Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Lotus 'Agenda' Returns as Open-Source 'Chandler'

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the chander-fritz dept.

RobotRunAmok writes "Before there was Outlook, or Evolution, or The Brain, there was Lotus Agenda, a DOS-based Personal Information Manager created by Mitch Kapor. Wired is reporting that Kapor is throwing 5 Million USD at the Open Source Applications Foundation to create an open-source resurrection of this PIM-Of-The-Gods in the form of Chandler, available now as an alpha for Windows, Linux, and Mac. For the Agenda hardcore among us, it's as though Atlantis is rising..."

2 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. This Story is Three Years old by asv108 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The whole "Chandler is going to be an outlook killer," is a three year old story.

    So far, they've only managed to produce alpha quality software at best, after more than three years. I always felt that they made some bad technology decisions from the start, like Python is probably not the best language for writing a PIM.

    The requirements for this project have gone all over the place. Initially, it was touted as "exchange without the server," using some P2P method. Then it became an "outlook killer," then a "repository," and now they even have a "higher ed version," thats been talked about for some time.

    Instead of trying to do a few things really well to start with, this project has become the poster boy for scope creep.

    1. Re:This Story is Three Years old by bitMonster · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why is Python a bad choice? It's just a high-level OO language with lots and lots of libraries. Speed shouldn't be an issue with this sort of application. Whatever GUI library they use is surely written in C or C++ with Python bindings. Also, training developers to use Python is very easy (lots of personal experience), especially if they already know Java, C++, or C# pretty well.

      Would you have chosen C, C++, or Java or ... what? I think that if the project is taking too long, Python, or any other language like it, would be the last thing to blame.

      -Jeff