[Kroupware] OpenGroupware release is a success for the Kroupware Project

[Holger Schroeder]

Hi,

On Monday 14 July 2003 19:48, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> On Monday 14 July 2003 19:36, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> > On Monday 14 July 2003 18:12, Martin Konold wrote:
> > > Am Montag, 14. Juli 2003 18:10 schrieb Bernhard Reiter:
> > > > I've seen other projects that got motivated
> > > > by Free Software solutions coming along to rethink
> > > > their proprietary model.
> > > >
> > > > In any case a win for the users.
> > >
> > > Yes, but still the public relations work of kolab sucks :-(
> >
> > The actions that I've undertaken were fine,
> > you know why we act as we act.
>
> To explain this a bit further:
> We've put the priority to quality control the software
> and the collaboration with the community over PR.
> To have a stable and powerful product is the best PR somebody could have.
>
The time is working for you. when you get the kroupware branch merged into 
what will be kde 3.2 by the end of the year, you will automatically have the 
"kolab client" aka kmail/kontact on almost every linux desktop, as almost 
every distribution installs kde.

i am playing around with this since some months, and i really like it. there 
are still two points left:
- you should check, that the users can't _in any case_ destroy its data 
anywhere. i understand, that you had to put a warning on the installation 
description, as to make a backup of all data and so on. but this is not 
helping any more. iirc, some work on this has been done, but it should be 
made foolproof, and it should be tested _extensively_ that in no case any 
data will be erased, if the user doesn't explicitly tell kmail to do so.

- the server installation should be easier:
of course you had to manage your own set of patches to apply them to the main 
packages before compiling to be able to work effectively. i haven't looked at 
the patches for some months, but you should get the patches, for which it 
makes sense, into the main packages, so that in the future you don't need 
package foo version x.y.z and apply your patches, but you say you need 
package foo version x.y.z+1 and don't have to apply any patches.
also there should be a possibility to install the kolab server on a system 
without the need for openpkg. it is a good way to make the "kolab server 
part" of the server independent of the operating system version in big 
installations. but there are also some people like me, who have only one 
server, which has already an apache running and so on. so i have the problem 
to integrate kolab with the rest of my system. this task would be a lot 
easier, when a kolab installation description would state "add the following 
few lines to your apache.conf:" or similar.

> Naturally we should start collecting more good experiences
> people have made with Kolab already. Anybody feels like
> contributing success stories? :)
>
> 	Bernhard

Holger