90% Open Source Lightning

Well, not exactly: Lightning, which comes from Mozilla, is a 100% open source calendar extension for Mozilla Thunderbird....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Spicing Up Thunderbird

As I've noted before, one of the key features of free software is its modularity. From this and the underlying licence flows the ability to mix and match different elements to produce new applications.

Here's a good example:

Synovel, a startup based on Hyderabad, India founded by a group of International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) graduates, has released a preview of Spicebird, a Mozilla-based collaboration suite.

Spicebird is built on Thunderbird and Lightning, the powerful extension that adds calendaring functions to Thunderbird. Additionally it seems to integrate SamePlace, a Firefox extension that provides instant messaging capabilities based on the Jabber protocol.

Interesting to see that this is coming out of India - not currently a hotbed of such open source startups, but an area I'm sure we'll be hearing more from in the future.

And as David Ascher, who heads up a new company that aims to build software based on Thunderbird, points out:

There are lots of young companies in the same space, each promoting their own angle on solving the problem that they’ve identified. There are companies playing within the Outlook/Exchange framework. There are companies coming at it with Exchange replacements. There are companies focusing on collaboration rather than communication. There are companies with a web focus, others with a mobile focus, others with a social network focus.

But as he also notes, there are very particular advantages to working in the open source space:

From the project health point of view, I think it’s good to have various companies building products off of the Mozilla codebase in general. At the very least, it means that the platform won’t get too tied to any one product’s requirements. I don’t think there’s a huge risk of that happening, because Mozilla already supports several active products (Firefox, Thunderbird, Seamonkey, Komodo, Songbird, Miro, Joost, etc.). But having more people care about the mail/news bits should at least help with the engineering work we need to do there which is product-independent. There are long-standing architectural problems with the system which haven’t been fixed because of a lack of resources. With several companies betting on this platform, as long as the discussions happen in public and in good faith, we should be able to work together to improve things for all.

Thunderbirds Are... Synched!

I'm a big fan of Thunderbird, so details of how to synch up its emerging Lightning calendar extension to Google Calendar is big news for me. Here's a handy step-by-step guide.

Am I Dreaming?

Dreaming in Code: a book about Chandler.

Chandler? Out of several hundred thousands pieces of free software he choose Chandler??? A project that after nearly four years still has not yet got to a 1.0 release? A project that, though started with the best intentions (which I applaud) is essentially irrelevant now that we have Lightning, based on a program (Thunderbird) that is already widely used?

Great title: pity about the subject-matter.

Will Lightning Strike OpenOffice.org?

I've written elsewhere about what I call the FOOGL concept - Firefox, OpenOffice.org and GNU/Linux. Basically, the idea is that once everyone is using Firefox and OpenOffice.org on Windows, it's much easier to slip them across to GNU/Linux, because nobody really cares about platforms if the apps are the same.

The only fly in the ointment in this argument is that you need a good email client. Thunderbird, I here you say: to which I reply, OK, but what about the calendaring? If you're going to replace Outlook, you need to match its basic functionality, and for businesses that means calendaring.

Enter Lightning, an add-in to Thunderbird that brings it up (down?) to Outlook's level. Here's an interesting interview with the Engineering Director at Sun Microsystems, Michael Bemmer, on this very subject. What's particularly significant is that it hints at a day when Lightning will be more closely integrated with OpenOffice.org too.

Now that would be seriously fooglicious.

OpenOffice.org Gets Them - and It

Good - if belated - news on the OOo front:

First, OpenOffice.org shall get Firefox-like extensions capabilities by the 2.0.4. This release should be ready somewhere between the coming week and the end of the month. What this means is that besides the fact that OpenOffice.org could include extensions before, now the way to develop, include, select and manage them will be made easy. Aside the traditionnal .zip and unopkg extensions packages, a new and definitive extension format, .oxt, shall be used across the extensions that can be developed using a breadth of languages ranging from StarBasic to Java. New wizards and configuration tools shall be added for the benefit of our endusers.

Second, and I think that although we have no clear roadmap for this yet (besides, our version naming scheme is going to change once again ), OpenOffice.org and StarOffice shall include the Mozilla Foundation's Thunderbird and Sunbird (calendaring application) in the future. Besides the inclusion of those two softs inside the office suite, connectors to Sun Calendar Server and Microsoft Exchange will also be developed accordingly.

Great, but why not Lightning instead, and then we'd be in complete harmony? (Via Slashdot.)

At the Top of the Stack

The Inquirer has an interesting story about the quaintly-named "China Rural PC", which seems to be Intel's bid (a) to make some dosh out of the huge Chinese market and (b) to prove that a Lintel duopoly is just as nice as the Wintel one.

But what really caught my attention was the software line-up that this system - whether it ever gets made or not - will/would run at the top of the stack:

Mozilla
Evolution
Gaim
Gnomemeeting, aka Ekiga
OpenOffice.org

along with some interesting extras like Moodle (what a great name: now I wonder why I like it so much...?). The only things I'd change are to swap out Mozilla for Firefox and Evolution for Thunderbird, especially once the latter acquires the Lightning calendar extension.

What this list shows is the range and maturity of GNU/Linux apps on the desktop, and the fact that the technical obstacles to broader take-up are diminishing by the day.

That only leaves the users.