Novell Releasing Hula and 200,000+ Lines of Code

H0ek writes "Seems Novell has announced at LinuxWorld Expo that they will be releasing 200,000+ lines of code to the community in the form of a project named Hula(TM). The project is derived from the Novell NetMail product and provides web-based email and calendaring. Seems our boy Nat Friedman has some info on this, too. If you were fortunate enough to get a MyRealBox email account, you will probably know what NetMail is like."

Web-based email? Oh, that's sooo exciting

[Bad Move]

yawn

I am not an enterprise admin...

[GreyWolf3000]

But if I were setting up an IT infrastructure at a 200+ computer office, I'd want to keep e-mail and calendars separate. I know it's probably just me, but I like having a separate calendar program.

Why the silly names ? :(

[rfinnvik]

Why do people insist on calling these projects such silly names ? :P I've been trying to get my company to go with NetMail, but... Hula ? My boss will just laugh at me:(

nuts for webmail

[eh2o]

hopefully this app will work better than a certain other webmail named after a rodent with a big bushy tail.

Integration

[Albanach]

For a long time I've thought that a calendar server that integrates with Outlook is the missing killer app for open source. Then we hear Evolution will be ported to windows, and an Outlook replacement is suddenly available. With OpenOffice we'll have a complete open source office and groupware suite.

Of course life is never that simple, and there's a new target for integration - cell phones. PDA sales are declining fast as the cell phone becomes the computer for outside the office. Most rhe big names, Sony, Nokia, Motarola have been offering a calendar for some time and recent ones will happily sync with Outlook. If we can have an open source calendar server that has a good web interface as well as a desktop application like Outlook and a hook into the big name mobile phones, then we'll have all the angles covered.

Re:I am not an enterprise admin...

[Telastyn]

And if I were setting up [another] IT infrastructure at a 200+ computer office, I'd realise that every non-technical user expects calendaring to be part of their messaging system, since y'know their messaging system is used solely to schedule things...

Though personally, I'd love that messaging system to be IM rather than email, but that is yet to exist nicely [though Exchange supports something like it, but I've not tried it, since... it's Exchange...]

And it shows...

[brunes69]

.. because if you were, and you tried to roll out an IT infrastructure that did *not* have integrated email and calendaring, you would likely be fired.

Seriously, if you have worked at any even moderately-sized organization, you would know that this is essential. There are people I work with, who I know would be totally unable to function without this kind of integration. And I don't blame them either - if I had to be in that many meetings / week, I would need it as well.

Re:And it shows...

[GreyWolf3000]

I'm not saying that the functionality cannot be integrated. I'm saying that the services do not need to be tightly coupled and made into one to acheive that integration.

Re:Abandonware. Try Citadel instead.

[fejjie]

Hula isn't abandonware. It is anything *but*. You have no idea what you are talking about.

Without Outlook connector....

[otis wildflower]

.... You're not gonna be able to get any of these in a MS shop.

Unfortunate but true.

Re:Abandonware. Try Citadel instead.

[natrius]

It's ok to suggest alternatives and all, but if you're going to criticize a project, at least learn something about it. Novell is basing future versions of NetMail on Hula. It's not so much abandoning as it is getting people to help them work on a project for free. Read the FAQ. [hula-project.org]

Re:And the reason?

[denissmith]

Rumors, and they are really only rumors, are that the new Novell strategy is to migrate the old Netware services, which are a fairly complete and easily managed set of directory, print and Groupware services, to Linux. This is to stave off the inroads that Microsoft has been making in large companies who need these services. Some of these new services will be open source, like this announcement - some may remain proprietary. Basically Novell needs to move its existing clients onto Linux, while keeping them Novell clients. Its a risky strategy, if the rumors are correct, but a wise one. Microsoft has spent 20 years announcing that they have x or y in the pipe that will eliminate the need for a Novell solution, and eventually (like Active Directory) they implement something, this is Novell moving ahead again.

Re:Abandonware. Try Citadel instead.

[Myddrin]

Funny that a standard that is a draft status is "too cumbersome". If you subscribe to the CalDAV development lists you'll see that they are trying very hard to keep the standard quite simple.

The competition. Was: Abandonware.

[Monkius]

It might not be abandonware, but I wouldn't bet my job or life on it.

