Novell Dumps the Hula Project

asv108 writes, "On the Hula general mailing list today, it was announced that Novell is no longer providing full-time developers to Hula. While the project will continue, it appears that Novell is not committed to developing a viable open-source alternative to MS Exchange. The Hula project was announced in February 2005 with much fanfare."

No full time developers

So then are they providing twice as many part-time developers?

Come to think of it, is there such a thing as part-time developers?

salt/wound?

Why do I detect the feeling of salt poured into an open wound?

Re:salt/wound?

Looks like Microsoft money helps ward off competing developers as well. Novell sold out - plain and simple.

Novell could have gotten large cash infusions, but instead they let Microsoft intimidate them. This is just plain wrong.

It's pretty obvious what happened from the timing of the event. I'm certain we'll see more of this in the future.

Apparently it was easier for Microsoft to buy off Novell than to fund SCO.

Re:salt/wound?

to everyone: it's about connections, stupid. connections (communication) between people is the most important thing we do, and it is why the Internet is important.

Exchange is the MS communications gateway, allowing people to connect on MS the proprietary platform with the single most popular online communication tool.

An open source alternative to Exchange is the single most important project the open source community could develop to allow IT managers to migrate away from Microsoft.

Now, only days after a deal between MS and Novell, the open source project to build an exchange alternative is hurt by Novell removing support.

No theories needed here, just look at the facts.

Oh, come on

the open source project to build an exchange alternative Theres like, 5 different projects trying to achieve the Holy Grail of replacing Exchange. And Hula was far from the leader of the pack.

Re:Oh, come on

Is HULA the same as Netware OpenExchange (SLOX) and its open source deriv?

No, completely different. Hula comes from Novell NetMail. SLOX came from SuSE.

Re:Oh, come on

Could it just be that Novell found themselves with two projects aiming to achieve the same goal, and figured the suse one was better to concentrate their development effort on?

Re:salt/wound?

>An open source alternative to Exchange is the single most important project the open source community could develop to allow IT managers to migrate away from Microsoft. This comment was so insightful it motivated me to create a Slashdot account just to say so.

Re:salt/wound?

This is absolutely correct. I have seen more UNIX/Linux shops closed because of the need for integrated mail, documents and calenders then for any other reason. First the execs demand mail, then calender, then wonder why they are paying for both Windows and Linux support... then Linux support goes bye bye, and the microsoft lock in factor hits.

Re:salt/wound?

You've never used Exchange, have you? Exchange is more like email, calendar, mailing lists, newsgroups, project planning, address book, and collaboration software integrated into one fairly solid package. It's an excellent product, and there is nothing out there that even comes close to being able to replace it.

Re:salt/wound?

but it's all those Add-ons to Exchange that Executives HAVE to have that are the killer to migrating away from it. All the office apps, sharepoint, Active directory, all expect to tie back to an Exchange server and simply have no other way to use the "must have" collaboration tools without it. That's the deviousness of Microsoft.. all sorts of other apps that use MS development tools like .Net expect to tie to MS tools. Many third party apps use that "one piece" you've got no control over when it MUST run a special machine custom for your industry.

I'm not knocking the OSS solution, not at all, but the "Exchange" problem isn't JUST an email server.. it's all the third party stuff all over the company that just assumes you've got Microsoft... In many cases you've got no way (profitable) to chase down all those loose ends... and when you finally DO, some middle manager pulls in ANOTHER must have app you have to fight over.

What's needed is more SOLUTIONS and not just pieces. The modularity of OSS is a strength and a weakness. The strength is in rapid integration of modules.. the weakness is the problem that every geek expects THEIR favorite module to work with every other module... we need to start thinking in STACKS of features rather than individual apps. The issue for geeks is that their favorite apps may not end up in the same feature "stack"... in order to round out the feature set easily without duplication. I think Google building it's own apps helps break the "must have MS" syndrome.. but Google's stuff is still their own.. and much doesn't translate to something that's feature COMPLETE in OSS right now. That's the next step for Linux distros.... to offer turnkey solutions, and not just parts. Ubuntu is on the right track, but they're not nearly ambitious enough at promoting STACKS of functions "ready to go"... but the users in the forums are definately on the right track... witness Automatix. Now do that for domain/email/groupware setup and you'll have something interesting for business.

