Novell Releasing Hula and 200,000+ Lines of Code 223
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."
I am not an enterprise admin... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I am not an enterprise admin... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I am not an enterprise admin... (Score:2)
Re:I am not an enterprise admin... (Score:2)
Besides, if you take out the calendar thing, you could just use, say, qmail and openldap.
Re:I am not an enterprise admin... (Score:5, Insightful)
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...]
Re:I am not an enterprise admin... (Score:2)
Re:I am not an enterprise admin... (Score:2)
Re:I am not an enterprise admin... (Score:2)
And it shows... (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And it shows... (Score:2)
There is iCal, but all that is good for is the storing / retrieving calendars. That is a starting point for integration, but it is one step on a mile long journey.
This is why you have all kinds of Open Source PIM suites out there ( Kontact, Evolution, OpenGroupware, etc ), but you can't easily do something like use Thunderbird for your email an
Re:And it shows... (Score:2)
But I'll concede that exchange has created and firmed this association to the point where the level of integration required is more than even the level of integration that a word processor and a spreadsheet need.
Wrong direction (Score:2)
There are numerous Open Source packages that do this quite well - there is no need for exchange here. But there *is* a need for the calenda
Re:And it shows... (Score:2)
Re:And it shows... (Score:2)
Re:And it shows... (Score:2, Informative)
Also quite interesting, is that I do run a network of a large number of machines, and nobody has ever seen the need to have this functionality. Everything that Outlook does can be done with seperate apps, and can often be done better. If the people you wo
Re:I am not an enterprise admin... (Score:5, Informative)
You can run the Hula calendar separately from the mailer/MTA. We definitely want to follow the one-problem one-tool rule for people who want that.
Re:I am not an enterprise admin... (Score:2)
It's a real pain to set up a working MTA with AV and spam filtering. Nice to know you won't have to do it again.
Re:I am not an enterprise admin... (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah, this is a very fair point. You can run separate components of Evolution separately with the -c option, e.g. "evolution -c calendar" gives you only the calendar.
We have considered splitting Evolution into separate projects a number of times, and it may still happen.
Re:I am not an enterprise admin... (Score:2)
On the server side folks are looking for an exchange replacement that scales way up.
They are not looking for an openserver cobled togther set of scripts / programs / configuration directives.
I don't think the limited combo is going to be a huge problem in the marketplace.
And you'll be surprised at how enterpise admin folks like ser
Released as LGPL - Are you watching, Sun...? (Score:5, Interesting)
See, that's how it's done. Simple really and no need for weeks of backtracking, bullshit and misleading statements.
Re:Released as LGPL - Are you watching, Sun...? (Score:2)
Re:Released as LGPL - Are you watching, Sun...? (Score:2)
That's what I'm afraid of.
Re:Released as LGPL - Are you watching, Sun...? (Score:2)
Their plans are to _prevent_ patent lawsuits, not cause them. Read this blog [sun.com] entry. In short, the FUD mongers are wrong.
Re:Released as LGPL - Are you watching, Sun...? (Score:2)
If Sun wants to extend it's sandpit alittle that's fine. Sun is not doing what they claimed they were doing. The are not making the largest number of patents available to the open source community evah!, they are not "releasing Solaris" to the community at large. End of story.
Today the news from Sun is all "oh, if you don't like our licence don't use it". Fine, but on flip side of
Re:Released as LGPL - Are you watching, Sun...? (Score:2)
SunMink is Simon Phipps, an executive at Sun who writes on the same level as Groklaw. Not knee-jerk stuff, not OSRM insurance sales pitches.
Sun is populating OpenSolaris with its own patent portfolio via the CDDL to protect it from litigation. OpenSolaris will have its own IP asset base to put it on par with other patent holders, so, if someone decides to sue, OpenSolaris is ve
Re:Released as LGPL - Are you watching, Sun...? (Score:2)
I guarantee you the process of clearing the IP for OpenSolaris was a hell of a lot more complicated than for this project.
So what?
