Mitch Kapor's Outlook-Killer 371
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.
In case it gets /.'d (Score:0, Informative)
You're Making a What?
The product, which is central to the whole undertaking, is a new take on the Personal Information Manager. It will handle email, appointments, contacts and tasks, as well as be used to exchange information with other people, and do it all in the spirit of Lotus Agenda, about which more here and here. Agenda, for those who aren't familiar with it, was a DOS product I designed (along with Jerry Kaplan) in the late 1980's which introduced a new kind of database optimized for entering small items of information in a free-form manner, and then adding organizational categories on-the-fly. It was much beloved by a few, despite (or perhaps because) being abandoned by Lotus.
We are trying to make a PIM which is substantive enough and enticing enough to make people want to move to it from whatever they are currently using, which statistically is probably Microsoft Outlook. I'm not going to bash Outlook here. Suffice it to say that while feature-rich, it is highly very complex, which renders most of its functionality moot. Its information sharing features require use of Microsoft Exchange, a server-based product, which is both expensive and complex to administer. Exchange is overkill for small-to-medium organizations, which we think creates on opportunity we intend to pursue (as well of course as serving individual users)
Have I mentioned it's going to run on Macintosh, Linux, and Windows and will not require a server? This is an ambitious goal, but we are convinced is possible to achieve using a cross-platform tool kit. (We are working with wxWindows/wxPython).
Also, everything is going to be fully open sourced.
Users in large enterprises will have to wait beyond the first release to get a version they can fully use, as we're deferring the substantial engineering required to scale the product. Once we have an initial release, we think it would be an excellent entrepreneurial opportunity to build a full-out large enterprise version on top of our code base. This is an opportunity OSAF is not going to pursue itself, but one we think could be very attractive to commercial developers. That door won't open for quite some time, but it's worth contemplating now.
This entails making sure we dot our I's and cross out T's with respect to all the features a product must have to be best-of-class, without sacrificing ease of use. We need to worry about migration paths from existing products, synchronization with PDA's and a whole host of details beyond core functionality which are required to make a truly first-rate product. On top of that, we have to have perhaps half a dozen killer features elsewhere unavailable, which I will be writing about in future entries. (Don't mean to tease; there's just too much to say all at once). One area which I will mention is that we have a lot of faith that the general and powerful information-sharing technology (built on top of Jabber) we are embedding, will make it trivially simple
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.
To join a discussion on the design of the product see this.
Some things I intend to write about:
Time: when is this thing going to ship?
Money: where is the money coming from to do this?
Our candidates for killer features
What was so great about Lotus Agenda?
RDF (Resource Definition Framework) and what it brings to the party
The sorry state of most software design today: how we got here
In the era of the Web, are PC applications obsolete?
More Useful URL (Score:5, Informative)
This is the article from the Mercury (Score:2, Informative)
Kapor, a pioneering developer of personal-computer software, is definitely not nuts. And it's no surprise to see the founder of Lotus Development now leading an unorthodox project that could have an outsized impact.
For more than a year, 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.
As with other open-source software, the source code (programming instructions) will be freely available along with the working program. An early version of the calendar part of the software should be posted on the Web by the end of this year, and version 1.0 of the whole thing is slated for the end of 2003 or early 2004.
Code-named ``Chandler'' after the late mystery novelist Raymond Chandler, the software will run on the Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. Initially, it will be aimed at individuals and small businesses, but it's also being designed as a platform upon which other developers can build useful software and services of their own.
The planned features alone would make the project noteworthy. If the desktop software world needs anything, it's more innovation in the once-competitive area of personal information management, now overwhelmingly dominated by Microsoft's inelegant but overwhelmingly dominant Outlook, part of Microsoft Office. No sane venture capitalist would fund a company in the financial vacuum created by the Microsoft monopoly, Kapor says.
That makes the Chandler business plan perhaps as important as the product itself. Kapor, founder of the software company that sold the influential and hugely successful Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program in the 1980s, is funding the initial work through a non-profit foundation. Why does this matter? For one thing, it may succeed. For another, it could be a model for other such projects.
