Kolab Groupware
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| Number of Parts | 90 | |
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| License | CC Attribution 2.0 Belgium: You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor. | |
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00:00
Control flowCollaborative softwareFreewareObservational studyRight angleShared memoryControl flowSoftwareGroup actionLecture/Conference
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Open sourceNeuroinformatikSoftwareGame controllerDecision theory1 (number)FreewareXML
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Complete metric spaceSoftwareFreewarePoint (geometry)Office suiteOperating systemTablet computerServer (computing)Computer programmingSystem administratorExterior algebra
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Operating systemFreewareOffice suiteOperator (mathematics)TelecommunicationEmailAddress spaceGroup actionSuite (music)XMLLecture/Conference
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FreewareWeb browserSystem callSoftwareEmailRadical (chemistry)Game controllerView (database)Web 2.0Computer animation
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EmailCollaborative softwareRankingSystem callLecture/Conference
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Client (computing)Address spaceMultiplication signWeb browserFreewareEvent horizonMathematicsGoodness of fitDifferent (Kate Ryan album)SoftwareEmailTask (computing)View (database)Computer fileNeuroinformatikPoint cloudPlanningSystem callComputer programmingWindowCore dumpElectronic mailing listLaptop
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FamilyAndroid (robot)WindowWeb 2.0Virtual machineNeuroinformatikSystem callLecture/Conference
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Web browserLaptopEvent horizonRight angleGoogolClient (computing)
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Server (computing)FreewareProjective planeSoftwareGoodness of fitData centerLecture/Conference
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Directory serviceElectronic mailing listFreewareAddress spacePower (physics)SoftwareScalabilityComponent-based software engineeringServer (computing)Default (computer science)Dressing (medical)Directed graphForm (programming)DiagramProgram flowchart
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EmailDatabaseComponent-based software engineeringComputer virusSynchronizationPhysical systemServer (computing)Web 2.0State observerWindowLecture/Conference
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Web browserCodeSoftwareServer (computing)DemonUtility softwareComponent-based software engineeringGroup actionSystem administratorDatabaseProgram flowchart
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Mobile appFreewareSoftwareRepository (publishing)EmailSource codeSoftware developerElectronic mailing listLecture/ConferenceSource codeXML
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Beta functionState observerError messageGroup actionComputer hardwareCommunications protocolUser interfaceMultiplication signLaptopBefehlsprozessorGoodness of fitTerm (mathematics)Hidden Markov modelCone penetration testAreaFreewareEmailGraph coloringIntegrated development environmentCoprocessorServer (computing)HookingNumberINTEGRALClient (computing)Online chatAddress spaceReal-time operating systemGoogolTask (computing)CollaborationismText editorSoftwareOpen setFile formatSystem callProjective planeStandard deviationSoftware testingJava appletPlastikkarteLecture/Conference
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:01
All right, so last talk before the lunch break, at least in this room by Torsten Grothe, and he will talk about Colab groupware, and there's nothing left to do but set the kitchen timer and have you do your thing. Thank you very much, and thanks everybody for coming.
00:20
I'm Torsten Grothe working with the Colab community and I'm here to show you what Colab is all about. So, we all know why we love free software, right? We can freely use, study, share, and improve the software that we run, and there's nobody who could tell us what the software can do and what it can't.
00:41
We are in control and we are the ones to decide. Nobody can make decisions except us if we choose to do so. So, why isn't it that free software isn't everywhere? If it's so good, if it can do everything, what's stopping it from taking over the world? And especially where most computers are in companies
01:03
and public administrations, there is very, very little free software, and I ask myself the question, what's the problem? Because we have achieved so much since the free software movement started. Like, we have GNU, we have Linux, so we have a complete operating system that we can use on servers, on desktops,
01:22
even on tablets, and it runs free software. So, what's stopping people from going fully free software? So, one big point was Office programs, because many people need that, and especially in companies, they all have Microsoft Office and there was no really good alternative so far,
01:43
but now we have even two. We have LibreOffice and we have OpenOffice, and that's also something we achieved. So, that problem is solved. Like, we could still, of course, improve upon it, but the big stone is out of the way. So, the problem here is people can now use free operating system, free Office Suite,
02:01
but missing is, of course, what people usually use for their email, for their communication, for their calendars, their address books, and this is a groupware solution. Usually Outlook, but here we have Coolup as a replacement. So, we are hoping that by placing Coolup into the market
02:22
and giving it to everybody as free software, we are removing one more problem out of the way for free software world domination, basically, and giving you the control that you deserve. So, I give you a short overview of what we have and what we can do.
