personal opinion.....

[Andreas Gungl]

On Sunday 30 October 2005 01:21, Markus Feilner wrote:
> Am Freitag, 28. Oktober 2005 22:18 schrieb Martin Konold:
> > Am Freitag, 28. Oktober 2005 21:36 schrieb Joe Auty:
> >
> > Hi Joe,
> >
> > > > How do you want to keep the coherent management infrastructure
> > > > (kolabd) with
> > > > e.g. a SUSE Apache?
> > > >
> > > > The problem is that SUSE admins expect that YaST handles the
> > > > Apache, imapd,...
> > > > configuration not kolab....
> > >
> > > Well, are there technical issues with mixing and matching user
> > > installed parts with Kolab (i.e. Kolab requiring specific versions),
> >
> > Yes, Kolab requires enhanced versions (some patches and versions are
> > required)
>
> And why does it? Why are they necessary?
IIRC Cyrus IMAP got some improvements for annotations, but Martin is the one 
who knows exactly.

> What exactly are the reasons that make patched software necessary?
Usually bugs, incomplete implementations or missing features...

> Can you give some examples?
>
> I am one of the "friends" Markus mentioned, and I have worked with
> different Groupware Servers. Only kolab seems to need patched versions of
> standard software to accomplish the same tasks like others do.
> I have tried e.g. OpenXchange and before the SuSe Open-Xchange - and I
> consider its necessity for a java server disgusting and unnecessary,
> because other groupware solutions do without. The same seems to apply to
> Kolab with regards to:
> - installation
> - update,
> - distribution integration,
> - modular structure (more backends)
Honestly, I would not like to do the openpkg stuff on a small environment 
(like at home of for a company with about 5 people). However if you have the 
need to spend a dedicated machine for a groupware server, it makes no 
difference in the maintenance if you run Kolab or anything else.

In our company, there we have a Kolab 2 server running on a Suse 9.3 
installation. We've installed the absolute minimum of the Suse packages plus 
the self-containing Kolab with OpenPkg via obmtool. In such an environment 
you will fail to explain the huge additional effort.
However I agree that it's more complicated on an all-in-one server running 
Samba, some Web server instances, a database server, maybe even an FTP server 
plus an LDAP server. There you have to care much more after installing Kolab.

> egroupware in fact could be a very good role model for Kolab at the moment.
> Just try the installation and configuration routine - all from the browser
> - this is state of the art! The only thing missing is the ability to store
> groupware data in the IMAP folders.
[snip]

When we evaluated groupware solutions for our company, one important issue was 
offline capability. Consider travelling w/o paying for online connections 
only because you want to use the time in the train/plain to read and sort 
messages and manage calendars or prepare some messages for sending.

All the nice web solutions fail badly in this respect. I like eGroupware, but 
it would not fit our needs in the company. And that's why I say one should be 
very carefull with simple comparisons between groupware solutions.

And as a last thougth (see the subject): I feel a lot of people complain in 
the list about the openpkg solution w/o offering help to overcome this 
problem. Even if we were told that solutions are on the way but will take a 
while due to limited man-power, there are still complaints coming in.
Come on, this is open source. You have the choice.  - Help or wait. ;-)

Regards,
Andreas