Re:salt/wound?

that doesn't make it not a conspiracy theory.

I know for a fact A and B are unrelated - I work for Novell and wanted to get on the Hula project. It's been dead for months, even before the MS/Novell deal.

Re:salt/wound?

... I work for Novell ...

No wonder you post anonymously.

Re:salt/wound?

That conspiracy theory, while entertaining, is just totally untrue.

The Hula team decided not to go forward with the project because the project wasn't working. It had been nearly two years since we launched Hula and during that time a lot of other people entered the space (Zimbra, Google Calendar, etc) and implemented many of the innovative things that we had planned to do with Hula. This took some of the wind out of our sails, and we had some execution problems too; I don't know if you've noticed, but the project has essentially gone two years without a release, and if you've ever done any significant software development before, you know that's not a sign of a healthy project.

Now, there is some great work in Hula and we sincerely hope that some of it will be useful to the community. The AJAX-based dragonfly web interface for mail and calendar is gorgeous and open source and could be turned into a nice replacement for SquirrelMail or the other web mail/calendar interfaces. The Hula store and the former NetMail agent code are also both open source and other companies are using them now as well.

The guys who worked on this stuff (Jacob Berkman, Peter Teichman, Dave Camp, Cyrus Dolph, Rodney Price, and others) are extremely bright guys, did fabulous work, and really enjoyed the project -- but unfortunately it's one of those things that didn't work out the way everyone hoped. So it goes.

Novell customers of NetMail and GroupWise and other products can rest assured that they are unaffected and will be supported and carried forward -- I'm sure Novell will have things to say about that, so stay tuned.

Re:salt/wound?

I was very excited about Hula when it was first announced. I quickly became less enthusastic until I discovered Zimbra, which I have been using since Beta 1 days (it's not version 4.5RC1).

As far as the microsoft angle goes, I don't think it is nearly as open and shut as that. Hula had a variety of problems that were difficult to overcome. Almost all of those problems are centered around the underly platform.

• There is always a question of building on top of the existing stack, or replacing the stack. Hula choose to replace the stack rather then build on top of industry standards
• Hula's C++ mail server duplicates sendmail and postfix. That means you loose the time tested nature of sendmail and postfix and replace it with buggy and possibly insecure mail. That's a problem.
• That stack also had a proprietary web server. You loose all the work in apache and tomcat.
• Your new code in on python? Look I know that Python is a pretty piece of work, but it is not something that clients are going to get excited about supporting. Open source means you eat your own dogfood, and very few companies are willing to find python experts to support their mail platform.
  

Anyone who thinks that Hula had any kind of momentum at all before this announcement is ignoring the fundamental architectural problems that killed the project months and months ago. Something may emerge from the ashes. Zimbra has proven it can be done, but it will have to be a firefox to this convoluted and bloated Mozilla.

Coincidence? I think not

Hmm, I wonder if Microsoft had anything to do with that decision?

Re:Coincidence? I think not

Nah, it's a completely independent decision having nothing to do with their new Redmond overlords.

How weird, my nose is growing.

Re:Competition?

I wonder if there is a non-competition clause in the recent agreement.

Right. In other news, Novell is getting out of the operating system, virtualization, and identity management businesses. In a press release, Novell states, "We got tired of selling actual software that does stuff."

Re:Coincidence? I think not

Yes, because Microsoft was seriously on the verge of having Hula overtake Exchange.

Yes, that's sarcasm.

I liked Hula, or at least the idea of it, but there are quite a few of these sorts of applications around, I don't find any of them quite satisfying, and I doubt Hula has much of that market anyway. Besides, it's FOSS. Novel can't kill it if it wants to, so long as there are programmers willing to work on it.

Re:Coincidence? I think not

Once again, go take a look at Zimbra. There was a article in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago that was front page even that covered the traction Zimbra is getting. It even mentioned that Microsoft and specifically Bill G knew about Zimbra, and were starting to have customers bring it up. That's the kind of product the open source world needs in this space.

Re:Coincidence? I think not

Hula wasn't able to do anything without a huge amount of duct-tape and bailing wire. Even if you did manage by some mircle to get it working, replacing all of the sendmail, httpd and ldap servers, you could not integrate with ActiveDirectory, could not add functionality to the stack, had a web interface that was just plain ugly (dragonfly is much better) and could not easily integrate with most of the anti spam systems out there.

