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."

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

[donnz]

"Licensed as open source under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and the Mozilla Public License (MPL)".

See, that's how it's done. Simple really and no need for weeks of backtracking, bullshit and misleading statements.

And the reason?

[Infinityis]

So what's the rationale behind this? Is it basically the same as catching a fish and throwning it back becasue it was too little? Not enough profits? Are they hoping that open source developers will make as user friendly as Gmail?

Also, how exactly do they transfer it over to open source? Will company employees still head up the project, or do they just pick some leader in the OSS community and declare a project leader?

Re:And the reason?

[dameron]

This is a total stab in the dark but I'm guessing they're really going to be pushing their OpenExchange solution instead.

-dameron

a reliable alternative to microsoft outlook

[geekschmoe]

I really hope this turns into a reliable alternative to Outlook. Every manager will tell you that they need/rely on Outlook calendering functions.

And every time the server goes down almost every nerd at the place I work (99% UNIX shop) says something about how we need a unix mail server. But that already exists. We need an open source calender server.

Does something like this exist already or is it in the works? Last time I looked I couldn't find anything comparable.

Abandonware. Try Citadel instead.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

I'd like to remind everyone that the Citadel project [citadel.org] has a complete, robust, flexible open source groupware server that, unlike Hula, is not abandonware. And, it works today, has developers actively working on it, contains a high-performance standalone messaging engine, does IMAP, calendaring (with support for upcoming versions of Kontact and Evolution built-in thanks to GroupDAV), a nice web-based front end, and all the other stuff you expect. Go check it out.

By the way, CalDAV is starting to become widely regarded as too cumbersome to implement properly. GroupDAV [groupdav.org] is the upcoming standard -- not only is it simpler to implement (resulting in fewer buggy implementations) but it also supports all the usual groupware object types -- not only calendars, but tasks, contacts (using vCard), etc. GroupDAV support is currently in beta for Kontact, Evolution, Citadel, and OpenGroupware.org. Go check that out too.

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

[Drishmung]

Read the article. It supports web mail---and having used MyRealBox I can say it's quite good. But, it also supports POP3, IMAP, LDAP and webcal.

So, doesn't this now start to sound more like a free Exchange Server replacement?

Outlook integration - OpenConnector.Org

[Kunta Kinte]

For a long time I've thought that a calendar server that integrates with Outlook is the missing killer app for open source.

I thought so too, and started OpenConnector.Org [openconnector.org] a while ago to fix this.

An Outlook connector would allow the thousands of Microsoft Outlook users to connect to a CalDAV calendar server or something like Hula

Although we've come a long way with the OpenConnector project ( we now have a MAPI Message Store that loads, and lots of code to base the Transport Provider off of...) a full Outlook connector is still a lot more work. Most completed commercial connectors, I've heard are developed by a team of fulltime developers, so help is *always* needed. Even simple things like the network protocol library, which requires no knowledge of Outlook or MAPI.

At any rate, I think it is a good time for internet calendaring, especially with CalDAV coming out with so much support ( OSA Foundation, Oracle, Mozilla, and many others... ), and on track ( 5 drafts in a few months ).

Code is broken/incompleate?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just pulled hula of their svn server and guess what? It doesn't compile. Apparently novel forgot to include definition of atomic_inc and atomic_dec macros. Has anyone else had this problem?

For the sake of compleatness I'm building this on a nearly fresh fedora 3 box + reacent updates that I use for my daily work (devel). Novel claims no external dependencies are needes as can be seen here: http://www.hula-project.org/index.php/FAQ#Does_Hul a_have_any_significant_dependencies.3F [hula-project.org]

Re:And the reason?

[Nat Friedman]

Open source hasn't yet succeeded in building a collaboration server that people can actually use in a variety of settings. We want to fill this gap with Hula.

We believe that people mainly just want the basics: mail, calendaring, addressbook, maybe shared documents.

The dominant solutions today -- Exchange and Notes -- are built on a 20-year old design that predates the web. They were intended to be platforms on which you could build tools like expense processing, vacation requests, and other things. This was called "workflow."

Today, those functions are all done on internal web sites. It's just better. Who wants to build on the Exchnage "platform" if they don't have to?

But still companies are stuck with these hopelessly big, complex servers, just to do basic email and calendaring. They are expensive, they are heavyweight. They overdeliver.

So what we want to build with Hula is, in a way, the "Firefox" of collaboration servers. Do the basics, and do them extremely well. Provide an extension system so other people can add things if they want.

Dave Camp is the maintainer of Hula; he has a lot of experience in open source and we think he'll guide the project well. Many of the Novell engineers behind the original code (notably David Smith and Rodney Price) are working on the Hula project and will continue to work on it.

We're serious about making Hula work. Stop by #hula on freenode if you want to meet us.

Re:And the reason?

[nine-times]

Of course, we all can't know exactly what the top-execs are really thinking, what's PR and what's for real, but I for one am glad to hear Novell has at least an rookie programmer with that sort of optimism about FOSS. I just hope your attitude is indicative of the general tone over there.

All public indications are that Novell's participation in open-source communities is in earnest, and they've been releasing some pretty good stuff to GPL (YaST, Ximian Exchange connector, now this). I'm really hoping y'all over at Novell succeed in showing that it's possible to play nice, contribute to FOSS, and still get past that old "2) ????" step and see some profit. It could provide a good contrast to other companies who seem to feel like they need to screw over everyone else and stifle their competition in order to succeed.

Anyway, have fun storming the castle!

Re:nuts for webmail

[drinkypoo]

The only thing wrong with squirrelmail is that the interface sucks. That and, when I put in the encryption stuff and followed the directions to the letter, I got errors all over my mail windows though the encryption does seem to work.

Re:And the reason?

[T-Ranger]

Wait a couple of months. The decent front end is Evolution, and /. has reported that Novell has hired on staff to do a Windows port.

shared addressbook and calendar?

[rsax]

Okay so I saw the screenshots and from the description it is mentioned several times that this is mail + calendaring. Two questions for anyone involved with this project or whoever has used Netmail.

1. Does this allow a team to share their schedules, calendars? Can you modify each others?

2. Does this ship with an addressbook that can be shared with other people on the server? Can you add entries in others?

JWZ

[frithsplot]

has some interesting thoughts [livejournal.com] on this.

JWZ on Hula. Bonus track: Insides of Netscape fate

[hangel]

The DNA Lounge [dnalounge.com] owner comments [livejournal.com] about the "groupware Hula" (advises/admonishes Nat Friedman on?) and by the ways clarifies about the Netscape-Collabra innards.