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Kroupware Komplete
sorinm writes "The three companies behind the Kroupware Project (Erfrakon, Intevation and Klarälvdalens Datakonsult) announced its successful completion today. This new groupware approach using only Free Software is now available in stable versions under the Kolab brand name. Commercial support on an individual basis is already offered with further support options to come."
Nope, you still need a commercial connector to use Outlook with this. We have had the ability to do that for some time (things like the old HP Exchange alternative and the suite from Oracle, what most of us want is the equivilant of SAMBA, a free and FREE drop in replacement for Exchange that doesn't cost anything to implement so long as we don't need support.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
From the FAQ:
How can I make Outlook talk to the Kolab Server?
You need a Plug-in called InsightConnector from http://bynari.com. This is proprietary software and you need to aquire a license. Demo versions are available. A second company, konsec.com, announced to make a similiar plug-in offering in Q3 2003.
Later on it states:
Is there no Free Software Outlook plugin? Will you create one?
We are not aware of an existing Free Software plug-in for Outlook. Within the Kroupware project we have not been contracted to create such a plug-in. "Kervin L. Pierre" announced to work on it and started sourceforge.net/projects/otlkcon.
According to the FAQ (and from ximian.com) it appears as if Evolution doesn't support Kroupware and wont be supporting it anytime soon (see this post to the evolution mailing list). This is a real shame considering that outside of the KDE camp most people aren't using K-Mail in favor of Gnome clients like Evolution and Balsa.
That's right. Kontact is currently in development, and will be released as part of KDE 3.2. Kontact is the way official KDE development has chosen.
No, not at all. Kontact will merge all Kolab functionality that has been developed by the kroupware project.
Until the KDE project has released Kontact, you can use the KMail-based Kolab client offered by the kroupware project.
The kroupware project is sponsored by the German gouvernment. Because of the requirements of the German gouvernment offices, they chose to release a KMail-based Kolab first rather than waiting for Kontact to be finished.
http://otlkcon.sf.net is mine.
I've been working on it from about Nov'02, and was pretty much trying to keep things on the down-low until I had a proof-of-concept to show. You see, ironically, I did this to not have yet-another-vapor-project out there :)
The a simple connector plugin would not have taken this long. But I've decided to take a solid stab at solving the root problem, that is, an extendable MAPI message service, and the tools needed to program for/with this set of MAPI providers.
First part of the Message service, is the message store. That's the DLL in MAPI responsible for actually saving your mail to the filesystem, amongst other things. The second most important service provider, the transport service provider, is responsible for sending the mail off, basically.
I've been focusing on a sub-project at http://sapimapi.sf.net. Don't let the stats put you off, I've been putting a decent amount of hours on this one ( sf.net CVS stats are broken right now ). This testing utility has a built in scripting language, and common MAPI routines, to make it easy to configure the behavior of MAPI clients for testing the service providers. I also intend to fit in TNEF routines and info on much of the undocumented MAPI properties I've collected from/at various places. The testing utilitly is early, early alpha; I have the language lexer/parser done, and I'm working on the built in MAPI library calls. Extended MAPI from C# is a bitch. Funny they forget to mention stuff like that in the brochure.
Open source connector will get done soon. I've heard of at least one other group working on the problem. I suspect it's only a matter of time till one of the unprofitable companies, selling a MAPI connector, releases it as open source. There are a lot of them.
The important thing, I believe, is that we get a complete extendable toolkit, that would spark the continued development of extensions. Eg. address book, chat, voicemail, etc.
First of all: The "Kroupware" name. Don't worry, it doesn't exist at all anymore. Kroupware was the name of the contract development, and will not be used for anything else. The server is called Kolab, and the client is KMail, Korganizer, KAddressbook and KPilot. In KDE 3.2 these will come together in one bunch under the name Kontact. We are now porting the features to KDE cvs HEAD.
Second: There are a bunch of people asking about features. For this project we had a list of requirements from BSI that we would implement. We implemented exactly this and not much more. When people say the word groupware, they immediatelly expect three thousand different functionalities, and if you in version 1.0 try to implement all of them, you will break your neck trying.
The functionality is:
Calendaring with iCalendar - send invitations between KMail and Outlook for example
Addressbook - a global one by LDAP and a local one in vCard contacts
Tasks - not groupware tasks though (only KMail to KMail or Outlook to Outlook, since OL doesn't understand iCalendar tasks scheduling :-( )
Vacation mail setup - for vacation nag mails
MDN
Disconnected IMAP support
Roaming support by storing the calendar/contacts... stuff in IMAP folders
Resource scheduling (book cars, rooms...)
I probably forgot a bunch of features. Clientwise, the most important are definately that you can invite between KMail and Outlook. On the server side, the interesting thing here is that this is the only truly free groupware server available, and will allow the Outlook people to continue working with it.
In case you visit the Linux Developers Conference in Edinburgh next week, you can see a presentation/demonstration by me.
Bo Thorsen,
Klaralvdalens Datakonsult AB
Project leader on the client.
Yes, it's complete.
It uses LDAP for company-wide addressbooks. It offers services for distributing free-busy lists. It can be used offline through disconnected IMAP. It allows for sharing folders (containing mail, calendars, contacts, whatever) between people. It has normal POP3 and SMTP support. Everything is configurable through the webinterface, in which you can set vacation messages as well. HOWTO's are available for integrating SpamAssasin and Amavis (anti-virus) with Kolab. You can install SquirrelMail on the server to allow webbased access to your mail.
What do you want more?
You could replace Exchange servers with Domino servers using iNotes Access for Microsoft Outlook.
Rather than the ~3,000 users per server max of Exchange, you can load up to 100,000 simultaneous users on an iSeries machine running Domino...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak