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Chandler 0.1 Released
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.
Note that Lotus Agenda, a distant ancestor of this program, is available for free. It's tricky toget working on a new PC, its interface is abysmally clunky by today's standard, but its approach to PIM (that's Personal Information Management) is really great. Agenda was for managing ANY information that you, personally, might want to track. It's like a dynamically-typed relational database, or something.
I don't necessarily agree. While Exchange is used in many (if not all) larger organizations, frequently, each exchange installation covers only a subset of the organization, such as one department or workgroup. Within such a group - and especially if they have the budgetary responsibility for their installation - moving to a different, better, solution may well be worth the pain.
Also, and more important, they are aiming for the small organization. How many 3-10 employee companies would have an exchange server already? How many 10-50 employee organizations in other areas than north america and europe? I know we do not (we're three people total), and we certainly could use something like this, if it is painless enough to deploy.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Well, if Evolution is a clone, doesn't it compare to Outlook? I think Evolution has pretty much the same advantage/disadvantage rating as Outlook. In what way does not Evolution compare to Outlook?
(Really - I'm curious!)
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It's nice to see that have included so much documentation about the architecture & philosophy, considering how early in the development they are. That's *real* openness.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
There's never been anything like Agenda, before or since. Now, THERE was software!
DOS-based, fast as lightning, completely (and intimidatingly) customizable (It opened into a blank page, if I recall correctly). It took any bit of info you wanted to throw at, and allowed you to establish your own relations among the bits. It was a database, an organizer, a rolodex, a "sketchpad for ideas," it was transcendant! No online component (E-Mail, Web) cuz there was no online component to your life -- this was circa 91-92.
In the small office where I was the Tech guru at the time, no two workers' Agenda looked and ran the same -- everybody used it a different way, and the interface reflected that (Ultimately, it was probably that aspect of it which prevented it's widespread adoption in bigger shops.)
Then along came Windows 3.1 and the Web, and upheaval. Lotus spiked Agenda, replacing it with a Win-based Lotus Organizer 1.0. I moved the company over to Jensen's "Commence" program, which held some of Agenda's flavor but proved an administrative bear.
If Chandler can even approach lighting a candle to Agenda (sorry...) -- and run on Linux as well -- I'm there, Opneing Day. But I suspect it'll be targeting the regimented Outlook suits, and not us "Agenda hippies"...
phpGroupware exposed their API through both SOAP and XML-RPC, and I have yet to see *anything* use their backend, other than an old Delphi frontend for WinXX which was yanked from their site. I'm sure there are other web-based groupware suites that also have web-services available, and yet no one wants to build interfaces to them?
Don't get me wrong, Evolution is a nice toy, but only that in the realm of business until someone decides that they want to interface it with an existing groupware server (other than Exchange, which is quite closed-source...), since otherwise there is no open solution to doing this.
I contacted the Evolution people at least a year ago about interfacing with phpGroupware, to get a reply of "if you can reverse-engineer our calendar API, which isn't documented anywhere, you can write it yourself...". (No disrespect to the developers of Evolution intended, but I'm trying to make a point about the little emphasis any of the major groups seem to place on enterprise adoption.)
"He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." - Duck Soup
Chandler makes the exchange/server component redundant in the first place. It's purely p2p and all that jazz... there is no need for an exchange server. At least, not according to the design philosophy they are pitching. Which is a good one.
The one thing that will be interesting is what happens when they realize that in most organizations people turn off their machines at night. Will they write a caching server for people's calendars and such? Or will those people's shared resources just vanish?