European Wafaa

Yay openSUSE is having a shindig in September, yes it's the openSUSE Conference 2011 (aka oSC11). And seeing as the theme is rwx³ I've submitted a couple of BoF propossals.  Now they haven't been approved yet, so I'm not 100% sure they'll happen but either way I'll be there and will be keen to talk to anyone that is interested.

The first topic I'd like to talk about is as the post's subject says "Designing the missing Web UI for Bongo".

For un-aware the Bongo is an e-mail & calendaring solution that can trace its roots back to Netmail. It is directly descended from Hula, which was a proof of concept email & calendaring solution which had such luminary hackers such as Dave Camp, Peter Teichman, Nat Friedman, Garrett Le Sage and many others.  Unfortunately due to commercial and other management decisions Hula was terminated. Yes it was honestly cool, and as a PoC it actually worked. Thankfully it was an open source project and was forked just before the door was closed, into the Bongo project. As part of the code clean up and ongoing development the existing UI had to be dropped due to code complexity, size and lack of resources for maintaining it. Which leads us to where we are now.

What we have now is a MTA backend that can be distributed over multiple servers or combined on a single machine. It's pretty light weight and works. We support the usual protocols, so IMAP (with or without TLS/SSL), POP3, SMTP (currently we've had to disable outgoing TLS/SSL due to a bug), CalDAV (albeit in a simple form), anti-virus support for clamav, and anti-spam support with spamassassin. So the foundation blocks are there in place, all we're missing is the shiny frontend beauty.

Just to be clear Bongo is not aimed at the "Groupware" market, so it isn't aiming to compete with the likes of Zimbra, Exchange, Domino, GroupWise, OpenXchange etc. It is aimed at those that don't require the bloat that comes with those big products, those that want a simple clean way to deal with e-mail and calendaring. A competitor could be viewed as Gmail+Google Calendar, but self hosted at home/office or hosted as a service. Target audience I suppose could be viewed as individuals/families; SOHO that don't need the bloat or intricate understanding of servers like postfix or sendmail with dovecot or similar; educational facilities - you get the picture.

As I mentioned we have a fairly stable backend that provides email and calendaring, but the only way of interfacing with it is via a fat client (evolution, thunderbird, kmail, etc) - I use it at home. What we need is a way of getting to it via a browser. The aim of my BoF proposal is to discuss ways of meeting that requirement, what technologies could and maybe should be used, going through pros & cons and getting people interested in e-mail & calendaring and web design involved.

As a project we have some ideas on technologies used, but at the end of the day this whole web joojoo is kind of out of developer's field, so if one of you hipster hackers has a better idea and implements it then who are we to argue ;-) As an example we kind of like the idea of HTML5 but we don't have to be limited to that, at the end of the day we want a clean simple and functional UI - both user and admin. We have a blank canvas so anything goes.

As Bongo can be a distributed solution it would also be great if the Web UI could be re-used in a way similar to Roundcube or Squirrelmail, Meaning you could use it as a generic web based MUA hooking into almost any mail server. This isn't mandatory but a "would be nice to have" type feature. Initially we would be looking at something that provides core functionality - email, calendaring & contacts - but can be extended via a plugin system maybe. Again that's just a thought.

Hopefully we can get some real traction going and maybe after the BoF we can start to do some hacking on it :-) It would be absolutely awesome if by the end of the conference we had the beginings of a beautiful product.

So please register for the conference and join in the fun.

It's been over a week now since I came back from the fantabulous FOSDEM, and have had a chance to digest a lot of the conversations I had whilst there. One of the conversations I had was with a senior developer who was in a sort of Special Interest Group. He mentioned to me that his management had asked the SIG to formulate a plan for where they wanted to see their project in five years, and how they aimed to get there.

Now I thought about that idea for a while, and to be honest I find it a really difficult question to answer properly. So I thought I'd ask my fellow community members (whether that's openSUSE, Bongo or whatever) how would you answer that question in relation to your chosen project? I can invariably only come up with a partial answer, not a full where and how. Let me try and show you what I mean.

I'll take Bongo as my first example. For those that have no idea what Bongo is let me explain: Bongo is an evolution of some forward thinking by some people who used to work at Novell. It started out as the Hula Project; then Novell sold the related assets off due to strategy alignments (or whatever); a few of us wanted to continue and forked the code and created the Bongo Project. OK so that's a brief history but what is it? Bongo is a lightweight and simple e-mail & calendaring solution, it is based on proven technology – the heritage goes back to NIMS if I'm not mistaken. Whoopee do there are like a million and one e-mail solutions out there. Yes but not all in one solutions that are light on resources and contain all functions. Bongo is NOT a groupware product, it is aimed at SMBs, geeks education and pretty much anyone that just wants e-mail, calendaring and contacts. Think of it as a FOSS solution to provide the functionality of Gmail+Google Calendar. Here endeth the history lesson.

Back to the example. So I need to list where I would like to see Bongo in five years time, OK how about:

• Used by a large number of education and SMBs

• Shipped with all the major distributions

• Mimicked but never beaten by potential competitors

• Partnering with other projects to maximise reach

• Leading edge web front end

• Hooks for multiple languages/frameworks

• Large developer community

• Large user community

• Global domination

Now the trickier part – how to achieve those goals. So far all I can come up with is (in no particular order):

• Canvas more developers that are interested in the e-mail/calendaring space to join in

• Advertise and market Bongo

• Actually get a working WebUI done

• Look at existing solutions and try and learn from them

• Speak to distributions and see if they can help

• Win the lottery

As you can see the list for where is larger than the list for how. Sure I could expand the latter a bit by being more detailed but this is supposed to be a bullet list with summaries not an essay. In my view one needs to get a list to work from and then expand on it, maybe even categorising the bullet points to see what/how/where/when and also explaining why.

Now Bongo is a relatively simple project with a small user base and community, and a very defined focus. The other project that I'm involved in and care for is openSUSE, and lord knows that is no simple beast :-)

Let me try the same with openSUSE. The where:

• At the forefront of distributions

• Large developer base

• Better toolsets for developers

• Working better and closer with fellow distributions

• Have a foundation that manages the project

• Get more community contributors involved to lessen the load on Novellians

• Learn from other projects to help improve us

• Keep momentum going

• Grow the user base

• World domination

Now the how:

• More active marketing

• Speaking to developers of different projects to find ut what they feel is missing

• Win the lottery

As you can see I'm woefully short on how on earth I am to achieve anything.  I'm open to suggestions :-)

I know for a fact that there may be one or two items that I've listed that could be contentious, and do you know what? I sincerely hope so :-) Now don't get me wrong, I really do appreciate and am grateful for all the work effort and money that Novell has invested in openSUSE; but it isn't fair at all for Novell to keep carrying the Project. If anyone thinks they're not, you are living in lala land. Sure some of it might be their own doing, but a lot isn't and it is up to us the community help them so that we can benefit even more.

I really do hope people start thinking, and doing it seriously about where they would like to see their preferred project in five years time. I would also love to see people's responses as to Where & How they would do it. Anyone that starts screaming like my 21month old daughter about this or that will get a sound thrashing and ignored. There is absolutely ZERO room for pettiness in the community. If you disagree with something then great! Just make sure you are as detailed and as calm as possible about why and also how you propose to do it differently. This doesn't just apply to this whole five year plan thing, but to general discussion.

Don't loose your passion, just learn to use your passion ;-)