More importantly, for the things it claims to do now, Netmail/Hula will have to work very hard to be better than alternatives already out there:

1. Sendmail, Qmail, Exim do SMTP, variously, *really well*

2. Cyrus does IMAP *really well*

3. They do this in a manner that scales horizontally across a cluster--I find Hula's scalability claims an invitation to scrutiny, but I wouldn't put 200,000 email accounts on one box, even if I could

4. We have a wide variety of webmail solutions, I like Horde/IMP a lot.

5. We lack, in part, an interoperable calendaring framework, which was the Citadel person's point. But we don't totally lack that either, cf OpenGroupware--and Netmail/Hula appears to be playing catch-up

Re:Released as LGPL - Are you watching, Sun...?

[ievans]

You're seriously comparing an abandoned webmail program to an entire OS? Patents and possible infringements are not really an issue with this kind of software, and wouldn't be covered by either the LGPL or the MPL anyway.

I guarantee you the process of clearing the IP for OpenSolaris was a hell of a lot more complicated than for this project.

There's been no confusion on Sun's part about the release of OpenSolaris. Some very visible people expressed their dislike that OpenSolaris wasn't GPL'd, and that the patent grant is only for CDDL projects (a license that explicitly deals with patents--coincidence?). Ok, fair enough. You can't please everybody. If you don't like the license or the software, don't use it. The paranoia and sour-grapes about the CDDL/OpenSolaris is truly bizarre. Did McNealy kick Perens' dog or something?

On Slashdot, Sun's actions are interpreted as simultaneously clueless and methodically sinister. It's more annoying than anything else, as the collective business wisdom here on Slashdot over the years has been impressively wrong.

Full disclosure: I work for Sun, but not on anything to do with Solaris. I don't speak for Sun in any way.

Capitalize on 'em! (was Why on silly names? )

[ediron2]

Why do people insist on calling these projects such silly names ? :P I've been trying to get my company to go with NetMail, but... Hula ? My boss will just laugh at me:(

Ah, you mean silly names like:

Amiga or apple, bob or beowulf, cairo, dongles, EBCDIC or EULA's, FOSS, GoDaddy (I was the only one at my superbowl party to know what they sold/did before or after their ad), honeypots, intuit, java, the Kompany, lisp or LAMP, macintosh or mozilla, newegg or numega, outlook, python or perl or php-nuke, quark, raid, scsi (whether you pronounce it scuzzy or sexy), twiki or TeX, unix, vax, wifi or windows, x, yahoo, zip or zope?

(forgive me, I know there are plenty of wierder names... my point is that any new brand name or jargon carries a risk of misinterpretation)

Based on past experience, do like I do and say you think 'HULA' is an acronym. Better yet, slather on some business jargon or statistics. Your bosses will nod and and pretend to have read about it being the next new thing so they could claim credit for ordering you to use it. That's how I got to implement a LAMP server and a few other FOSS apps long before they'd trust Linux. Or how I got the ok for Numega. 'Raid'ing the important database drives scared one company's leadership until we explained it. One old boss was screamin' mad to find out that 'scuzzy' drives cost *more*. And one of my homebrewing friends got all excited when I mentioned I was helping put together a honeynet. Not that I blame him... free fermentables sound a lot more interesting than getting hacked on purpose.

Speaking of which, it's beer-fiftynine. Gotta run!

Re:And the reason?

[Clover_Kicker]

>So what's the rationale behind this?

They're pissing in the groupware well. A competitor makes a lot of money from their groupware product, they're trying to "cut off their oxygen supply" by supplying a free alternative.

Just like MS destroyed Netscape by giving away IE.

Just like Sun is trying to devalue MS Office via Open Office.

Re:Released as LGPL - Are you watching, Sun...?

[Xross_Ied]

You're seriously comparing an

abandoned webmail program to an entire OS?

You sir are trolling.

I know of two colleges in the lower mainland of BC, Canada that are using NetMail in production for the last 4years (provide email to all students). One of these colleges just bought a new portal system that comes bundled with SunOne messaging server (email integrated portal) and they still stuck with NetMail for email. Why? Out of the box it is designed with features that make an admin's life easier (think seamless email quotas, etc).

w.r.t to the rest of your comments about Sun..
They still stick to an attitude and culture that is elitiest and down right snotty.
Reminds me of IBM in the 70s.
I don't know if Sun will survive; they claim they want to be a services company but still want to sell hardware+software bundles while VARs provide the real services.