More to the point, they had a core crew that looked at JWZ, declared him God, read his statements, proclaimed them good, and then immediately replayed every single mistake that Mozilla ever made.

Hula needed to be simple, clean and functional. Even know a year later, it is none of those things.

Re:Coincidence? I think not

>Hmm, I wonder if Microsoft had anything to do with that decision?

NO... never... They wouldn't do a thing like that...

Anyway next weeks update to SLES10 will include the following features
a) OpenOffice has been updated to load/save Word documents by default and Macros will run by default.
b) Firefox has been updated to use MSN as it's homepage and default search engine
c) Evolution has been patched to try and execute all email attachments when you view an email.
d) All the above programs now need to be run as root

Re:Coincidence? I think not

Short answer:
No, believe it or not, Microsoft wasn't in on this.

Longer answer:
I work at Novell, and for about a year, I was on Hula. I loved it. I still run it on my home server, and it still bothers me that I didn't get to finish and polish the bits I was hacking on. An insufficient degree of planning and management led to the magic "1.0" getting pushed farther out and being less clearly defined. Inside Novell culture (and elsewhere, I would think), that's a bad sign. Other projects were in the spotlight, some Ximian modus operandi kept a lot of Hula's exciting stuff secret, and a few months back, the already-thin team was cut back dramatically. At the same time, its release deadline was moved up, and Hula was still without what I'd call a manager. The writing was on the wall well before the Microsoft deal came around.

I made the mistake of getting pretty emotionally attached to Hula, so this has all been pretty rough for me to watch. I worked weekends and wee hours on that code, and I'd do it again. I can't blame anyone for using this news as fuel for the fire and/or shouting "Novell just doesn't get it", and I can't blame anyone for being highly suspicious given the recent Microsoft deal (I'm still not sure how I feel about that, by the way). But I can say, and you can take with as much salt you want: No, this was the result, a long time coming, of numerous mistakes, and of other decisions that truly didn't seem like mistakes at the time. As much as I love to blame Microsoft for stuff, the facts say otherwise in this case.

Its death as a Novell-sponsored project is unfortunate, but Hula's not dead - it's grown a small community and a bunch of us still have commit access. Read the mailing list message, take a breather, and if you still feel like being pissed off at Novell or Microsoft, fine. I tried. But at least check out Hula. It still has a ton of promise and is surprisingly useful today.

What?

An open source project dying a quiet, pathetic death in lieu of things that might actually generate revenue?

NOW I've seen everything.

Zimbra?

Didn't Zimbra [zimbra.com] beat them to the punch anyway?

Re:Zimbra?

All of the options, including Zimbra and OpenXchange, have serious problems. Hula looked really nifty and nice, if a bit monolithic. However, it always had a whiff of the vaporware about it and I think the case on that is now closed.

Re:Zimbra? - also Scalix, PostPath

• Scalix [scalix.com]
• PostPath [postpath.com]

Customers left stranded!

So where will be buy our hula hoops from now? :-(

Ping...

You should check your ping times.

Protest the Microsoft-Novell Patent Agreement

Protest the Microsoft-Novell Patent Agreement [techp.org].

I don't think there's anything illegal about Novell dropping its support for the Hula project, but it's another sign that they've welshed out on their former friends for money. About the best we could do in response would be to continue the project and get it deployed in the enterprise.

Bruce

Re:Protest the Microsoft-Novell Patent Agreement

I don't think there's anything illegal about Novell dropping its support for the Hula project

You don't think?!?! Last time I checked there was no law forcing them to pay for Hula development. If you don't like Novell, just don't use their products. No need to pull a Redhat and imply that they're criminals.

Re:Protest the Microsoft-Novell Patent Agreement

If you don't like Novell, just don't use their products.

Telling me not to use Novell's products if I don't like them ignores the fact that I'm one of the guys who wrote "their" products. I doubt you can install that system without using my software. And thus I'm one of the people who just got screwed because Novell and Microsoft colluded to engineer a way for Novell to welsh on the agreement that comes with my software.

No need to ... imply that they're criminals.

