Re: [phpgroupware-developers] probusiness introduction

[Dave Hall]

Christian Böttger <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 

Hi Christian,

> my name is Christian Böttger and I'm head of the Software 
> Solutions Team at
> probusiness AG, Hannover, Germany. I'm writing this not in my name 
> only, but
> as well in behalf of our CEO Jens Gogoll. 
> See end of mail for more information about myself.
> 
> In the name of probusiness AG I would like to introduce our 
> company and our
> interest and possible future involvement in this and possibly similar
> projects.
> 
> The probusiness group (http://www.probusiness.de/) focuses on IT 
> services,ranging from selling hardware (server, storage, ...) over 
> conceptual work
> and remote services and support to a relatively small software 
> developmentteam. As probusiness' main direction is selling IT 
> services, not products
> (apart from hardware), OpenSource  in general fits well into this 
> picture,although we are not limited to OpenSource services (e.g. 
> we have specialised
> teams for Linux, HP-UAs we are not interested in selling licenses 
> for any software we write (but
> selling the service of writing it and offering support contracts), 
> we try to
> give our results to the public. 
> 
> The first example is the project pb.WebMAUI 
> (http://pb-webmaui.sourceforge.net/ (German only, unfortunately)), 
> whichprovides an administration interface for the Courier 
> mailsuite and some
> patches for Horde/IMP. Currently, there is only a design study 
> available for
> download; we are finishing a stable version and will release that 
> hopefullythis month. pb.WebMAUI is already in commercial 
> production use at a
> customer.

phpGroupWare is very different product to that produced by the Horde/IMP
Project.  At the same time courier is a very nice IMAP server.

> 
> After having been urged by customers to adapt, extend, modify, 
> bundle etc
> not only a mail suite, but some groupware as well (as OpenSource), a
> decision has been made to do this on the basis of phpGroupware. 
> Apart from a
> customer, the government of Lower Saxony in Germany has stepped in 
> with some
> funds from their regional economical support funds (which have to 
> be spend
> in the region again and cannot be spend to subcontractors in this 
> case). All
> development is carried out under GPL and we explicitely plan to 
> publish it.
> Of course, all work will be offered to the phpGroupware project 
> and we would
> be glad if parts of our work may flow back into phpGroupware 
> itself. 

We look forward to your contribution to the project.  Commit access to
our CVS respository is not automatic, there are some requirements to be
met, these are spelt out at http://docs.phpgroupware.org/developer.php .    

When the code is published we will look at it, if it is up to scratch we
will include it.  I would suggest that you look over the docs contained
in the following URLs:

* http://www.phpgroupware.org/wiki/DeveloperDocs
* http://docs.phpgroupware.org/ - some are some what dated - but you
should get the idea.


> But
> anyhow, even parts too specific for this (e.g. for specific 
> customer needs)
> will be available to the public under GPL (as far as the customer 
> does not
> veto against this).
> 
> Currently the work is planned and technical concepts are written. 
> Theseconcepts will be made available for discussion as well. This 
> will be done
> mainly by the responsible developers, in most cases a short 
> summary and an
> URL for the full info will be distributed here. If it proves 
> useful, we can
> open a Wiki for this as well or take part in the phpGW wiki as 
> well. 

I would suggest initially you start your own wiki and we can set it up
as a interWiki to link the docs into.  Our wiki is currently for our
developers, but we are happy to link to other wikis if they provide
receprocial interwiki links, like we have done with the axiswiki ( see
http://docs.axisgroupware.org )

> In case
> we create new modules for phpGW, we are of course well prepared to 
> maintainthese modules with the phpGW tree as well, if this is 
> wished by the phpGW
> team.

See above about CVS access, I have no issue with any developer gaining
CVS access if they meet our requirements.  Alternatively, you can submit
patches for our consideration - http://docs.phpgroupware.org/patches.php .

> 
> Our team members will introduce themselves shortly.
> 

That would be nice, and it would be good if they could drop in at
#phpgroupware on irc.freenode.net too.

> Our customers normally want an integrated solution, e.g. a mail 
> suite +
> groupware + admin GUI, sometimes + hardware (Linux HA clusters 
> etc) and very
> often + support/maintainance contract (with defined SLAs). 
> Therefore we have
> to restrict ourselves to some products and integrate them in the sense
> mentioned above. A possible bundle would be (hardware +) Linux LVS 
> cluster +
> Courier mail suite + OpenLDAP + pb.WebMAUI (+ Squid + ...) + 
> phpGroupware +
> SLA service agreement. As customers don't like such long names, 
> this will be
> known as "pb.Groupuware".

Integration is a great aim, it is something we are working towards too.
 Not only of apps, but of projects.

Looking forward to hearing more from you and the probusiness crew.

Cheers

Dave Hall (aka skwashd)
Release Coordinator
phpGroupWare

dave.hall.vcf
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