The three companies behind the Kroupware Project (Erfrakon, Intevation and
Klar?lvdalens Datakonsult) announced its successful completion today. This new
groupware approach using only Free Software is now available in stable versions
under the Kolab brand name. Commercial support on an individual basis is already
offered with further support options to come.
The Kolab system offers common asynchronous groupware functions such as email,
group calendaring, notes and tasks. Stable releases of the software can be
downloaded from the website.
Kolab Server 1.0 is designed to be very scalable benefitting from already
matured Free Software components like Cyrus IMAPd, Postfix, Apache and OpenLDAP.
"Our design is completely based on open standards and compatibility", says
Martin Konold, whose company Erfrakon developed the Kolab architecture. "This is
why we can even interact with Outlook, using the iCalender formats to invite
people crossplatform and exchange contacts using vCard files." Security aspects
have been included from the beginning. Thus, the whole communication between the
server and the clients is done via encrypted connections.
The KDE Kolab Client in version 1.0.1 draws upon the corresponding KDE
components KMail, KOrganizer, KAddressbook and KPilot. These parts have been
integrated to talk with the server. In addition the client has been made fully
offline capable. Klar?lvdalens Datakonsult AB, the company of Kalle Dalheimer
employing many distinguished KDE developers performed the necessary work on the
client side. "We closely cooperated with the KDE community," adds Klar?lvdalens'
Lead developer Bo Thorsen, "the high quality of GUI components maintained by the
community made it possible for us to assemble a feature-rich groupware client in
such a short timeframe."
"Kolab has undergone a significant period of testing and bugfixing in the last
month", explains Bernhard Reiter, managing director of Intevation and
responsible project manager. "We now believe that it has reached a stable state
and will make Free Software much more attractive for the office desktop."
The Kroupware project has been started in september 2002 after the three
companies won a contract to set up a quality in-house groupware solution for the
German "Bundesamt fόr Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik" (Federal Agency for
IT Security, BSI).
Apart from www.kroupware.org which documents the project itself, there is an
emerging community around the Kolab approach which organises itself over the
mailinglists and the kolab.kroupware.org website.
...
http://kroupware.kde.org/news/pr-20030725.html
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