Kapor, who has remained active in the industry as an investor and cyber-activist (he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation), says he has committed up to $5 million of his money. But he wants to make the project self-sustaining by 2005 through a variety of funding sources. These include sponsorships and contributions from outsiders -- he likens this to one of National Public Radio's fundraising strategies -- as well as selling services and collecting licensing fees from people who want to build commercial applications on the Chandler base.
Call it a socially conscious, post-bubble strategy -- ``to have an impact and be self-sustaining, not to generate revenue, profits and a high market capitalization,'' Kapor says.
The legal vehicle is called the Open Source Application Foundation (www.osa foundation.org). Including Kapor, the project team numbers eight. All but one (a marketing specialist) are programming veterans. It will grow to 14 when fully staffed, Kapor says.
If the software lives up to the developers' plans, it will have wide appeal. It should be highly adaptable to personal tastes, with robust collaborative features. I'm especially hopeful about a feature to build in strong encryption in a way that lets users protect their privacy without having to think about it.
The Chandler architecture builds on other open-source projects. These include Python, a development language and environment that's gaining more and more fans among programmers, and Jabber, a communications infrastructure that started life as an instant-messaging alternative but has evolved into a robust platform of its own.
One of the Chandler developers, Andy Hertzfeld, is volunteering his services. Hertzfeld is well-known in the software community, partly for his key role in creating Apple's original Macintosh and Mac operating system. An open-source company he co-founded a few years ago, Eazel, died during the Internet bubble's immediate aftermath.
``I hope we make a great application that I love to use myself, and that eventually millions of people will enjoy using,'' he says. ``Hopefully, we'll be able to make e-mail a lot more secure, without encumbering the user with technical detail. We can make accessing and managing information of all kinds more convenient if we're lucky. And we'll be helping to pave the way for free software to displace proprietary operating systems at the center of the commercial software industry.''
The paid team members aren't going to get rich on this deal. Non-profits don't go public, and they don't grant options. ``What matters,'' says Katie Capps Parlante, a developer, ``is creating something I'm really proud of.''
How much does Kapor's longstanding antipathy toward Microsoft count in this effort? ``I've gone to great lengths to make sure that my strong feelings are not a motivation,'' he says. Negative motives are ``not enough to sustain a five- to 10-year effort.''
Still, it's possible that only someone like Kapor could put together and lead such a thing. He's rich, with an unusually powerful sense of social justice, and he enjoys the development process. It's fun, he says, and that's one reason to do it.
But the Open Source Application Foundation also could be a template for other efforts to restore some choice and spark more innovation in markets where dominant companies have squeezed out serious competition. I'd like to see some foundation fund an ongoing effort to ensure that files in Microsoft Office formats can be translated, opened, changed and saved with competing programs. Microsoft has used its proprietary formats as part of an effective lock-in strategy. I'd also like to see foundations help keep Internet standards from being locked up by commercial interests, as some now threaten.
For now, it will be fascinating to see if Kapor and his team succeed. This is potentially a big deal.
``No,'' muses Kapor, ``I don't think it's crazy.''
Re:Fortunatly, though (Score:2, Informative)
It isnt an Outlook-Killer for
Re:good idea (Score:5, Informative)
Eudora is full of spyware my friend. I switched from eudora to evolution for that reason.
kroupware/kolab (Score:2, Informative)
2) they actually have a release schedule (kde 3.2)
the interesting thing about "Chandler" is that they have "features" but no app
They are using some of Mozilla (Score:5, Informative)
Jason
Misinformation on Agenda and Symphony (Score:2, Informative)
True enough, because you're completely wrong about Symphony. Lotus Symphony, a DOS application, was released in 1985. It was a spreadsheet/business graphics/database program that was supposed to be the logical successor to 1-2-3, but suffered from a number of problems, not the least of which was a nasty user interface. Think of it as "1-2-3 plus a few utilities".
Agenda first shipped in 1988, and was a Windows-based PIM application. It had almost nothing in common with Symphony, or any other Lotus product.
