[Kolab-devel] SPL for Kolab Webinterface

[Markus Heller]

Dear list,

> > Estimations are always tricky, but we expect to be able to create a
> > useable webinterface until end of the year with a budget of 4000 EUR.
> > Please note that it will only have primitive mail support (at least at
> > the beginning, it can always be improved later).
>
> I still find this strange, as people on this have stated, in the last
> months only, that with some weeks effort horde will work might work well
> with kolab. Why not go that route and fix the kolab-horde interface.  Once
> that is done, all the nice horde goodies (e.g. a webinterface for pda's)
> are automatically available to kolab, being much more than mail support
> alone.  At the same maintainance of this code is automatically obtained
> from the horde community.

Richard is right: It would be hell of an effort to develop an interface from 
ground up, and it would disintegrate the community and bind valuable 
developer resources. Better fix the Horde interface and profit from security 
fixes from that neighbouring community. 

The tendency to build every little application again and again from ground up 
is a great hindrance to the entire Open Source community and it will 
eventually lead to a huge landscape of incompatible and half-baked solutions. 

This outcome is not in *our* interest. In order to gain ground compared to 
corporate (M$) software and in order not to sink to oblivion, we need to 
build modular solutions with compatible, standardized and well-designed 
interfaces. 

> > I personally think that the web interface will then still require some
> > more months of community work for bug fixing and working out rough edges.
> > But the "bulk" work could be done within that budget.

4000 Euros? Well, better multiply by 100, to be realistic. Then you'll have a 
solid funding... The alternative would be to engage developers from countries 
like India. Then 4k Euros will yield about 10 developer months. I mean, we 
all have to buy food and pay our housing, don't we?

Regards
Markus