Except that they've just chosen to ally with an authentic convicted anti-monopoly law violator, found so by more than one jurisdiction. And their collusion with that law violator is engineered to reinforce the monopoly.

Bruce

Re:Protest the Microsoft-Novell Patent Agreement

people are free to do things you don't like with it

Yes, when I wrote the Open Source Definition, I made sure that it would be OK for you to use Open Source even if the author didn't like your politics. This was because of a license I'd seen from UC Berkeley on the Spice circuit simulation program, which prohibited the police of South Africa from using it. And still did, 10 years after apartheid was over and said police were probably Black.

But this case is different, becuase Novell and Microsoft have created a legal fiction of covenants rather than licenses in order to do what my license prohibits.

Bruce

Re:Protest the Microsoft-Novell Patent Agreement

Sorry, the agreement that comes with your software requires them to pay Hula developers how, exactly?

The agreement doesn't require them to do that. That's just walking out on your frends for money. And I suppose you're going to tell me there's nothing bad about that, because it's not breaking the law.

The agreement does, however, require that they not create a tiered environment of patent rights on my software. Which is what they are trying to do.

Is "welsh" an ethnic slur? On people from Wales? Sorry. I didn't know.

Bruce

Re:Protest the Microsoft-Novell Patent Agreement

Have you yourself never started a project and decided not to finish it?

Novell would be *ecstatic* if some of the great developers in the Hula community continued to carry Hula forward.

Good lord, Bruce, your character smearing of Novell is reaching new lows. To imply that this decision has anything to do with Novell's commitment to the free software community is just offensive.

Interoperability, anyone?

Remember when the deal between Microsoft and Novell was to "encourage interoperability"?

Here's that "interoperability" at work, folks...

Calendar Sharing

For business users, I think the lack of an integrated way to share calendars is a real shame. I realize that such things probably aren't that glamorous -- but I'd love to be able to edit my calendar and have my secretary edit my calendar. Maybe there is something that lets that happen right now and if so, I'd love to hear about it. I do recall being excited by Hula when I heard about it before because it seemed like "finally" something would happen. So I'm dissapointed by this news.

My present solution is for my secretary to manage my calendar with korganizer -- I then just overwrite my calendar on my mac laptop (ical works fine with the korganizer files). But it would be nice to not have to call her up and say "please put ____ on my calendar." I'd rather just do it and have the calendars sync up. The ics files are understandable text files and I've thought of trying to make a sync system by comparring the files on my computer and my secretary's, but I just dabble at computer stuff -- I'm not a real programmer and I can't risk my calendar to my low quality skills. So still I wait.

Because they already have one?

While the project will continue, it appears that Novell is not committed to developing a viable open-source alternative to MS Exchange.

I know it'll never happen, but I've said many times before, the best thing Novell could do for their Linux interests is open source Groupwise.

2007: In other news

Novell has introduced Tux-change, a MS-sanctioned port of Exchange for Windows
The company also states that it will soon release it own version of CIFS after the SAMBA organisation was sued into bankruptcy.

Linux-based Exchange server?

From the Hula Project web site: [hula-project.org]

Hula is a [Linux-based] mail and calendar server with a friendly web-interface designed for a great user experience.

So if Novell has taken all their FT developers off Hula, are we to assume that Microsoft is now going to offer a Linux-native version of the Exchange server? I mean, come on. If Microsoft-Novell is really serious with their "we are working on Linux-Windows interoperability" then they're dropping out of Hula in order to work on their Linux-native of the Exchange server, right??

I mean, the only other possibility is that Microsoft "asked" Novell to stop supporting a direct competitor for a Microsoft product. And that would just be silly of them, wouldn't it...

[/sarcasm]

Maybe there it has been done already.

What about Zimbra and Kolab?
Both offer similar functionality to Exchange.
While an Exchange server killer would be really nice it seems to me as there are already too many clients and ideas floating around with not real direction.
Novell is a company and it's primary job is to make money by making their customers happy. I could very well be that the majority of their paying customers already have an E-Mail solution in place.
Of course it is FOSS so if it is worth doing maybe the Ubuntu team will pick it up.

I'm just asking, seriously.....

Okay, hate Microsoft all you want, but will someone tell me just what is so wrong with Exchange Server that makes it such a target for Open Source replacement? Is it that Exchange is basically an anchor for Windows Servers, or does anyone have a problem with Exchange itself?

