Groupware Evaluation

[Evan Leibovitch]

Christopher Browne wrote:

>Here's an interesting summary article of an organization that did some
>evaluations of OSS "groupware" packages...
>
>http://www.itwales.com/997890.htm
>
>It seems quite a mixed bag; a lot of the systems are quite severely hindered by the "we may call it OSS, but that version isn't properly supportable;  you *actually* want to buy licenses from us if you want to use it" problem.
>  
>
Yes, unfortunately.

>I'm not sure how current it all is, but it seemed consistent with the
>way things were the last I took a look at it...
>  
>
LPI experimented with OpenGroupware but I absolutely despised the 
interface and could never get the hang of it.

I think the reviewers were too focused on the web-UI options and didn't 
give enough of an effort to the client-server options (after all, that's 
what someone comes from if they're using shared Outlook data using an 
Exchange server...).

Kolab looks pretty solid as a server, what seems immature is the range 
of clients for it.
(http://www.kolab.org/about-kolab-clients.html) KDE's Kontact is good 
but only for that platform. I'd heard that Evolution worked with Kolab 
but haven't tested it; that might be a very powerful combination.

For a while there were high hopes for an integrated OpenOffice client 
for Kolab -- that has evolved into the Java-based "Glow" 
(http://groupware.openoffice.org/glow/) which is still pre-alpha despite 
the fact this effort has been around for many years.

Now I see attention focused on two projects, neither of which was on the 
Welsh list:

1) The groupware extensions to Thunderbird, using Kolab as a backend 
(http://www.gargan.org/extensions/synckolab.html)

2) For those who really want a web interface, Google Calendar

- Evan


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