Mitch Kapor's Outlook-Killer

Kent Brewster writes "In the San Jose Mercury this morning: 'For more than a year, [Mitch] Kapor and his small team have been working on what they're calling an open-source "Interpersonal Information Manager." The software is being designed to securely handle personal e-mail, calendars, contacts and other such data in new ways, and to make it simple to collaborate and share information with others without having to run powerful, expensive server computers.'" Kapor explains his intent in his own words.

Was it just me..

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Or did anyone else read the headline and think there was yet another outlook vulnerability?

Evolution....

[colin_n]

Why not build on the success of evolution?

I send you these files to ask you advice

[schlach]

Kinda disappointed... For a second there, I thought it was another email worm that uninstalled Outlook on its way out...

=)

Chandler

[T-Kir]

Code-named ``Chandler''

At least it wasn't named after the same character from 'Friends'...

People might have worried that the software would take after the character... get a bit bloated and be a bit sarcastic. :)

Re:sorry

[Psiren]

Perhaps this is a bit exaggerated but I've simply experienced too many disappointments with software which does not exist yet.

Yeah, I've always had problems trying to get non-existant software to compile. Even when I do it never seems to run.

Nah, the *real* Outlook-Killer

[schlach]

... is Exchange =)

Excuse me?

[CoolVibe]

You are:

• posting to the wrong forum
• preaching to the wrong choir
• hopelessly offtopic

Unless divine intervention has to do something with killing that eeevil outlook of course

Re:Evolution....

[colin_n]

Why is that considered funny? I wasnt trying to be funny. Was it funny to people?

$500K Gone Today

[Josuah]

In a followup story, the San Jose Mercury has stated that Mitch Kapor's open-source Interpersonal Information Manager project will now need to be self-sustaining by 2004 instead of 2005. Kapor released this statement: "We should have never announced this. Within a few hours, and lasting for almost a day, our server was slashdotted and we had to dish out one tenth of our operating funds just to stay afloat."

Way to support a new non-profit open-source organization!

i thought the real outlook killer

[Anonymous Coward]

was a tie between melissa and the love bug?

Re:sorry

[Entropy_ah]

Yeah, I've always had problems trying to get non-existant software to compile. Even when I do it never seems to run.

you should probably upgrade to gcc3.2

Re:sorry

[sydb]

kermit:~# cc /dev/null
/dev/null: file not recognized: File truncated
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
kermit:~#

Yeah, you're right. Vapourware.

Re:Sorry to be negative, but...

[zulux]

Why not wait until, say, a single line of code has been written before proclaiming it an Outlook killer?

Anthing is better that Outlook/Exchange:

A dead rat.

Moldy cheese.

Uncooked noodles.

Hell.. a pure vacume in deep space doesen't suck as much as Outlook does.

Re:sorry

[JabberWokky]

Compiling /dev/random will work, it just takes lots of tries. (And you'd probably want to make sure that ^D forces the end of file rather than trying for the end of that stream).

--
Evan

Re:Evolution....

[Sivar]

Build on the success of Evolution.

Think about it. ;-)

Re:sorry

[thefogger]

You know, if you compile the output of a million /dev/random's with a million compilers for an unlimited amount of time, you'll eventually end up with a working linux kernel ...:-)

Re:sorry

[evilad]

But you wouldn't have to groff nearly that many of them to get a complete set of man pages for the unix command set.

They need a copy editor to edit their copy

[steveha]

now overwhelmingly dominated by Microsoft's inelegant but overwhelmingly dominant Outlook

This surprisingly clumsy phrase was clumsy but surprising to me.

steveha

Re:sorry

[maw]

it is just vaporware for me

Hmm, I think you mean Kaporware.

Re:Evolution....

[Tokerat]

Build on the success of Evolution.
Does that meean this software will come into common use and become the de-facto standard everywhere except America's Bible-belt?

Re:Python

[The Pim]

The project is going to be written mostly in Python....

I've been meaning to swap some books in Safari and check out the Learning Python... I guess I finally have some reason....

but why is there no code available?

When you learn Python, you'll find that it's high-level, dynamic nature allow you to accomplish a great deal in only a few lines of code. So no code in Python probably contains more functionality than no code in C.

You'll also find that whitespace is an important part of Python syntax. So look closer--that "no code" could contain a lot of significant whitespace.

Re:Frontpage news

[plasm4]

too bad I already patented it since I was planning on doing it the day after tomorrow

excess verbiage error

[MegaFur]

Note to reader: this is not a flame! I'm just joking around. It's funny, laugh.

From the article:

A couple of months ago, it became clear that we could not do all of the above while at the same time fully realizing all of the new ideas we've developed about helping people manage information better. This gave rise to an important idea, which is that we see this project as needing to go through multiple major releases to grow up and become fully realized. We felt it was important to start with something which could over time gain wide adoption, because then there would be a larger potential base of interest for future developments. All of which is to say we're going to wind up deferring working on certain cool features in order to get an initial product out the door.

At this point, a small team has spent the better part of a year thinking through the problem space and developing the fundamental of our approach and has just begun writing the production code. We've made a number of fundamental decisions about the architecture and have arrived at a preliminary set of features. Andy Hertzfeld has built a terrific prototype which enabled us to explore lots of new ideas.

A couple of paragraphs ago, it became clear that I could not take all of Mitch Kapor's claims seriously while at the same time fully realizing my internal goals of being honest to myself and others. This gave rise to an important idea, which is that (maybe) Mitch has been in marketing far too long. I felt it was important to continue reading so that I could be fully informed. All of which is to say that I have to keep reading while Mitch drones on and on about "product" and "deferring work" and more "product".

At this point, a small team has spent the better part of a year thinking through the problem space and developing a theory to explain wtf Mitch's problem is. (Their answer? Five tons of flax! (see ddate(1) or your peneal gland for more info)) I've made a number of fundamental decisions about the quality of the weblog I've just read and have arrived at a (not preliminary) set of conclusions:

1. Mitch Kapor has been fatally infected by market droids and suits.
2. I have too much time on my hands.
3. You have too much time on your hands. (You (might have) read the article, then you read the blockquote of my post (so you read (part of) the article again), then you read all the way down to here.)
4. I use too many parentheticals. (But it's so much fun, dangit!)

The part that really got me was the first line of the second quoted paragraph. Yes, I understand what he means by "thinking through the problem space", but I can't ignore that he actually phrased it that way. Guys, the only time a programmer should talk of "problem space" is when she or he is writing code that handles one. E.g. an expert system that has to search its database to find the "best" answer to the user's querry or a (chess-like) games program that has to search the tree of valid moves to find a good one or a root finding program that has to search in the x-y plane (or the x-y-z space or n-dimensional space) for the set of points where f(x[1],x[2],...,x[n])=0.

Now go talk amongst yourselves while I "think through the problem space" of how to quit being a slashdot bum and go get a job. :-P (I know, I know. The answer is obvious...)

Re:Evolution....

[kubrick]

Yes, but the great advantage of the 'Creation' program is that it will only take six days to write! On the seventh day the author will rest.

Evolution, on the other hand, is taking aeons :).

Read slashdot from the groupware client!!!!

[Nicolay77]

"having every feature a user wants"

That of course means that /. will have their comments in an email format.

Imagine the anxiety just waiting for that pop-up window saying: "Your message has been replied" or "You've been moderated insighful".

And believe that some of us are /. addicts... just wait to see this stuff working !!!