Summary of Goodies... (Score:5, Informative)
Sure it's vaporware (or Kaporware, if you prefer), but it's likely to be an interesting project.
I maintain that the Mozilla project isn't just a browser. The code developed will fuel the next ten years of browser development. You can make a similar claim about OpenOffice and office suites.
I'm going to guess that this project will do the same thing for office and personal information managers. It's an important announcement and I'm looking forward to following its development.
Kolab (Score:3, Informative)
It still isn't ready but, you can find it here [kde.org].
On the client side Ximian's Evolution rocks and has been available for a while.
Re:Evolution.... (Score:5, Informative)
"Have I mentioned it's going to run on Macintosh, Linux, and Windows and will not require a server"
Evolution is not exactly intended to be run on a Windows Box or a Mac...
Re:good idea (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Evolution.... (Score:5, Informative)
It may not run in Aqua, but Evolution does run on Mac OS X.
Re:good idea (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/kb/2220hq.html [eudora.com]
I've been using Eudora for years, including 5.1, and I can't recall any other times Eudora was accused of being spyware, so unless their response is false, it's not "full of spyware".
I do keep meaning to switch to a fully Linux-based client, but email seems to be one of the big issues for me. I have tried Evolution, KMail and at least 4 others but never quite find it as usable. I spend probably 50% of my work time answering email.
Of course, this whole thread is off-topic.
Re:Evolution.... (Score:5, Informative)
"Recent open source groupware products and projects (Evolution, Kroupware) use Outlook as the baseline for design and functionality, an approach which benefits users by being familiar, but doesn't take design risks which could have big pay-offs for users in power and simplicity. We're trying to re-think the PIM in fundamental ways and expect to be judged in terms of our success in achieving that goal. We're building the product on using up-to-date architectural components (peer-to-peer networking, integrated instant messaging, an RDF-compatible semantic database) and are not saddled with legacy code. At the same time, we will be fully compliant with a variety of open standards, such as iCal, vCard and the Jabber protocol."
Re:Evolution.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:good idea (Score:5, Informative)
Does this mean that O2k or 98 is vulnerable because of OE? No. (Actually there is ONE vulnerability that's OE's fault, I'll explain that in a bit...)
O2K has similar features to OE, but the default security settings are better. It makes better decisions about what kind of scritps can be run and what type of attachements can be called. If you want my opinion, I suspect that the reason OE's security settings are further behind is to give O2K a 'more secure!' rating on the marketing brochures. I cannot substantiate that of course, but it does amaze me.
There is one O2k vulnerability involve IE that really frosts me. If you save a message as a file in O2k, then the extension is '.MSG'. If you save a message in OE as a file, the extension is '.EML'. Can you see the problem with the two different extensions? You can have O2k installed, but if you double click a message saved in OE format, then
I have friends who think they need to forward every chain letter that goes around, and a good chunk of them use OE to do it. So they are forwarding a
I have a piece of advice for ALL of you that are using Windows: Reroute the
With that said, I feel pretty confident with O2K. My company's run Outlook since it first came out and we've only had one virus actually get through and cause any problems. The damage caused was not a result of a flaw in Outlook, but rather a flaw in the person who decided to open the mail.
Interestingly enough, that virus picked exactly the right believable message for the user to open it, so I don't entirely blame him. We used to have an employee with contacts in the gov't. He got a message one day that said "Take a look at these FBI pics..." Heh. Of all the 40 or so random messages that email picked to display, that was the one that would have pretty much guaranteed it'd be opened. Given the context of things going on around that time, it would have been akin to recieving a message like "Check out these pictures of my baby" recieved from somebody who had given birth a week earlier.
Your mileage may vary, but you'll understand why I will stick with 2k and not bother with XP or future versions of Outlook until a.) I have a better choice or b.) Microsoft pulls out its compatibility crowbar and demands I upgrade.
