Submitted by It’s been more than a year that Novell open sourced their collaboration product Netmail, under the name Hula. This was quickly hailed as a major step forwards for Linux-based groupware. Of late, however, things’ve been awfully quiet around Hula. The only explanation given on the Hula mailing list is that construction work is going on behind the scenes. At Brainshare 2006, finally some light was shed on exactly what Novells plans are for Hula and Netmail.
I downloaded and installed Hula yesterday, it was certainly the most easily installed mail/calendaring system I have ever seen.
It had a resonably good web interface both for administration and for the users that preferr to read their mail and calender from the web.
Even though it looked good, the product didn’t feel quite ready and this article seam to confirm that. What I was missing was ways to integrate with existing directory servers and data bases for users.
Integration with I folder and further AJAX polish to the GUI could make this evolve into an Exchange/Sharepoint killer.
However, I wish Novell learned how to take advantage of the opensource development process. Sitting on the code and develop large chunks of code by themselves is not the way to do it, as they miss out on early feedback that might be constructive.
However, I wish Novell learned how to take advantage of the opensource development process. Sitting on the code and develop large chunks of code by themselves is not the way to do it, as they miss out on early feedback that might be constructive.
just like they did with Xgl.
I do think that part of the problem is the “re-learning” of how to do business under a substantially different development model. Personally, I think that they’re still finding their way. That said, I haven’t spent a lot of time out looking for anything in regards to these products. If the article/blog was accurate, would that seem to indicate that iFolder is going to be included in the project? Could be a hell of a product.
Novell is actually starting to impress me a bit. I know some open-source freaks (I don’t mean that in a derogatory manner) don’t like them keeping stuff closed source until they’re ready with it, but I think it’s working out quite well for everyone. It is ending up as open-source, but having the development going on in the background by paid professionals seems to get things done a bit faster sometimes.
But what is actually impressing me is their direction and effort to push all these new technologies to the forefront. Reading all the stuff they are doing actually has me sort of excited, about a linux distrubution no less! I’m sure other people are doing the same things Novell is, but it’s about the whole big picture and the friendly package they are presenting it all in with their linux desktop.
I can’t wait to try all this stuff.
Novell is coming out with a lot of nice opensource products these days. More and more it is looking like they are leveraged Linux/OSS to compete with MS. The only problem is that it has yet to pan out for them. I am really pulling for Novell though because their technology is really great and they are the only Linux company really in a position to do any damage to Microsoft. The company is not as big as it used to be but that also makes them a lot more agile and that is the only way they can take any marketshare from Microsoft. I don’t care about world domination or total market saturation. All I want is for Linux to have a healthy market share, enough to force Microsoft to obey standards and implement compatibility with Open Source Software. That would get the attention of companies like Adobe, who would then finally accept the fact that they must release their software for Linux platforms. Of course by then Novell and OSS may have taken out some major proprietary players.
I agree, Novells propriatry technology is impressive and. I was already looking at deploying iFolder’s simple server but was concerned about the lack of some of OES’s features such as LDAP intergration and HTTPS support so the news that the OES server will be opened sourced is music to my ears
Hula also looks interesting and I will have to investigate it (I had never heard of it before) and of course any intergration with iFolder will be useful
Note, as far as I see in the article, it’s only the iFolder server component that’s being open sourced, not all of OES.
Correct. Not all of OES is open sourced. Even if they wanted to, Novell can’t, at the moment, as they’re using 3rd party proprietary bits and pieces. RSA security, f’r instance.
yeah, sorry, I meant the iFolder component of OES server (it is only available with OES server, the incompatible iFolder 2.1 server is available seperatly) although I wonder what they will do about the iManager console interface which would presumably require iManager to be open sourced or a replacment writen.
Does Netmail use iManager and if so what does Hula use?
Netmail uses WebAdmin rather than iManager; Hula uses a scaled-down version of WebAdmin.
Correct. Not all of OES is open sourced. Even if they wanted to, Novell can’t, at the moment, as they’re using 3rd party proprietary bits and pieces. RSA security, f’r instance.
Where’s iFolder? I really wanted to try that out on my XP boxes and Mac OS X system.
– chrish
Go to http://www.ifolder.com.