OGo and SOGo

[Noèl Köthe]

Hello,

we are some Debian developer interested in Groupware and collection
informations about free groupware systems:

http://wiki.debian.org/Groupware

The information on
http://www.opengroupware.org/en/install/debian/index.html are outdated
and Sebstian isn't working on Debian packages anymore.

We are now trying to understand OGo and SOGo development status and
direction to get them packaged and included into the Debian GNU/Linux
distribution.

It looks like (this might be wrong!) OGo development is slow (stopped?)
and the active development is now done in SOGo.

Is this correct?
Can you clarify the status/differences of OGo and SOGo?

Thank you.


--
Noèl Köthe <noel debian.org>
Debian GNU/Linux, www.debian.org

[Helge Hess]

On 21.06.2008, at 11:06, Noèl Köthe wrote:
> It looks like (this might be wrong!) OGo development is slow  
> (stopped?)
> and the active development is now done in SOGo.
>
> Is this correct?

Almost.

OGo is basically 'done', its mature software in development and wide  
deployment since over 10 years now. You mostly see bugfixes to the  
current OGo version and smaller additions, hence, little 'progress'  
feature wise. The next big 'feature' will be a Java 'client library'  
for OGo, but even that is just an addition (but which might ultimately  
lead to a new user interface, etc etc).

SOGo is still very fresh and sees a lot of development to reach its  
first 1.0 status. Development today is mostly driven by the developers  
of Inverse, which do a lot of great work on it to bring it forward.  
Though the development model is very closed (they basically maintain  
their own, internal fork which is made available to a public branch  
now and then).


> Can you clarify the status/differences of OGo and SOGo?

They are completely different applications, although they share a lot  
of basics (the SOPE application server frameworks).

ScalableOGo is a very lightweight and highly scalable server,  
comparable to Apple CalendarServer, Chandler Server or Bedework. It  
stores vCard and iCal entities as-is in the database and is developed  
with native iCal/vCard/CalDAV/GroupDAV clients in mind.
The status is: no 1.0 release yet, but Inverse seems to be close.

OGo is a feature rich application, initially designed as a web  
application, but with great support for access protocols like XML-RPC,  
WebDAV, etc.
As mentioned, it does not see a lot of 'big' development, since the  
functionality is basically done and proven. (itch has been scratched ;-)

Feel free to ask more questions.

Thanks,
   Helge
--
Helge Hess
http://www.helgehess.eu/--
OpenGroupware.org Discussion discuss@...
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[Adam Tauno Williams]

> > The information on
> > http://www.opengroupware.org/en/install/debian/index.html are
> > outdated and Sebstian isn't working on Debian packages anymore.

The website is horribly out-dated.

> > It looks like (this might be wrong!) OGo development is slow  
> > (stopped?)
> > and the active development is now done in SOGo.
> > Is this correct?
> Almost.
> OGo is basically 'done', its mature software in development and wide  
> deployment since over 10 years now. You mostly see bugfixes to the  
> current OGo version and smaller additions, hence, little 'progress'  
> feature wise. The next big 'feature' will be a Java 'client library'  
> for OGo, but even that is just an addition (but which might ultimately  
> lead to a new user interface, etc etc).

Fairly recently a new XML-RPC API was added, which I think counts as a
"feature".  But it isn't a user-facing feature.
<http://code.google.com/p/zogi/>

> > Can you clarify the status/differences of OGo and SOGo?
> They are completely different applications, although they share a lot  
> of basics (the SOPE application server frameworks).

This is covered allot in the Linux World interview
<http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2008/032808-opengroupware.html>

> OGo is a feature rich application, initially designed as a web  
> application, but with great support for access protocols like XML-RPC,  
> WebDAV, etc.
> As mentioned, it does not see a lot of 'big' development, since the  
> functionality is basically done and proven. (itch has been scratched ;-)

A large portion of OGo development isn't specifically on OGo but around
client access or related to clients like the Funambol GroupDAV connector
<http://bionicmessage.net/index.php?q=node/2> and Consonance
<http://code.google.com/p/consonance/>.   In relation to the GroupDAV
connector (mobile device support) we are working on some improvements to
ZideStore.   And I have some work to make the RSS feeds provided by
ZideStore way more realistic in providing something real-world end-users
want.  There usually one or two patches from someone else, relating to
various things, every month;  although most are, as mentioned, pretty
small (fixes, etc...).

--
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[Helge Hess]

On 21.06.2008, at 15:52, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> And I have some work to make the RSS feeds provided by
> ZideStore way more realistic in providing something real-world end-
> users
> want.