When you consider the available alternatives, is their any room here for suggesting that in this ONE case, Microsoft did something right, when it comes to Exchange Server? I would like someone to honestly tell me either that Exchange has problems that need fixing, or that Exchange must go for Linux to gain more share in the Enterprise space.

Which is it, and why?

Disclaimer: I was on the original Exchange team, but no longer work for Microsoft. I'm really just curious at this point what is driving the anti-Exchange bandwagon, because I don't see a real, viable competitor out there.

Enlighten me.

What timing.

What odd timing. I literally swapped out Hula this morning with Really Simple CalDAV Store [sourceforge.net]. The only reason I used Hula was for it's CalDAV support, so that Evolution clients can work on a shared calendar. It worked fine for a while, but it started eating up 99% of the CPU on the server, so I had to dump it for something else. So far RSCDS seems to do the trick, but I haven't tested it extensively yet. You'd think a shared calender server wouldn't be very difficult to implement, but there doesn't seem to be many stable options in the Open Source world. Evolution's CalDAV support does seem to be a bit lacking, however, so that could be the bulk of my problem I imagine.

Thus far I've tried Hula, RSCDS, Cosmo, and Apple's CalendarServer and none of them seem to be the perfect solution. I'd love to see a package that acts as both a CalDAV server, but also gives you the ability to view and edit the calendars via a nice looking web-interface as well. I'm thankful for the projects that are currently being worked on however, and I guess I should stop complaining and start coding...

Not Surprised. Expect More Cuts

I'm not suprised they're dropping Hula, or at least support in the form of developers for it. Hula was released simply because Novell had a ton of crufty Netmail code, didn't know what to do with it and couldn't make any money out of it.

Netmail was repackaged into Hula with a logo, snazzy graphics and a lot of pretty meaningless hype. The project didn't really do anything because everyone already had a POP/IMAP and SMTP server, and there were countless open source groupware and calendaring solutions around such as eGroupware, OpenGroupware and Kolab. Novell should have invested their time and effort into one of these and bit the bullet over Groupwise in order to really try and take the ubiquitous Exchange head-on in corporate environments and make some headway. However, Novell still seem to be flogging that rancid and long deceased horse called Groupwise for some reason. Every Novell using company that I know (Netware, Groupwise etc.) is using Exchange, and Novell were going to need to do something different to change that - remove licensing costs at the server and CAL ends, ensure trouble-free Exchange migrations, ensure there was a free and working Outlook plugin etc. etc. Basically, remove the barriers to actually moving away - something Novell is hopelessly poor at. All of their customers (apart from Suse) they have now are basically historical from the eighties and nineties, as you have to literally fight to buy anything from Novell.

Novell strikes me as a company in a spot of real bother, especially with financial results around the corner. Linux (Suse) revenue has not increased in any way that is going to sustain them as a company by itself, Red Hat is miles off in the distance, the Netware userbase is continuing to shrink which it was before Novell's Suse move, and worse, there is still no sign whatsoever that Novell is creating a Linux distribution with open source software that will replace Netware, functionally speaking, and completely satisfy their existing customer base and stop them leaving. Novell talks a lot about choosing a Netware or Linux kernel in OES (Open Enterprise Server) or virtualising Netware, as is, under Linux via Xen. That's the extent of their support of Netware and the roadmap that they have for it, and by all accounts their customers are less than impressed by it.

It seems as though Novell really needed that $300 million from Microsoft, and I would expect many more cutbacks on lots of open source projects and even the proprietary software that isn't making any money in the run up to the next round of financial results.

Google beats Hula (and Exchange)

Exchange is an expensive disaster. Attempting to replace it with something equivalent that's open-source is a waste of time. The genuinely attractive alternative is Google Apps For Your Domain, i.e., GMail (and GCalendar) for your company. Instead of spending lots of energy and money on IT staff and infrastructure and getting crappy results, Google gives you a better product for free. Who's going to say no?

"People want to control their data", I hear you say. Actually many companies already outsource this stuff, and more would if it was free and the service was great.

"Disgruntled Google employee could steal my data", I hear you say. Hello, your OWN disgruntled employees can already do so, and are probably more likely to.

