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Novell Releasing Hula and 200,000+ Lines of Code

Posted by Zonk on from the that's-a-lot-of-if-statements dept.

H0ek writes "Seems Novell has announced at LinuxWorld Expo that they will be releasing 200,000+ lines of code to the community in the form of a project named Hula(TM). The project is derived from the Novell NetMail product and provides web-based email and calendaring. Seems our boy Nat Friedman has some info on this, too. If you were fortunate enough to get a MyRealBox email account, you will probably know what NetMail is like."

9 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Released as LGPL - Are you watching, Sun...? by donnz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Licensed as open source under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and the Mozilla Public License (MPL)".

    See, that's how it's done. Simple really and no need for weeks of backtracking, bullshit and misleading statements.

    --
    -- Free software on every PC on every desk
  2. And the reason? by Infinityis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So what's the rationale behind this? Is it basically the same as catching a fish and throwning it back becasue it was too little? Not enough profits? Are they hoping that open source developers will make as user friendly as Gmail?

    Also, how exactly do they transfer it over to open source? Will company employees still head up the project, or do they just pick some leader in the OSS community and declare a project leader?

    1. Re:And the reason? by Nat+Friedman · · Score: 5, Interesting


      Open source hasn't yet succeeded in building a collaboration server that people can actually use in a variety of settings. We want to fill this gap with Hula.

      We believe that people mainly just want the basics: mail, calendaring, addressbook, maybe shared documents.

      The dominant solutions today -- Exchange and Notes -- are built on a 20-year old design that predates the web. They were intended to be platforms on which you could build tools like expense processing, vacation requests, and other things. This was called "workflow."

      Today, those functions are all done on internal web sites. It's just better. Who wants to build on the Exchnage "platform" if they don't have to?

      But still companies are stuck with these hopelessly big, complex servers, just to do basic email and calendaring. They are expensive, they are heavyweight. They overdeliver.

      So what we want to build with Hula is, in a way, the "Firefox" of collaboration servers. Do the basics, and do them extremely well. Provide an extension system so other people can add things if they want.

      Dave Camp is the maintainer of Hula; he has a lot of experience in open source and we think he'll guide the project well. Many of the Novell engineers behind the original code (notably David Smith and Rodney Price) are working on the Hula project and will continue to work on it.

      We're serious about making Hula work. Stop by #hula on freenode if you want to meet us.

    2. Re:And the reason? by swerk · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm a (newish, but still) software engineer at Novell, and I'd like to answer your questions quickly from my little point of view.

      The rationale behind this is that we'd like to put out something that's simple at first but can seed an ecosystem of its own, and, with some luck, one day become "the Apache of collaboration". Netmail was a good fit because there were very few issues IP-wise in releasing the code, and because it's a young and extensible base that has the potential to evolve into a killer enterprise-level system. If we were to open up GroupWise, for example, (if that were even possible, which it isn't) we'd be saying to the world "hey, come on and help out with our finished, mature product", which isn't nearly as stimulating as "hey, come on and help shape the future of collaboration!" The latter may be a smidge optimistic, but that's honestly what we're shooting for, if I understand Nat correctly.

      As for transferring development of Netmail to the open Hula project, here's what I know and (I hope!) am allowed to say: Netmail was a very small team. The Hula team is bigger. So no, we're not just tossing it out and watching to see who in the OSS community should be the project leader. It's still our project, though everybody is free to fork if they decide we're headed in the wrong direction. That does two things: it forces us to stay honest and on the up-and-up with the OSS community, and (as of right now, no turning back) it gives to the world a useful piece of free software that can and will get more and more useful over time.

      There was a joke made in the hallways here (and possibly elsewhere in these comments) in reference to South Park. Step 1: Release Hula. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit!

      Step 2 is to play the game right, to give OSS folks what they want and what they need to help us build (or build themselves, if they so desire) a really sweet communications system. Something that there would be demand for at the enterprise level. Right now, Hula is mail and calendar. A year from now, I would be very surprised if it did not include IM, some form of VOIP, and some things I can't even imagine right now. Apache, QT, MySQL, and so on have shown that there is money to be made from a free-as-in-speech, free-as-in-beer tool if: 1) It's good, and 2) An ecosystem develops around it. That money, of course, is what Novell is looking for in the end, and I've got to say I'm pretty excited to see the way we're going after it. Microsoft built a proprietary community around Exchange, and it has dominated collaboration for years. I'm rooting for Hula's free, open community that was officially born today.

      So there's two cents from a rookie Novell programmer.

  3. Why the silly names ? :( by rfinnvik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why do people insist on calling these projects such silly names ? :P I've been trying to get my company to go with NetMail, but... Hula ? My boss will just laugh at me:(

  4. Re:Web-based email? Oh, that's sooo exciting by Drishmung · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Read the article. It supports web mail---and having used MyRealBox I can say it's quite good. But, it also supports POP3, IMAP, LDAP and webcal.

    So, doesn't this now start to sound more like a free Exchange Server replacement?

    --
    Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
  5. And it shows... by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    .. because if you were, and you tried to roll out an IT infrastructure that did *not* have integrated email and calendaring, you would likely be fired.

    Seriously, if you have worked at any even moderately-sized organization, you would know that this is essential. There are people I work with, who I know would be totally unable to function without this kind of integration. And I don't blame them either - if I had to be in that many meetings / week, I would need it as well.

  6. Re:I am not an enterprise admin... by Nat+Friedman · · Score: 5, Informative


    You can run the Hula calendar separately from the mailer/MTA. We definitely want to follow the one-problem one-tool rule for people who want that.

  7. Re:Abandonware. Try Citadel instead. by Nat+Friedman · · Score: 5, Informative


    Hula is not abandonware. It is a project we have only started to invest in.

    Come by #hula on freenode, count the 20-25 Novell employees there, and then determine for yourself what kind of project it is.