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Opengroupware
An anonymous reader writes: "From the OpenGroupware.org site: the OGo project announces its formation and the release today to the worldwide open source development community of its groupware server software. Gary Frederick, Leader of the OpenOffice.org Groupware Project says: 'Just to be perfectly clear, this is an MS Exchange take-out. OGo is important because it's the missing link in the open source software stack. It's the end of a decade-long effort to map all the key infrastructure and standard desktop applications to free software.' There are also plenty of screenshots of Outlook, Evolution, Korganizer, iCal etc. accessing the server."
Looking at this it looks as though Outlook requires a plugin in order to access the server. However as that plugin is also Open Source, I don't see a major problem with this. The users can't tell the difference.
Sorry, this does not come from LinuxTag. This comes from the SKYRiX Groupware Server by the MDLink company. It was just announced on the LinuxTag convention. I hope it stands to the promises, as a good GPL/LGPL groupware would be a good thing. Murple
There is an open source public branch exchange solution already. Supports SIP phones, conferencing, etc.
Check it out. It's stable, easy to work with, and the mailing list is very active.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
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.
maybe this can't cut it in the big enterprise just yet, but there's tons of small businesses that don't need or can live without the advanced features of exchange. Especially when an exchange solution costs (I'm sure I could find it cheaper, but I'm lazy) $1199 for win2k server + ($700 || $4000) for exchange + ($67 * #users) for client licenses. For a company with only 10 employees, that's a minimum of $2570 for email software costs alone (since exchange is typically run on a dedicated machine).
USE='clever' emerge -u sig
Check Convea (http://www.convea.com) which is a great open source web based groupware product (currently supports MS platform only with Linux / Moz version in development).
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
Hylafax could be set up to do that easily, and has been.
And they credit them for it. Just mouse over the logo. (or do as I did, wait for /. effect and look at the alt text while waiting for the page to load)
The site where: "I'm right, as long as you ignore the things that prove me wrong", became a valid method of debate.
We just purchased Oracle's collaboration suite for various reasons. One thing that Oracle needs improvement on is the web interface. Why, because it totally sucks! A high school web development class could do a better job. IMHO, what Oracle needs to do is borrow the code from OpenGroupware's web interface and then give back something. Just like Apple did with Safari/Konqueror.
But in most cases, Microsoft was the first to do these things.
I believe Lotus was a full blown groupware suite before Outlook. For all I know, maybe even Lotus wasn't the first. MS is rarely the first to do anything; they are masters at co-opting other proprietary vendors innovations....then claiming them for their own.
I hate the fact that so much effort is going into interoperability with MS. That includes OpenOffice too.
I think this idea of having a "drop in" replacement for Exchange is just nuts. Do you think the Apache project would have gotten to where it is today if they decided what they had to do was a "drop in" replacement for IIS? (Yes, I know the chronology of metaphor is skewy, but you know what I'm trying to say).
What we should be concentrating on is making the best possible tool for the job, not making it compatible with existing close-source software. That's the only way to win in the long term.
go to the about page. The plugin is available from the original company. I am guessing that they are selling it .
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Oh yeah, forgot this gem.
We were testing an email application. Send a thousand emails to a tiny free email server on Windows, it swallows and asks for more. Send a thousand emails to our Linux box, it blinks and says 'yeah, so what?' Send a thousand emails to the departmental Exchange server... it crashes and IT support screams at us for 'overloading' their box. Just cracks me up.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
No, it is not open source. I've met them today at the Linux Tag in Karlsruhe. It will start at around 65 per User.
more.groupware is another Open Source project for web-based groupware.
It looks like their WebUI feature takes care of your web access question. From the screenshots it looks like it does calendars, but the rest is my guess.
"You couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine." ~Homer S
This isn't insightful. It's ignorance to emphasize performance if you're seriously considering Exchange; the worst-performing groupware system in the world. Performance could not have been one of your criteria in the first place.
If you've worked with exchange you'd know it has several crippling architectural limitations such as the MAPI limit.
A max of 240 MAPI connections, which in practice supports only 400-500 users... and that's assuming you don't have any other additions increasing the number of connections per second. It doesn't matter how powerful the machine is. Want to support 10k users? You need a load balancer and at least 20 boxes in a cluster. More if you expect to survive a worm or a machine in the cluster going down.
"Et tu Brutus?"
Wasnt this what the Czar of rome said when his former ally Brutus stabbed him in the back?
The open source movement is hardly an ally of MS Exchange or am I missing out?
Anyway, what I was thinking was that Yes, you are right. Competing with Exchange IS a tough fight mainly because of Outlook being the most popular browser combined with the most widespread and, in my view, one of the most powerful collaboration systems around.
I support, implement and manage (mostly) *nix based systems..... And then we have Exchange. Impossible to get rid of because of two things:
A) Users like outlook
B) No other collaboration tool for the same cost or less impresses management
Now, point A) is easy. Most users tend to love Evolution too since it works in the exact same way but without shared calendars and the like, no change of software. period. Points B kicks in.