Thats pretty cool, I was considering to look into this too (if I find  
the time, sigh ...).

I have a request for showing document changes/additions in a project  
feed. The current document feed is just a very generic one.

Thanks,
   Helge
--
Helge Hess
http://www.helgehess.eu/
--
OpenGroupware.org Discussion discuss@...
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[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Sat, 2008-06-21 at 15:58 +0200, Helge Hess wrote:
> On 21.06.2008, at 15:52, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> > And I have some work to make the RSS feeds provided by
> > ZideStore way more realistic in providing something real-world end-
> > users want.
> Thats pretty cool, I was considering to look into this too

Our user-requested feature is an RSS feed of annotations/actions made to
the user's delegated tasks (not an RSS feed of the *tasks* but an RSS
feed of the *actions).  For instance we have a couple of central people
who dispatch ["delegate" in OGo & Groupware speak, in the USA's
rust-belt people say "dispatch"] to users at remote locations;  they
want to see a feed of actions performed on those tasks (the tasks from
the delegated-tasks list).  So when a remote user accepts, completes, or
makes a comment it will appear on their feed reader.   E-Mail
notifications for every action very rapidly becomes a pelting-my-INBOX
kind of scenario.

I'm making pretty good progress on that; the hard part I think is
figuring out why ThunderBird won't show any of ZideStore's RSS feeds.
At least on my version-of-TB / build-of-OGo it just silently fails.

The current tasks RSS feeds aren't terribly useful as they represent
data that is essentially quite static and thus not very news-feed-ish.

> I have a request for showing document changes/additions in a project  
> feed. The current document feed is just a very generic one.

Would be very useful.

Enh: single feed containing all documents changes of a project
<http://bugzilla.opengroupware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1814>

> (if I find the time, sigh ...).

Yep.   I'm on vacation stating today. :)

In my free-time I'm going to take a crack at adding calendar-multiget
support to ZideStore as I think that will make current versions of
Sunbird work [again].  I'll probably fail.

--
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[Adam Tauno Williams]

> > (if I find the time, sigh ...).
> Yep.   I'm on vacation stating today. :)
> In my free-time I'm going to take a crack at adding calendar-multiget
> support to ZideStore as I think that will make current versions of
> Sunbird work [again].  I'll probably fail.

I have my OGo calendar appearing in Sunbird 0.8!   Currently I've
short-circuited the request processing but the response is real and
Sunbird seems happy.

--
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[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Wed, 2008-06-25 at 09:44 -0400, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> > > (if I find the time, sigh ...).
> > Yep.   I'm on vacation stating today. :)
> > In my free-time I'm going to take a crack at adding calendar-multiget
> > support to ZideStore as I think that will make current versions of
> > Sunbird work [again].  I'll probably fail.
> I have my OGo calendar appearing in Sunbird 0.8!   Currently I've
> short-circuited the request processing but the response is real and
> Sunbird seems happy.

Woo hoo!  Sunbird 0.8 is working in CalDAV mode with ZideStore r2120.

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[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Sat, 2008-06-21 at 14:36 -0400, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:

> On Sat, 2008-06-21 at 15:58 +0200, Helge Hess wrote:
> > On 21.06.2008, at 15:52, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> > > And I have some work to make the RSS feeds provided by
> > > ZideStore way more realistic in providing something real-world end-
> > > users want.
> > Thats pretty cool, I was considering to look into this too
> Our user-requested feature is an RSS feed of annotations/actions made to
> the user's delegated tasks (not an RSS feed of the *tasks* but an RSS
> feed of the *actions).  For instance we have a couple of central people
> who dispatch ["delegate" in OGo & Groupware speak, in the USA's
> rust-belt people say "dispatch"] to users at remote locations;  they
> want to see a feed of actions performed on those tasks (the tasks from
> the delegated-tasks list).  So when a remote user accepts, completes, or
> makes a comment it will appear on their feed reader.   E-Mail
> notifications for every action very rapidly becomes a pelting-my-INBOX
> kind of scenario.

As of r2146 this is implemented,  URL is -
Link to delegated actions feed is
http://{host}/zidestore/so/{user}/RSS?feed=delegatedActions&limit=1024

The limit is optional and defaults to 150.

The feed should be completely RSS 2.0 compliant and was verified using
http://validator.w3.org/feed/

This feed does require an authenticated HTTP connection however, meaning
it work work from Thunderbird.  But other aggregators like Liferia and
Akregator work very well.  I haven't yet tried to test and of the feed
readers for Win32.

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