As a self-confessed open-source-ophile (I don’t yet class myself as a ‘zealot’…..) there are a number of projects that I keep an eye on, without necessarily being an active user. 2 such projects have been Mozilla Sunbird, the calendaring part of the Mozilla project, and Open-Xchange a groupware suite that was open sourced last year.
This week, however, saw the announcement of the Hula Project, a mail/calendaring/address book server/client. It was upon seeing this that I began to ask the following question:
Does anybody _really_ use a full groupware suite, or are we happy with small, interoperable applications? Open-Xchange is a very powerful piece of software – it has forums, document repositories, calendaring, mail, IM, to-do lists, knowledge base, project management, etc, etc. In some ways it reminds me of Lotus Notes for that reason. Similarly, OpenGroupware has features-abounding. But is that what the majority of people want? (We’re talking SOHO rather than enterprise, although SMB is possible too) Or is all they really want their email, a calendar with which they can create appointments, and a list of contacts?
One of Hula’s “killer features” (if and when it works) is the ability to invite _anybody_ to a meeting, as long as you have an email for them. If they do get this working fully, then this will be a major turning point in open-source calendaring, which is lacking in places.
So – what will I be voting for? I am hoping to set up a small test machine at home with one of my spare boxes quite soon, and I will try out both Open-Xchange and Hula at that point, and so may write a review. But until that point, lets take a small case-study with which I am familiar:
The church office is a workplace for 3 people, plus there are others within the church ‘organisation’ that don’t work physically in the office. They run a mix of email clients (mainly Outlook and Outlook Express, but let’s not go there). Calendaring is likewise done on various clients, but there is no Exchange server so this calendaring is not ’shared’ or ‘collaborative’ in any meaningful way. As I understand it, there is an online calendaring application provided by our web developer, but when I spoke to the administrator it became obvious that it was not being used, if, indeed, it was functional.
In an environment like this, a groupware suite like OpenXchange, or OpenGroupware (or even Lotus Notes) is unlikely to make any real difference to the working environment – it is too complicated – too much – for the needs of the users. Something like Hula, which provides 3 simple functions, but has advanced features within those functions, could be an absolute Godsend, and actually make a difference to the working environment.
For this reason, I will probably try Hula first, although I still like the idea of OX.
YMMV 
[edit]Just seen this rant too – similar lines but probably more coherent[/edit]
mrBen
The only way, which is something I am considering, is to setup a unique email address and submit it to them, and see how quickly it gets spammed. 