[Kolab-devel] Extending Kolab (was: munin)

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Thursday 03 April 2008 08:57, Gunnar Wrobel wrote:
> > I would maintain that Kolab Server is already pretty "pluggable" due to
> > its Unix philosophy.
>
> Of course any free software can be extended. The relvant question in
> that context is how much energy it costs the user to actually do
> that. Usually the free software project itself can try to lower the
> initial hurdles.

I agree with the general point. My thesis is that Kolab Server already
makes it comparatively easy because of its design philosophy
to add additional components. 
Your point - as I understand it - is more about how to extend 
the server or its package itself. This is different from being prepared
to plug in more stuff.

> For the Kolab-Server project I believe we have some dificulties in
> making it easy to add stuff like munin or greylisting. Adding such
> extensions would in principle just require adding some configuration
> files. As such it would be easy to do.

I am unsure how difficult it really is to add greylisting to a Kolab Server 
installation. We could have more documentation for frequent cases and I 
believe the wiki helps in this regard.

> But it is far from trivial for a user that would like to contribute
> back to actually get this added into the Kolab-Server so that other
> users can test/use this too.

Getting it into the main distribution and should it be in there 
is often a hard question. In the following you are talking about
this integration in the core server distribution. There are other
ways to make it easy for others to try things out.

> I see at least three problems there:
>
>  - You'll have to ensure the stuff works on OpenPKG
>
>  - You'll have to find a developer to actually care for the addition
>    so that it finds it way into the CVS system. That is extremely hard
>    as deleoper time is rare.
>
>  - The Kolab-Konsortium needs to support the extension which usually
>    means that it gets a good deal of testing so that customers don't
>    come back complaining that things don't work.

All those are very reasonable criteria before something gets
into the main distribution. Especially maintenance and compliance
with the rest of the system is critical or we will face a quality problem 
pretty soon. Kolab Server lives from real world implementations which 
have high requirements for those topics.

> So in fact adding things like greylisting or munin or something else
> is pretty hard with the Kolab-Server at the moment. At least if it is
> something a user would like to share with the community and not just
> keep for himself.

I suggest to go a different route, e.g.
a) do a good maintained documentation
b) we create add-ons for which we can lower the quality criteria

Best,
Bernhard

-- 
Managing Director - Owner: www.intevation.net       (Free Software Company)
Germany Coordinator: fsfeurope.org. Coordinator: www.Kolab-Konsortium.com.
Intevation GmbH, Osnabrück, DE; Amtsgericht Osnabrück, HRB 18998
Geschäftsführer Frank Koormann, Bernhard Reiter, Dr. Jan-Oliver Wagner
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