[Kroupware] Kroupware replacing Exchange

[Kevin L. Ritchey]

> -----Original Message-----
> [mailto:kroupware-admin@mail.kde.org] On Behalf Of Bo Thorsen
> Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 7:08 AM

> I will *not*=20
> sacrifice stability over features for 1.0. Even if it will be stable=20
> around beta 7 :-) (I'm actually confident that we can get it=20
> stable by=20
> beta 6.)


This is fundamentally good solid project management.  Stability is most
important and this attitude keeps feature-creep from killing a good
project.

I suspect that when a stable 1.0 is complete several companies are going
to sit up and take notice.

I'm particularly interested in this whole project, not simply because I
don't want to run Exchange anymore but more because of the process by
which this project has grown.  IMHO there have been a few Open Source
projects that never lived up to expectations because of feature creep
and poor project management.  The programming talent was superb, but
there was no structure, or perhaps better put, there was no
accountability for producing deliverables within reasonable constraints
emphasizing stability and feature freeze.  I note that the
OpenOffice.org project is one exception.  I also note that the Mozilla
project may be an example of what I am illustrating (although I admit I
know little of this actual management of the project).

The corporate/government sponsorship of this Open Source project once
again illustrates the importance of industry/commercial involvement in
OS development.  The contracting entities have delivered and negotiated
specific deliverables and are holding the developers accountable.  The
developers are getting paid for their talents -- I hope well.  The OS
community is positioned to gain another great solution.  Everyone
wins... Except perhaps Microsoft and Novell.

All this to say, I perceive a good process here and am excited to see
the results.  I am currently considering writing a story on this project
when the results are seen.  There's a lot more here than good
programming.