Re:good idea (Score:3, Informative)
I'm storing it in Outlook, then synching the phone up to it. My previous cell phone did not have a sim card. So I needed a solution to the 'How do I maintain my numbers?' problem. The only way I had back then was to buy an expensive cable to hook the two since it did not have an IRDA port.
Now, as for the SIM card, you are absolutely correct that it's a safer way to store your numbers. However, the main reason I got interested in backing up my numbers in the first place is that my first cell phone was stolen. The sim card would have done me no good then. Today, though, if my cell phone were lost or stolen my laptop'd have a good backup of my numbers. Plus, I synch up with my PocketPC as well, so my contacts are retained on it. So today, if I lose my phone or my laptop, I still have a backup.
Re:I -want- a server (Score:1, Informative)
The platform problem. I want to be able to connect from any of the major platforms - Windows, MacOS and Linux. MacOS and Linux will cope fine with NFS. Windows won't.
On top of that, there's firewall problems to take into account. I want this server to feed my network at home, but also to be accessible from my work machines. They aren't going to let NFS through...
At the moment, I use Outlook and tunnel Remote Desktop over SSH. It's not ideal though - it assumes a certain amount of client software (SSH client). I want to be able to walk up to any machine connected to the net and, with suitable authentication, access my server.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Evolution.... (Score:4, Informative)
Typical slashbot that didn't read the article, eh?
It uses P2P, with a no-server, freenet style data distribution model... think that's lightweight???
Well, even if the binary was small enough to fit on an ARM based proc, you would still have problems with the amount of bandwidth and always-on connectivity that P2P implies.
Now if they managed to make some soft of satellite *mobile* program that attaches to your always-on desktop/laptop app, that would rule... but then again, that would be a different approach, and so far, this project is still vapor.
Re:Evolution.... (Score:3, Informative)
Groove Networks, Mitch Kapor & MS$ (Score:3, Informative)
1. Mr. Kapor is on Groove Networks board of directors, isn't there any conflict of interests...
2. IMHO the OSAF target features are quite similar to Groove's...never mind the spesific technology used...
3. MS had invsted $51 million in Groove, and to my best recall parts of Groove were integrated into Outlook (or at least there was intention for such integration)
One may only wonder if:
a)Mr. Kapor is looking for a silver bullet against Gate's embrace & extend strategy? as well for Groove financial status?
To make a long story short, why not open & port Groove Networks source code? would it not be simpler? Groove shall still be the best party to package it as well tailoring new business components...
LDAP, iCalendar and IMAP (Score:3, Informative)
For calendars and to-do lists, you can simply store the calendar data on a WebDAV share. Apple's iCal is doing that. The file format for the calendar data is documented in an RFC, i.e. it's an open format (iCalendar). I think that for a large calendar, speed might be an issue, though, I've heard rumors that iCal is pretty slow (but I don't have a Mac, so I cannot comment on this). Anyway, there are free WebDAV servers available modules for the Apache HTTPD server.
For contacts, you could probably use LDAP. There are free LDAP servers available (openldap).
For E-Mail, IMAP is the obvious choice. There are plenty of free servers available.
For instant messaging (you haven't mentioned it, but the project this story is about is going to include it), there is Jabber.
So the only thing that might be a problem is calendaring (speed issues, see above), but I don't think it would be too difficult to "invent" a better protocol if one should be needed.
The real problem, however, are applications, not servers. I don't know of any integrated Windows application that handles all of the above protocols, so if you want to migrate your servers to Linux in an environment with Windows clients, you're out of luck unless you're also planning on switching your clients to Linux. Developing a good Windows-based alternative to Outlook that relies on open protocols is necessary, imho, and it will help Linux on the server.
This doesn't mean that a server for Linux that supports the Exchange protocol wouldn't be a good idea, but using open protocols certainly is better in the long term.
Re:Evolution.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Evolution.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Frontpage news (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Q. Protocol? (Score:4, Informative)
Python and ZODB (Score:1, Informative)
the fact that its written in Python (for xplatform and maintaince) and i also uses the Zope Object Database for storage. It is
great to see people using Python for what it was meant - write complex xplatform applications very quickly.
