[Kroupware] Re: General inquiry re. Kolab + Kontact

[Jan-Oliver Wagner]

On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 02:27:24PM +0200, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
> On Wednesday 02 July 2003 11:13, Bo Thorsen wrote:
> > > Will the completed Kontact be a drop-in replacement for the Kolab
> > > client so that when KDE 3.2 is ready it can easily connect to the Kolab
> > > server on the LAN?
> >
> > That depends on whether or not someone will fund the port. The kroupware
> > project is a contract with the German BSI goverment office. In that
> > contract there is no commitment to port it to the KDE development branch
> > (KDE cvs HEAD).
> 
> Didn't the project require integration into KDE development? Creating a 
> dead-end branch doesn't sound like integration.

The contractor didn't make this obligatory.

However, the companies behind the Kroupware project of course have the strong
wish to ensure that as much of the project as possible goes into HEAD.
A major element eg. is the disconnected IMAP feature that wasn't there before.
There are many others that the Klarälvdalens guys ported into HEAD
(aside of various fixes).

We even organized a developers meeting in January 2003 to work
out a concept on how to incorporate all the Kroupware outcome
into KDE. Kontact has been identified as the ways to go.
But the KDE development process has its own pace, while Kroupware
must finish soon.
At least our code is there in CVS and we support the Kontact guys to proceed.

> That's really bad news. I assume that this means that the Kroupware code in 
> CVS HEAD is now unmaintained, right?

No, we'll continue bug fixing for at least one year.

> Who uses the Kolab client, by the way? Is there nobody amongst the users who 
> would be interested in not being forced to stay with the KDE version the 
> client was written for and would be willing to put some work or money in 
> resolving that problem?

Besides the BSI, it seems that various small/medium companies
are preparing to use this (as read from the Kolab and Kroupware
mailing lists).

Currently it is important to help everyone who tries to install
Kolab and the KDE Kolab Client in order to create a large user base
from which eventually financial contribution is to be expected.

	Jan
-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

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