Any attempt to solve point B, ANY attempt, is most welcome.
I DO hope this will work since one of the major downsides of Exchange is the crappy protocol MAPI and its successors.
True ravers don't need drugs
If you buy the current issue of Linux Magazin (Germany), you'll get a bootable Knoppix CD where OpenGroupware with all its components (PostgreSQL, Cyrus-IMAP etc.) is already set up and ready to use. You can try almost all the features, so you see what you'd be getting without having to spend the hour or so required to set things up on a fresh server.
Looks like this is exactly what we've been looking for all this time, and Skyrix will offer commercial support for the package as well as nifty add-ons (that cost some money).
Like many of products from the Borg, all these whoop-dee-doo features like project scheduling are sold to management, but in the end are really quite useless in the "real world". In all the companies I've worked for that had Exchange, exactly none of them used much more that meeting reminders... That said, it would be nice to see a quality Open Source drop-in Exchange replacement, but only so the "suits" will buy out of Exchange.
A: He's usually called a "Caesar" not a "Czar".
B: He was stabbed in the crotch, not the back.
C: According to Plutarch he said kai su, teknon; according to Shakespeare he said et tu, brute.
It's funny, I've noticed how in love PHB's are with exchange because of all the bullet-points it has.
But when I think about it, I've never seen an office use exchange/outlook for anything but email and signing up for the conference room on a single public calendar.
All's true that is mistrusted
And why? Because it's Open Source? That is no reason to throw previously invested money out the window.
Actually, that is not true. Previously invested money should have no bearing on decision making.
If you take any economics courses, that is usually something that is covered early on. People have this instinct to worry about money that has been spent already, but logically it is wrong to do so.
You need to do the math to see if the future value of using an alternate solution is greater than the current one.
http://www.geekthing.com/opengroupware-1.0-deb.tor rent r rent
http://www.geekthing.com/opengroupware-1.0-rpm.to
The tracker will only be up for a couple days at the most. If we have bandwidth problems, it may have to come down sooner...
Ts,Ts,Ts. Kids today. Never read something else than comics.
A: He's usually called a "Caesar" not a "Czar".He's not called "a" Caesar. He was the Caesar, Julius Caesar. He was killed at the idens of March 44 BC, because he wanted to become imperator of Rome. The terms "Czar", "Zar" and "Kaiser" are derived from his name. And also the month of July and until 1513 the Calendar was named the "julian calendar" because he invented or at least ordered it.
... whenever a text is transmitted, variation occurs. This is because human beings are careless, fallible, and occasiona
But Outlook has to stay. Primarily because no other application is able to do synchronization with PDA:s (both PocketPC and Palm devices) in a decent way. It's a shame that such a basic feature seems so hard to implement in OSS clients.
Mail is easy to replace. Exchange already supports IMAP, and throwing in an OSS IMAP-server (Cyrus for example) is a piece of cake. Tell everyone to configure Outlook to use the new IMAP-server and you're done.
Address book functionality _should_ work with an LDAP-server like OpenLDAP. Read this.
The calendar thing is the hard part. Outlook supports publishing iCalendar data via WebDAV and FTP, but that's just FREEBUSY-info wich Mozilla Calendar ignores, and Mozilla publishes complete iCal-events which Outlook ignores. Great. Sure, there are closed source plug-ins for Outlook that could do the job, but we're after a completely open source solution at the server end.
I think we're going to replace what we can anyway and just skip the calendar part right now. Hopefully some software will evolve that we can drop in for a complete calendar solution some time in the near future.
EMail was based on IMAP, SMTP, and IMSP and came from a company then known as Esys, later ExecMail, not sure if they even exist anymore).
Originally it was called "Simeon" (MUA and MTA pieces), from Canadian firm Esys. Then it was Execmail from Execmail, Inc. Then, there were some mergers involving companies called Isode and Messaging Direct, Inc. (one of which may now own the other; I forget).In any event, that firm now owns the rights, and could resell it if it wished, but has apparently discontinued the product, as they're no longer in that business.
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com
> I'm sure you've heard this a million times, but the biggest concern
> people will have is how to make Outlook interoperate with
> OpenGroupware.org.
Yes. I would like to point out that OGo is one of the very few
solutions which provide a full MAPI storage provider (aka live access)
instead of just a sync.
> Is the ZideLook plugin free?
No.
> If not, what are the
> licensing costs
AFAIK about EUR 55, depending on the number of users. For exact
information contact sales@skyrix.de.
> and would SKYRiX consider making the plugin free?
We would like to, but we don't own the plugin. It was developed by a
partner of SKYRiX which needs to get back his investment.
regards,
Helge
--
OpenGroupware.org - http://www.opengroupware.org/
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/286254 http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/43307 http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/11901 http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/6968 Here be bugtraq references to exploits.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.