Wanna see how easy it is to store persist objects?
http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Articles/ZODB
Re:good idea (Score:5, Informative)
Well, take for instance the vcard Buffer Overflow vulnerability [securityfocus.com] that was unique to Outlook 2000.
The long GMT date field bug [securityfocus.com] bug caused a buffer overflow which allowed running arbitrary code in all versions of Outlook, as well as in some versions of Outlook Express.
Seeing as Outlook uses Internet Explorer to display HTML content, just like Outlook Express does, it inherits IE's flaws as well, as was demonstrated in the Buffer Overrun in HTML Directive [cert.org] flaw.
As for VB scripting being turned off by default now, that may be the case with Outlook XP (2002) or 2000 with all security patches applied, but I can assure that wasn't the case back in 2001 when the Anna Kournikova Worm and other similar exploits scourged through the Outlook community.
Re:Q. Protocol? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:good idea (Score:3, Informative)
I use Outlook 2002 (XP) (which has the same security as 2000 + SP1) and absolutely nothing is allowed to execute.
Until the next flaw is found, of course. Mind you that the post I was responding to was talking about Outlook 2000.
I got the Klez virus sent to me. Just for yuks, I opened the message, carefully watching and using McAfee to trap anything in case Outlook let it slip through. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
And this proves what?
I think you're making up the buffer overflow stuff (can I see a link, please?)
Sure, just click a few posts up.
for that matter (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Evolution.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Q. Protocol? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I've been looking.... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes and no. Screenshots would make it seem like an Outlook clone. And Evolution does mimic some of Outlook's functionality. But they're actually quite different.
So what's the same? Layout is simular. Mail, calandering, tasks (todo), contacts. Summary. And that's about it.
Outlook has memos and a journal. It has a more advanced flagging system. And numerous other tidbits and features I'm probably completely unaware of. It also has better integration. For example, you can create an appointment with an email note in the appointment's notes by dragging an email to the Calendar. No such functionality in Evolution.
But Evolution has its own features. Its searches are better. I prefer the way it threads messages. And its vfolders have proven to be rather amazing once I started to understand their use. Evolution also has nice touches such as quick access to email source and headers. And it is rather sane when handling potentially abusive HTML email (ie: by default, it won't load images from remote sources until told to).
Yea. Evolution and Outlook look simular. And they're bound to compete in one way or another. But they're hardly identical.
Re:almost (Score:4, Informative)
HP developed it and used to sell it as Openmail, but they don't sell it any more [hp.com].
Now it's been picked up by Samsung [samsungcontact.com]. Here's [samsungcontact.com] the FAQ.
Re:I've been looking.... (Score:4, Informative)
Outlook's main interface may be becoming commoditized (assuming this layout is an Outlook first). Other PIM implementations, like the default Palm calendar, allow multi-day views simular to Outlook. I seem to remember a third-party Palm app that squished ToDo items in that view too.
It may very well be that there is nothing for Microsoft to do. I would imagine they would put their considerable legal resources to work if they thought they had a case. Freeware or not.
Outlook features to avoid (Score:3, Informative)
-------------
* IBM PROFS was the worst. The original Prodigy 300-baud 24x40-character mail system was heinous also. The homebrew Kermit-based system we used that crashed when receiving more than 200KB of mail was about on par with MSMail in those days...
Re:LDAP, iCalendar and IMAP (Score:3, Informative)
Re:LDAP, iCalendar and IMAP (Score:2, Informative)
And for the record, I'm an Exchange Admin-type and if I could find an open sourced/free solution that did close to everything that the current Exchange platform does, I'd pitch it to my senior management to replace everything we have in a heartbeat.
What about Pegasus? (Score:2, Informative)
Netbeui (Score:3, Informative)
If you run NetBIOS over TCP/IP, you start introducing the computer browsing services which acts as a cache for locating machines. This helps to reduce the amount of broadcast packets flying around, and makes NetBIOS slightly more scalable. Then you have WINS and all that sort of stuff which solves most of the other issues, if you want to go to an NT domain model.