"GMail doesn't guarantee uptime", I hear you say. Google's already more reliable than than 99% of IT departments. I'm sure they'd be willing to take a little of your money in exchange for a contract that says so.

"Don't want ads", I hear you say. I'm sure Google would take a little more of your money to make them go away. Thanks to their economies of scale, they can charge far less than the cost of in-house email and still make ridiculous profits.

No need for Hula. Try Citadel instead.

Much of what Novell was promising for Hula was ideas that have been either implemented or planned in the Citadel project [http://www.citadel.org [citadel.org]] anyway. (We pitched Citadel to them about six months before the Hula announcement ... and they said they weren't interested, and then they announced their project. Draw your own conclusions.)

Anyway, do try Citadel -- it is a very well-integrated collaboration server with an ajax-style web user interface, built-in data stores, lightweight implementations of all relevant protocols (POP, IMAP, SMTP, etc.) ... very easy to install, and just a joy to use.

Down and Out in Provo, Utah

Too bad Novell didn't prioritize the development of the MS Exchange network APIs first. By now the protocol implementation should have been done. So Outlook and the rest of MS Office, as well as other Exchange servers in clusters, and Active Directory, all could have connected to a Hula shell as if connecting to a real Exchange server. That's the key competitive feature best done by an org like Novell. Which, as OSS, the rest of the community could use for our own apps.

Which we could still use now, even though Hula itself is dead.

It really looks now like Novell doesn't get "open source", and never did. Its management understood that it was the new buzzword, the only way to compete with Microsoft, somehow. So they bought a Linux distro (SuSE), and a desktop (Ximian), and announced a groupware (Hula). But they never really opened their projects, and left the source open mainly as a way to keep developers interested in developing for the "Novell" brand, long after there was any other reason left.

Meanwhile, SCO's lawsuits showed the power of open source, both threatening markets and defending from patent suits, as part of an organized effort by the global developer public. Even a way to work with a competitor like IBM without directly coordinating, just keeping the open content out in the public.

But they learned nothing about open source, its community, its culture, it's true value. They learned only that Microsoft so fears Linux that it will pay huge money for cross-licensing a single Linux run by a clueless, decrepit old competitor MS has already beaten every time, for 20 years. So MS can just crush it last, after MS has used Novell to attack Linux.

I really don't care about Novell. Their Directory Server will be a loss, but the LDAP servers will improve when they have to serve its demanding market. SuSE's SW and ecosystem will convert to other Linux distros, probably mostly Ubuntu. Ximian will be replaced by other GNOME developers, or just a different brand on the same team members.

And Hula will sink into the sunset, an empty promise by a senile old sellout. I just wish we could pick its bones clean for the next competitor to Exchange, without the Novell execs of limited vision getting in the way.

Active directory is what we need

We really need a full active directory replacement. LDAP + KRB5 integrated compatible with Windows, with a schema compatible with Windows 2003 Server or such, and a management console that doesn't involve writing up text files and then using some command line tool to parse them.

Why would they compete with Groupwise

Yeah sure the MS deal is too fresh to be coincidence.

But I'm wondering why Novell was going for it at all. Their proprietary system GroupWise is extremely stable and scalable (unless your admin's are monkeys) and makes exchange look sick unless you are talking about things like umm - you know - FEATURES and other fluff. But honestly - it ain't bad.

Why would they champion an OOS alternative to their own product?

But then - I can't say I really understand why they would champion Linux over Netware, unless they are acknowledging they've lost the OS battle and want to concentrate on selling the service and application layer/ring.

I guess they were really buying into the whole OOS thing. Well - up until some manager started to wonder what exactly is left to sell.

Novell is the new sendo

http://tinyurl.com/yhz8az/ [tinyurl.com]

Novell needed to do some due diligence before they entered this deal. So sad. Where will all their engineers go?

This is a loss

Hula was a great solution for those of us sick of configuring and reconfiguring Postfix/Sendmail/Courier/etc. Hula takes minutes to install, and a few clicks to add users and domains. It provided everything out of the box. I am really disappointed and was really looking forward to Hula with complete CalDav and re-enabled graphical admin. I don't really want the mish-mash of apps combined into expensive 'solutions' such as Zimbra. I guess it's time to dust off the HOW-TOs and feel the pain again.

Phillip.