Having done all the hard work why throw it away in what appears to many of us to be a honeypot entrapment wheeze. Remember, we are still smarting from SCO's attacks which were well financed by MS and Sun, the latter has also reached a very lucrative settlement with MS. I think a little paranoia is justified. Just look th
Re:Released as LGPL - Are you watching, Sun...? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Released as LGPL - Are you watching, Sun...? (Score:2)
You guys have better stuff to do instead of trolling slashdot. First of all, make god damn Webstart easier for implementing. You got such a technology while even NASA couldn't find a way to implement it and forced people to download/install Mars stuff by hand.
Solaris is ge
And the reason? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
-dameron
Re:And the reason? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And the reason? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And the reason? (Score:2)
Re:And the reason? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:2)
Seems to me that openxchange does all the stuff you list, and more. Except that openexchange also potentially competes with edirectory, Ifolder, Iprint, and some of t
Re:And the reason? (Score:5, Informative)
The rationale behind this is that we'd like to put out something that's simple at first but can seed an ecosystem of its own, and, with some luck, one day become "the Apache of collaboration". Netmail was a good fit because there were very few issues IP-wise in releasing the code, and because it's a young and extensible base that has the potential to evolve into a killer enterprise-level system. If we were to open up GroupWise, for example, (if that were even possible, which it isn't) we'd be saying to the world "hey, come on and help out with our finished, mature product", which isn't nearly as stimulating as "hey, come on and help shape the future of collaboration!" The latter may be a smidge optimistic, but that's honestly what we're shooting for, if I understand Nat correctly.
As for transferring development of Netmail to the open Hula project, here's what I know and (I hope!) am allowed to say: Netmail was a very small team. The Hula team is bigger. So no, we're not just tossing it out and watching to see who in the OSS community should be the project leader. It's still our project, though everybody is free to fork if they decide we're headed in the wrong direction. That does two things: it forces us to stay honest and on the up-and-up with the OSS community, and (as of right now, no turning back) it gives to the world a useful piece of free software that can and will get more and more useful over time.
There was a joke made in the hallways here (and possibly elsewhere in these comments) in reference to South Park. Step 1: Release Hula. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit!
Step 2 is to play the game right, to give OSS folks what they want and what they need to help us build (or build themselves, if they so desire) a really sweet communications system. Something that there would be demand for at the enterprise level. Right now, Hula is mail and calendar. A year from now, I would be very surprised if it did not include IM, some form of VOIP, and some things I can't even imagine right now. Apache, QT, MySQL, and so on have shown that there is money to be made from a free-as-in-speech, free-as-in-beer tool if: 1) It's good, and 2) An ecosystem develops around it. That money, of course, is what Novell is looking for in the end, and I've got to say I'm pretty excited to see the way we're going after it. Microsoft built a proprietary community around Exchange, and it has dominated collaboration for years. I'm rooting for Hula's free, open community that was officially born today.
So there's two cents from a rookie Novell programmer.
Re:And the reason? (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Makes good sense for Novell (Score:2)
Re:And the reason? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Why the silly names ? :( (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why the silly names ? :( (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why the silly names ? :( (Score:5, Funny)
just make up an important-sounding acronym:
High-end Ultimate Life Assistant.
ok, that sucks. make up your own.
Capitalize on 'em! (was Why on silly names? ) (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Capitalize on 'em! (was Why on silly names? ) (Score:2)
"Whenever I throw problems at you, like how can I build a collaborative documentation system, you just mutter some wierd word, like Wiki, and have it done by the end of the day!"
Re:Why the silly names ? :( (Score:2)
hoop! (Score:2)
Seriously. They are not selling HULA, they are selling NetMail. They don't want mangager-type-people to LIKE the free HULA. They want managers to BUY Netmail.
The HULA-name is only targetted at us communists.
Re:Why the silly names ? :( (Score:2)
nuts for webmail (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:nuts for webmail (Score:5, Funny)
Re:nuts for webmail (Score:4)
I use the Squirrel and find very few issues with it. A couple of people at my company have gone so far as to give up standalone mail clients completely, and just use Squirrelmail, and they have no complaints with it.