02:41
So, there is the web client, and it shows the email view. So, of course, we can do email, we can do email nicely, because we're working very close with the Roundcube initiative, and we have Thomas from Roundcube sitting right here, and he's done some great work integrating Coolup properly in Roundcube, because Roundcube could do mail before,
03:03
and what it now also can do to work as a proper groupware is calendars. So, you can have multiple calendars, you can show them, you can disable them, you can share them with other people, you can be putting events into other people's calendars,
03:21
you can invite people for events, you can even see when people are free and when they are busy, you don't need Doodle or something like that anymore if you have Coolup, and of course, you can also import calendars from the web and show them in this view as well. And this is address books, also many different address books,
03:42
global address books, sharing address books with people, like if somebody else already put an address in there, you don't need to do it anymore. And pictures showing in the mail view as well, everything that you want. This is a task, this is pretty new, that was what we did lately.
04:01
You can finally get things done with Coolup. Yeah, because you can manage your tasks, you can sort them hierarchically, you can set dates, and you can order them by priorities. You have a really quick overview, you can tag them, and okay, I just want the tasks that are tagged with the Coolup task, for example,
04:21
or with, I don't know, your homework, or your shopping list, whatever. So we also work with ownCloud, and up there you see also a file button. That's also possible to put ownCloud into Coolup. And apart from the web client that you just saw,
04:41
we have native clients that you can run on your own computer, which are fully offline capable. So if you're in a train, or in a plane, and you still want to work with your stuff, it's of course possible, because the native clients get the data, show them to you, and you can work with them, change that, and it gets, next time you connect online.
05:00
And the main client we use is KDE Contact. That's the upper one there. This has the most features, is most complete, and we see most likely to be a good free software competitor to Outlook. But for many other people, there's also Thunderbird and Lightning that works with Coolup as well.
05:21
And all, like the two programs, they work on Windows, on Mac, and on Linux. So it doesn't matter, like if you have a diverse architecture, like in your company or at home even, like your wife with a Mac can work with the same data, and still interact with you even though you have a Linux machine, and your brother who has a Windows computer, for example.
05:44
So this is Android. It also means we can get your Coolup data on Android, not only on Android, but on all mobile devices that support ActiveSync, which is basically all of them, even the iPhone. So you can have your web client see your data,
06:00
you can have it locally on your contact client, on your laptop, and even on your mobile phone, and then it reminds you of the events that you put in on your laptop. And that's truly awesome, and that's what we want. Like at the booth, somebody came to us and said, yeah, that's basically then a Google killer, right? And yes, that is exactly what we are aiming at, that you can choose where
06:21
to store your private, sensitive data, and that you can, even if you want, install it yourself on your own server that sits at home or in the data center with people you trust, and that you don't have to hand it over to Google where you don't know what they do with your data. Since we are a free software project,
06:40
we try to play very nice with the community, and be a good member, and work with as many proven free software components as we can to not reinvent the wheel. So this is maybe even an incomplete list of the free software products that we integrate in our solution.
07:01
The default configuration is a Syrus and Postfix, and the 389 directory server, and Apache. But you can also use this with NGX, and DAFCUT is possible, OpenLDAP is possible as well. So this is not to scare you, but just to show you, like give you a rough idea of what CoolUp is and how it basically works.
07:23
So our main power horse that we use for almost everything is the IMAP server, because all our data is stored in IMAP. So if you want to move your data from one server to another, all you have to do is do an IMAP sync, and all data is there.
07:41
So even the calendars, the tasks, and the address books, they are stored in IMAP. And that's also enabled scalability quite a lot, because you can have, for example, a Syrus murder infrastructure serving hundreds of thousands of users, and its skill runs like snappily fast. And the same is possible
08:01
with all the other components that we use. You can scale them up and down as much as you want, and serve really like thousands of users, or just two users that you and your wife, for example. So everything is there in Syrus IMAP. The user's database is stored in an LDAP server.
08:22
For mail MTA, we usually use Postfix. That works quite well. Of course, spam checking, virus checking, like we use the standard components that all the GNU Linux operating systems use as well. The active sync is served by an Apache web server, the same with the RoundCube web client
08:42
also running on Apache, using a MySQL database for caching, and memcache can be used as well. What I didn't mention so far is the Colab daemon. Like this is a piece of, today it's Python, Python software, that makes sure that all the components are working well with each other.
