal goals of being honest to myself and others. This gave rise to an important idea, which is that (maybe) Mitch has been in marketing far too long. I felt it was important to continue reading so that I could be fully informed. All of which is to say that I have to keep reading while Mitch drones on and on about "product" and "deferring work" and more "product".
At this point, a small team has spent the better part of a year thinking through the problem space and developing a theory to explain wtf Mitch's problem is. (Their answer? Five tons of flax! (see ddate(1) or your peneal gland for more info)) I've made a number of fundamental decisions about the quality of the weblog I've just read and have arrived at a (not preliminary) set of conclusions:
The part that really got me was the first line of the second quoted paragraph. Yes, I understand what he means by "thinking through the problem space", but I can't ignore that he actually phrased it that way. Guys, the only time a programmer should talk of "problem space" is when she or he is writing code that handles one. E.g. an expert system that has to search its database to find the "best" answer to the user's querry or a (chess-like) games program that has to search the tree of valid moves to find a good one or a root finding program that has to search in the x-y plane (or the x-y-z space or n-dimensional space) for the set of points where f(x[1],x[2],...,x[n])=0.
Now go talk amongst yourselves while I "think through the problem space" of how to quit being a slashdot bum and go get a job. :-P (I know, I know. The answer is obvious...)
Furry cows moo and decompress.
If I hear that sure-fire, badge of stupidity, quoted one more time I may just roll over, die AND throw up on my shoes. Not in that order of course.
Wheels get re-invented ALL the time. It's called PROGRESS. What? You didn't realize that progress was cumulative? That everyone stands "on the shoulders of giants"? Every post, it seems, that says ANYTHING, someone drags it out "What's the point? We've done that with x?"
Bozo. You folks are supposed to be thinkers. So think.
No Wheel, no rubber tyre - no rubber tyre, no tractor - no tracter, no avocado farm - no avocado farm, no Guacamole for the masses!
And then where would we be? Mmmmm?
Okay, so I'm a _little_ off topic but at least I have my chips and dip.
Stoptional
Reads and updates my calendar from the outlook server.
That is the only requirement. Anything that does not do this is be defininition not an outlook killer, in that I will still be forced to use outlook at work. Something I can just drop in frees a whole box from runnign Windows.
I have thought of using Evolution with the connector, but haven't taken a look at it yet.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes and no. Screenshots would make it seem like an Outlook clone. And Evolution does mimic some of Outlook's functionality. But they're actually quite different.
So what's the same? Layout is simular. Mail, calandering, tasks (todo), contacts. Summary. And that's about it.
Outlook has memos and a journal. It has a more advanced flagging system. And numerous other tidbits and features I'm probably completely unaware of. It also has better integration. For example, you can create an appointment with an email note in the appointment's notes by dragging an email to the Calendar. No such functionality in Evolution.
But Evolution has its own features. Its searches are better. I prefer the way it threads messages. And its vfolders have proven to be rather amazing once I started to understand their use. Evolution also has nice touches such as quick access to email source and headers. And it is rather sane when handling potentially abusive HTML email (ie: by default, it won't load images from remote sources until told to).
Yea. Evolution and Outlook look simular. And they're bound to compete in one way or another. But they're hardly identical.
There was and is a unix-based server that works like Exchange. It can use Outlook as a client, and can also use Java-based and Web-based clients, as well as other Unix mail clients.
HP developed it and used to sell it as Openmail, but they don't sell it any more.
Now it's been picked up by Samsung. Here's the FAQ.
"having every feature a user wants"
/. will have their comments in an email format.
/. addicts... just wait to see this stuff working !!!
That of course means that
Imagine the anxiety just waiting for that pop-up window saying: "Your message has been replied" or "You've been moderated insighful".
And believe that some of us are
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Two things that caught my eye were the Office-like shortcut toolbar on the left side, and the calendar page, which copies every single mundane detail from Outlook's interface, especially the date-book stacking (i.e., squishing more than one day's view on the screen). Even the positioning of the Calendar and Tasks list.
But then again, Evolution is meant to be an alternative to Outlook, with the least user training required to transition.
But like I said, I'm surprised that they haven't been sued yet. Maybe cause it's freeware.
Can you sue for "look and feel"? I thought that became a lost cause early on with legal battles between Microsoft vs Apple, and Lotus?
Outlook's main interface may be becoming commoditized (assuming this layout is an Outlook first). Other PIM implementations, like the default Palm calendar, allow multi-day views simular to Outlook. I seem to remember a third-party Palm app that squished ToDo items in that view too.
It may very well be that there is nothing for Microsoft to do. I would imagine they would put their considerable legal resources to work if they thought they had a case. Freeware or not.
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* IBM PROFS was the worst. The original Prodigy 300-baud 24x40-character mail system was heinous also. The homebrew Kermit-based system we used that crashed when receiving more than 200KB of mail was about on par with MSMail in those days...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You are confusing NetBIOS with NetBEUI.
If you run NetBIOS over TCP/IP, you start introducing the computer browsing services which acts as a cache for locating machines. This helps to reduce the amount of broadcast packets flying around, and makes NetBIOS slightly more scalable. Then you have WINS and all that sort of stuff which solves most of the other issues, if you want to go to an NT domain model.