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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."
How well does it do compared to EX-change?
IOW: is it a "Komplete" software product, or the usual 90% GNU solution?
Does anybody care to write a compairison feature and integration wise?
OK, so the KDE project started Kontact, which merges KMail, KOrganizer, KNotes, and KAddressBook. I was just at the Kontact web site and it doesn't mention Kolab. My thought was that Kroupware was supposed to merge at some point with Kontact, is this true? But Kolab screenshots look different than Kontact's. Is this going into KDE?
http://kolab.kde.org/
http://kontact.kde.org/
In other words, is Kontact dead?
Kroupware? There is an Open Source product whose that is going head to head against major proprietary mail server packages, and someone actually thought to call it 'Kroupware'?
Is that like 'HackingCoughWare' or, perhaps, the more subtle 'ScreamingInfantWare'? Ok, perhaps this is a troll, but I've historically had a hard enough time selling open source stuff into various enterprises. ("MySQL? Aww, what a cute name. Now go get us something that sounds professional." I've heard that. Literally. Twice.) I realize we're all smart enough to know better.
Selling a product is as much (if not more) selling an image than it is selling features, reliability, etc. At least for the PHBs I've had to sell to in the past. Trying to bring a mission critical piece of software in that's named after an anoying childhood malady will, before anything else, elicit a bunch of laughs from the powers that be, and then there's that much more of a hole to dig out of.
The project isn't just O"K", it's GREAT!
Seriously though, integrating the K elements is great. However, I noticed that Korganizer doesn't like a HUGE file (takes forever to load). Also, Kmail's LDAP feature is not integrated with the mail client (it's part of the address book and requires the user to start the address book instead of integrating LDAP with Kmail (as implemented in Mozilla)).
Anyone know if this project fixes those problems?
... but all those apps that begin with K become a real nuisance to find on KDE's version of the start-menu when you're a Linux newb such as myself.
"Derp de derp."
But I do not want to use Outlook at all. Evolution or Mozilla will do just fine for say, everybody. Plus, talking about free/FREE - why is everybody prepared to pay big bucks to Microsoft or Oracle but not to some other company for said Outlook connector, if they really want to use Outlook? That would be heaps cheaper option.
Kroupware and the others are nice. But what we really need is for CALSCH http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/calsch-charter.h tml
to finish with CAP http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-cal sch-cap-10.txt . As you can see CAP is on it's tenth public revision.
We need a standard that specifies the transport of the calendar protocol, badly. We need CAP finished.
The special folder in IMAP scheme will work. But is a little on the hackish side, and incompartibility between servers is a serious problem, even with standard formats, like iCal based schemes.
Next we need a cross platform messaging server. Although, it does not support IMAP as yet, Apache James is my favorite, at http://james.apache.org. First of all it has a strong group endorsing it, the Apache group. That's going to be important for selling this thing to risk-adverse corporate types. Second, it's Java, so I trust it a little more in the buffer-overflow department. Also it would probably integrate nicely in current J2EE setups. I've heard people are doing this.
James needs IMAP and CAP support. And then we will have a decent shot at the less entrenched sector of the exchanges market.
Mozilla's calandering SUCKS balls. Sorry but it does. I've been using it since it first got released and it isn't even stable or usefull enough for a single person yet, let alone as the frontend to a groupware package. Evolution would be nice IF it ran on windows, but it doesn't, and unfortunatly I have to run windows at my employer on at least one of my desktops because of various proprietary apps that don't run under WINE. Also it's not that we won't pay big bucks, we will, but there are tons of instances where I could save a company money and hassle by replacing Exchange with something less crash prone and which works with their current tools. Most of the time if you are going to pay for a new set of liscenses anyways it makes sense to go with a commercial package all they way because it isn't much more expensive (like say Oracle's product or the one that HP used to have). I know that the MAPI protocol can't be any more difficult than the SMB protocol so I guess I'm just hoping that one or more people stand up and start an open source project akin to SAMBA but to replace Exchange rather than windows file and print sharing.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I fon't care if Corporate decided to use Exchange. I'm not in charge of keeping it up, it's not my ass if it gets hacked, and I don't get paged at 4am when it goes down again.
What I want is not to have to use Outlook.
I _hate_ Outlook. I actually don't use it on a regular basis - I use fetchmail to grab Email and then read it with Pine.
The problem is calendars.
I figured out that Outlooks/Exchange have a nice little signature on Calendar items. They looks like regular Emails except they have a *~*~*~*~*~ pattern in them. So I can get Pine (or procmail or whatever) to grab them and stick them in whatever the hell I decided I want to use for calendaring.
But I can't actually send out an "Accept" or "Reject", not can I maintain my calendar on the server. I need to run Outlook for those.
I've found no software that'll let me do that. And no, Ximian and Bynari software don't work as they all require Outlook Web Services to be enabled.
Anyone know of software that can do that?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
iCal doesn't solve the real problem, it basically just solves the encapsulation of the appointment information problem but leaves the central storage and colaborative scheduling problems unsolved. Almost all programs support iCal but iCal doesn't gain you a whole lot.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
no windows interoperability. There is no free plugin that works with Outlook. This is a problem is you want to get ride of exchange / msmail server and replace it with this, cause then you have to PAY for a connector to this. So then is it really worth it to management when they already have a licensed peice of software that works? Not in my company. yes there is a web frontend to it, but that is NOT a solution. This is close and if you can pull off an entirely linux / unix installbase then you are okay, but when your flagship product runs windows and management wont let the dev team rewrite it, your glued to windows.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?