09:01
So if you create a new mailbox, or a new user that mailboxes are created in Syrus, the LDAP server knows about it, that RoundCube can let the person log in right away. We also have command line utilities, where you can administrate everything around Colab, like create new shared folders for everybody,
09:21
but we also have a web client that allows you to just click at user, click at groups, at new rules, at resources, everything. So Colab is 100% free software, and we develop it publicly, we have public development mailing lists,
09:40
and we have public source code repositories. So if you go to git.colab.org, you see everything, and you can subscribe to commits, can see each change we make, and you can of course easily contribute as well. Like send us patches, we have also public bug tracker, we try to be as open and as friendly, as nice as possible.
10:04
Like I'm helping myself on the mailing list a lot, so if there's somebody coming and saying, yeah, I want to help here and there, or have the idea for this and that plugin, like we help people and support them to actually get stuff done, and to realize the visions they have.
10:22
That is a developer meeting, I just want to show you some nice pictures of like how it looks like when we get together to code. Yeah, that was in Berlin, friendly hosted by KDAB, and we had a great time there hacking. This is Thomas from OneCube
10:40
discussing with our lead developer, and this is all of us having a beer afterwards. So you see like friendly community, nice people to hang out with, and we would love to work with you as well. Like if you want to know more about Coolab, go to coolab.org, or here in the K building right next to own cloud,
11:02
we have a little booth. If you want to know more, we show you Coolab, the web admin, everything around there. So if you have any questions, come chat us up, and we will be delighted to help you. This is something that was started just recently, this is mycoolab.com.
11:22
So we realized that many people don't want to install Coolab themselves, because they don't have a server, or they don't want to maintain it, or they just don't know how to do it. So there is now a company offering hosting Coolab. So you just sign up there, currently it's free beta,
11:41
at some point they will probably have some money from it, and just two clicks, and you have a Coolab account yourself, you can hook up your clients, you can use the client right away, hook up your mobile phone, works out of the box, no problems. And the second one, your project at mycoolab.org, is an offer especially for FOSDEM initiatives.
12:03
The real power of a group error only shows when you have multiple users in one Coolab server, because then they can share with each other, and collaborate, that's what group error is about. So if you are in a free software project, and you like to test Coolab internally, like we can give you something fedora.mycoolab.org,
12:24
and you can try it out right away. So that's from me, thank you for your attention, and I think we have some time for questions.
12:54
Well you usually, yeah the question is, like what are the hardware requirements basically in terms of CPU and RAM to run a Coolab server?
13:02
Well, like with one gigabyte it might work, but you probably want to have two gigabytes, a CPU is not that important, but it also depends on the number of users you want to serve. Like for just a small server, the few people, like one to two gigabyte of RAM and a small processor
13:21
is totally fine. Another question? Well the question is what is missing
13:41
to make it a true collaborative environment? And I think it's basically complete, but you could of course always improve upon it, and what I like to see is web interface integration for Java for example. Like it's also easy to hook up a Java server to the same LDAP and just serve at the same address
14:01
also XMPP chat, but it would be nice to go into your web interface and see what of your friends are online, the same with Google Talk, and then to chat them up right away without need for native clients. That would be nice, and what I also like to see is an integrated etherpad where you could do real-time collaborative text editing
14:21
that you then could maybe attach to emails or make a task, that still needs to be changed in the document. That would be cool as well.
14:43
Well the contacts, okay, repeating the question. What are the protocols we use for contacts and calendars? To serve to the outside we use ActiveSync because that's what all devices support. The native clients are actually hooking indirectly into the IMAP because in there the contacts are stored in X card
15:02
and the calendars in XCal format. And that's also open standards, everybody can understand that. But you ask for what's missing, and we are also still working on Cardiff and Cardiff integration for people who really need that and there's, I think, the Mac clients
15:21
on the Mac laptops, they still need those protocols. How difficult it is to exchange Postfix with another SMTP server, hmm, good question.
15:42
Like that's not my area of expertise, but it's definitely possible, but the problem is we are using some of the Postfix features to make Cola possible. For example, that you cannot send emails to other people. So I don't know how difficult it is, I know it's possible, but if you want to work on it, you're welcome.