Re:nuts for webmail (Score:2, Interesting)
Integration (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Outlook integration - OpenConnector.Org (Score:5, Interesting)
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 ).
Re:Integration (Score:2)
but good luck with that, my Nokia helpfully converts the XML to somem crazy binary format. I've tried reading the copious 9and I mean copious) docs from the SyncML group and W3. I've captured the binary and chucked it into a HEX viewer but I'm convinced that they've pulled an MS and implemented a format that's the same but different such that I can't decode it (or perhaps it's me)
I've found SyncML programs that do the ASCII/utf-8 version o
Re:Integration (Score:2)
Novel netmail crashed a lot (Score:2, Informative)
And I lost several important emails even the guy from Novel tried hard to recover data as his time permitted.
Hope this step could change it.
Re:Novel netmail crashed a lot (Score:2)
Call Novell ANYTHING but never unstable.
Lazy to find but there was a machine running novell for 4 or more years straight in an university which was -literally- lost.
BTW, people calling Novell dead, ahem ask Wal Mart what they use. Or what huge airport/ticketing networks use...
A system not running on your Dell or at your geek friends baseme
a reliable alternative to microsoft outlook (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:a reliable alternative to microsoft outlook (Score:2)
IMAP is a very rich protocol for handling mail messages. But calander items, task lists and what not are not mail messages. So you have a meeting stored in IMAP. "Tell me what meetings Bob is scheduled for" requires a linear search through all the messages. So you make a change to a meeting, you have to pass around an entire message. Sure, its all linear store somewhere, but you should have something that is
CalDAV vs. webcal:// ? (Score:2)
That is, in iCal which uses WebDAV to store
Is CalDAV the 'official' way of doing this?
Abandonware. Try Citadel instead. (Score:2, Interesting)
By the way, CalDAV is starting to become wid
Re:Abandonware. Try Citadel instead. (Score:2, Insightful)
The competition. Was: Abandonware. (Score:2, Insightful)
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. W
Re:The competition. Was: Abandonware. (Score:2)
I do run mail servers with 10s of 1000s of users, and I certainly think it does matter what we use, don't you think?
Re:Abandonware. Try Citadel instead. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Abandonware. Try Citadel instead. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Abandonware. Try Citadel instead. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Abandonware. Try Citadel instead. (Score:5, Informative)
Hula is not abandonware. It is a project we have only started to invest in.
Come by #hula on freenode, count the 20-25 Novell employees there, and then determine for yourself what kind of project it is.
Re:Abandonware. Try Citadel instead. (Score:2)
I wouldn't give a shit to that application after reading this. This must be the best way to degrade the product to lowest lame standards.
http://www.novell.com/products/netmail/ --> "abandonware"
BTW, we prefer Novell since we can get real support in case some bad thing happen. Imagining to get support from a guy like you... We made a good decision.
From the same company that brings you... (Score:3, Informative)
It would be interesting to catch the differences between the two, Open Xchange has a few more collaboration engines in it, namely a project manager and bulletin board.
In full disclosure we plan on releasing OX in the office sometime soon after their .8 release. Especially now that it looks like they integrate with any IMAP server (freeing us from having to switch to Cyrus).
Without Outlook connector.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunate but true.
Re:Without Outlook connector.... (Score:2)
http://www.hula-project.org/index.php/FAQ
Scroll down to the "Clients" area. They have a decent number of clients that work to some degree. Being a new project, I wouldn't expect it to have perfect connectivity to a wide range of clients just yet.
200,000 lines of code! (Score:2)
A web mail system at 200 KLOC sounds like a nightmare to maintain, both as a developer and as an administrator. I bet this was a corporate project that went horribly wrong somewhere and this is an attempt to cut some losses.
Re:200,000 lines of code! (Score:2)
LOC does not determine how easy a project is to maintain. Design does. If the project is well designed then no matter how big it is it will be easier to maintain. I've worked on a bit of software that probably only had about 5000 LOC and it was a nightmare!
200K LOC isn't even a particularly big project. The linux kernel has over 30 million.
Re:200,000 lines of code! (Score:2)
The kernel has about 4.2 million.
