[Phpgroupware-developers] [Fwd: Re: [users-groupware] Kroupware]

[Dan Kuykendall]

For any of you that have heard about the kroupware project that has 
gotten some press recently, here are my comments on it that I sent to 
the Open Office GroupWare project. I spent a while reading the spec and 
trying to re-think the solution (which we had considered ages ago) to 
see how useful it would be. I basicly have come to the same 
conclusion... that it would suck. So as far as I can see kroupware is 
krapware

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [users-groupware] Kroupware
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 21:44:41 -0700
From: Dan Kuykendall <address@hidden>
Reply-To: address@hidden
To: address@hidden


Tony Earnshaw wrote:

> The trouble is, indeed, the "short timescale of the project," ask the
> Mozilla people in this group like Arentjan Banck or Exchange people like
> Vincent de Lauw how much detail that sort of project needs. The final
> Kroupware system has all the signs of having been made up of odd bits
> and pieces thrown together. Two of my specialities are - apart from
> anything else - mail: smtp, pop and imap, together with LDAP, and I just
> couldn't believe the choice of specs that I was reading on the Kroupware
> site.

I agree with this. I couldnt believe what they were trying to call a
replacement to Exchange/Outlook. I have spent two and half years
starting the phpGroupWare project and helping it develop into a serious
solution. Building a well integrated groupware solution is not an easy
task and the spec I have seen on the kroupware website fo nothing more
than to create server storage for PIM data. That does not create a
groupware solution. Their free/busy time solution is a train-wreck of a
solution which is going to get out of sync on a regular basis.

This also does nothing to solve one of the most common requirements a
groupware solution must provide to executives. That is the ability to
give their secretary rights over their calendar to accept/decline
meeting request and to view the actual details of their calendar. Execs
often have their secretaries manage their entire calendar and just call
them to find out what their days meetings will be. The kroupware
solution would only give the secretaries the ability to see free/busy
time, but no details of what their boss is actually scheduled to be doing.

The same goes for todo lists and in some cases even for an email inbox.
This requires an integrated solution, not a quick hack of slapping
together disparet server pieces together and making calendars work.

The use of IMAP as the data store is a serious mistake. IMAP is designed
to only store personal email messages. If userA needs to give userB
access to any their data, and so much of this is controlled in the
client, then userA ends up having to give userB his password, and at
that point has no way to limit what userB can do with his data. userA
could not limit userB to read only access because IMAP servers dont
really support that.

As far as I can see kroupware is nothing more than server storage of PIM
data + a flaky system for a shared free/busy time listings. It is not
groupware as much as they want to call it such.

Dan Kuykendall


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: address@hidden
For additional commands, e-mail: address@hidden