Hi, the main issue here is not email, contacts, or calendar applications,
it is the need for a calendar server, providing the backend to support
free/busy functionality so that teams can collaborate.
Contacts and Email and Calendars need to talk together. There are
increasing numbers of solutions to that - let's say the three leading ones
are Evolution, Thunderbird/Lightening, and eGroupWare. However, only
eGroupWare provides the "table stakes" to credibly provide solutions for
organizations, because only it can provide the simple analogue to
Outlook/Exchange meeting functionality so many people are familiar with,
"free/busy" functionality to find open times available among teams.
If you don't wish to use the complete eGroupWare solution including its web
email interface, perhaps because you are using Ubuntu with Evolution so
nicely integrated, I'm unaware of any other FOSS options. Groupwise works
very nicely with Evolution, but it is not FOSS.
We have looked at FOSS solutions, and have decided to build an RFC 2445
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt compliant interface between Evolution
with its nice front-end that understands free/busy functionality, and
eGroupWare which has a good server and FOSS community behind it. This will
provide pure FOSS native free/busy functionality from Evolution.
I joined to let you know about freeopensourcesoftware.org, but there might
be more synergy. Of course we will be releasing our interface as FOSS.
Comments, suggestions, and developer offers to help, very welcome!
Cheers,
Bill
jonathon wrote:
On Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 3:29 AM, Ian Lynch wrote:
This is a marketing/sales issue. If a sales objection is "There is no e-mail
client" ...
If we don't provide a satisfactory answer we lose a customer.
Different types of email requirements require different types of email clients:
* Evolution works for some individuals, and organizations. It does
not work for other individuals, and organizations;
* Thunderbird works for some individuals, and organizations. It does
not work for other individuals, and organizations;
* The same can be said for the other FLOSS email clients;
* The same can be said of the non-FLOSS email clients;
Bundling Evolution, Thunderbird, Penelope, or Alpine is not going to
satisfy everybody's needs.
xan
jonathon
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