Re:200,000 lines of code! (Score:2)
Re:200,000 lines of code! (Score:2)
The two clauses of that sentence don't go together: "I don't know the thing I need to know in order to judge how many lines it should be, so I will assume it is bad."
Actually, if you look at the product, it is fairly complex and comprehensive and 200KLOC looks very reasonable. It includes an imap system, pop system, interface systems, calendar systems, list managers and a whole
native clients and desktop shell integration (Score:2)
who knows - once evolution is ported to windows, maybe we'll see progress on this front. a cross-platform native groupware client would be a huge win for desktop viability in businesses.
Dear Novell, CEASE AND DESIST IMMEDIATLY... (Score:3, Funny)
Mahalo nui loa
A more likely scenario (Score:2)
It doesn't work yet. (Score:3, Informative)
Hopefully they'll iron this out, and I'll get a chance to update tomorrow and use the thing. I'm absolutely ready to blow away my qmail+vpopmail setup in favor of this sucker. I might have to install a postfix proxy to handle virus scanning, though.
shared addressbook and calendar? (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Who used it? (Score:3)
2Mail? (Score:2)
JWZ (Score:2, Interesting)
And in a related story... (Score:2)
SCO sues Novell over the use of the number 200,000 which was used in the original unix implementation in a header file.
IBM is being subpoenaed to discuss licensing issues, and Novel is being ordered to release all 200,000 lines of public code to SCO (whose lawyers apparently didn't know that the code is publicly accessible).
A Microsoft owned company has already purchased 500 licenses of "litigation protection insurance" from Microsoft to avoid litigation in the future if SCO sho
JWZ on Hula. Bonus track: Insides of Netscape fate (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Web-based email? Oh, that's sooo exciting (Score:3, Funny)
Seriously, though: if you want webmail, what's wrong with Horde/Imp? I use that at home; it's pretty nice and full featured, if you can get past the configuration.
Re:Web-based email? Oh, that's sooo exciting (Score:5, Interesting)
So, doesn't this now start to sound more like a free Exchange Server replacement?
Re:Web-based email? Oh, that's sooo exciting (Score:2)
Re:Web-based email? Oh, that's sooo exciting (Score:2)
Re:Web-based email? Oh, that's sooo exciting (Score:2)
Re:Web-based email? Oh, that's sooo exciting (Score:2, Informative)
The key is that people want support when they get a product. This way, Novell can capitalize on the development of the product, then sell it to people and support it. It makes sense, really.
And yes, it looks like an Exchange replacement, as it has integrated mail and calendaring. That's basically why people go to exchange. Add in tasks, contacts, and a few other things, and that's Exchange i
Re:Web-based email? Oh, that's sooo exciting (Score:2)
Re:Web-based email? Oh, that's sooo exciting (Score:2)
I agree that they don't want to kill Groupwise, however, Groupwise is in a distant 3rd in the email race (Exchange/Notes 1/2) and "if" they actually put developers b
Re:Web-based email? Oh, that's sooo exciting (Score:2)
http://mirror.open-xchange.org/ox/EN/community/ [open-xchange.org]
From the news on their websites it may sound like the Hula release was actually intended to benefit this project.
Re:It's Mature Too (Score:2, Informative)
That's "robo secretary". It's an idea for a feature. We couldn't think of what to call it.
See the "robosecretary" part on this page:
http://www.hula-project.org/index.php/Text
It uses mbox (with indexes) (Score:2)
http://www.hula-project.org/index.php/Mailbox_Fil
It uses mbox. VERY disappointing. Hopefully there is/will be some sort of plugin structure to get it to support Maildir (without having to use an alternate IMAP store) or a more robust storage format.
Re:It uses mbox (with indexes) (Score:2)
Folders are not mapped directly to directories; no, a folder name is a prefix for several file names with predefined suffixes, one of them is a directory for subfolders. I didn't try but I guess, God forbid you from creating a folder with one of these suffixes in the name.
Why it couldn't be made the natural way (a folder is mapped to a directory containing predefined files for contents/indexes, subdirectories are mappe