Webtop vs sogo thinking

Testimonials
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Since @lucag is busy in these days, I will try to shed some light on this topic.

This is what we are trying to avoid, but it seems we didn’t a good job :frowning:
SOGo had many problems during the time and we always tried to collaborate with upstream to fix them.
Nethesis even donate quite a lot of money to the project to improve the OpenChange part, but then the company behind SOGo focused on other major projects. Thus, the groupware stalled for a while and we began to search for an alternative.
We came with the decision to integrate WebTop inside NS.

It’s a matter of lack of resource: it’s hard to answer to support request (tickets, phone calls and forums) for two different groupware.
But this doesn’t mean we aren’t following the SOGo development. Mark did a great job, and we helped him, to finalize and release the RPMs right in time for NS 7 final release.
Our developers will be always here to help (and fix) problems on SOGo packages (even in our free time :slight_smile: )

Now let’s go back to WT5.
On February 10, all Sonicle developers will be at Nethesis offices to present the new WT5.
We will discuss all technical (and ethical) issues.
At the end of the meeting we expect to:

  • resolve all RPM-related issues
  • release a beta of WT5 on NethServer for the end of February
  • have a public WT 5 road map for the whole year
  • open the WT5 development process as much as possible

We absolutely need a review of development process which should be open in all parts (source code, road map and issue tracker).
Gabriele has already proved to be very collaborative on this :slight_smile:

All comments and clarification requests are welcome.

Only your attitude is not constructive.
But let’s forget it! :slight_smile: We are here to answer all questions and provider out technical support.

I will be very happy to hear anybody concerns next days at FOSDEM! :smiley:

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This is what I like (and miss) about this community! FTW!:beer:

Sorry, can’t help it, just had to blurt that out.

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We look forward to tomorrow’s meeting outcome, hope to hear good and assured plan.

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We are the 15th yet no smoke coming up !! what is going on ?
Ready for any kind of + or - news, mind as well being in certainty rather then left in the unknown waiting for the answer on who moved my cheese!!!

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You’re right, sorry for not sharing but we are working hard :wink:

Good news are coming!

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Giacomo is working on a terrific announcement, hold on :slight_smile:

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@giacomo @alefattorini 7 days already!! any hint ?

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I think this is the announcement:

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WT5 has been recently updated with cloud extensions adding support for Nextcloud and Webdav resources.
All other mentioned protocols are already supported since the beginning.

I would like to note that there is actually no difference in the web UI you can achieve using any server language, be it java,php,ruby or any other you may choose, as all of them supports the latest javascript frameworks for UI.
The reason why we choose java for the majority of our products, is that the language itself permits much more elegant coding and allows for better modeling and extending of the entire infrastructure.
It’s not by chance that even M$ decided to copy all the java model and “create” its own copy named “C#”: they copied java, not php.
Personally, I don’t like php ugly code, I would really love z-push to be written in another language.

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@gabriele_bulfon, I am guesing that by Nextcloud and WebDav resources you mactualy mean caldav and carddav resources.

Just wondering, are you intending to include a “file manager” module into a future version of WT and could that be used with either Nextcloud Webdav infrastructure or something similar? – ie. Netcloud allows for access to other protocol (SAMBA, FTP, Dropbox, Google Drive etc.)

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Probably you never realized that the “file manager” you talk about, is there in WT since version 4, supporting all VFS protocols (samba, ftp, sftp, …) and google drive and dropbox.
We added support for NextCloud so that you can access your current NC infrastructure inside the WT desktop.
WebDav resources are a direct consequence, because NextCloud actually works using the WD protocol.

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@gabriele_bulfon,
Sorry, but I have only minimum experiance with WT (I am intending to setup a VM so that I can review ther latest WT).

If there is file managment tools within WT, is there any plans to intergrate something like LibreOffice to WT (akin to Collabora Online)?

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That’s something we’re looking at for years, we have a plan for the next year.
Please note that any of the online solutions (including Google and Collabra) are not a substitute for M$ Office: I don’t think the average user will ever want to use one of those tools daily.
Not even M$ online version is comparable to their desktop office.

It’s still a wild sea.

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@gabriele_bulfon,

What about LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice! :wink:

Seriously though, I am aware of many users that use Google Docs / Google Drive on a daily basis.

Also, I suspect that Microsoft would disagree with you, how long until they stop producing a desktop based office suite and force users to subscribe to their 365 services?

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I was talking about online alternatives, that are not even near to desktop M$ ones, as stated by daily users of M$ ones.
I personally use LO and OO for years, but I’m not a daily user of that stuff.
Daily users hardly switch to LO or OO. It’s a fact.
I know it’s a pity, but it’s a fact.
Just a fact as it’s hard to take people out of their Outlook, and bring them to Webtop.
We have plenty of users using Webtop for years, since early 2000.
They’re just used to it and they dont’ complain, and they’re happy when we bring new features.
It’s not that easy to move an Outlook user to change. Anything you want to change is not Outlook.
Resistance to change.

The same is not for office on the web.
Any web version of office is currently not barely comparable to the desktop M$ office suite.
Not even M$ one.
That’s why, if you buy Office365, you get a download of office applications to install, not the web ones.

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Surely this is due to the profluence of Microsoft products that are distributed with new devices, the commercial “hold” that Microsoft has over corporate users and the general lack of knowledge of other (non-Microsoft / non-Apple) products / developments / platforms.

I suppose we could have a long discussion about the nature of anti-competive monopolies (such as Microsoft) or the slow but steady growth of the open-source sector (the increase usage of OSS within the commercial and domestic sectors, ie. hosting / VPS / Internet service providers, usage of software including Firefox and Chrome / Chromium forks, the increase usage of LAMP based services / platforms and the increased usage of the Android platform).

I agree that most users will act like religious zealots when it comes to favouring certain key applications or operating systems (I would imagine that most people on this forum has seen / bear witness to at least one of the many flame-wars / posts, ie. “Windows is better then Linux because…”).

I understand that to a certain group of users, a computer represents a metal (or plastic) box with Microsoft Windows installed, Internet Explorer is the Internet, e-mail is Outlook and an office suite is MS Office.

I wrote about “key technologies” and the issues related to change within a earlier comment in this thread (see the comment dated Jan 31).

Incidentally, I have been using Open / LibreOffice since 1995 / 96 (StarOffice 3.0, developed by Star Division) and also have used StarOffice both on a CP/M based Amstrad, MS-DOS (StarWriter Compact) and OS/2. Previous to using StarOffice, I was generally using Word Perfect (both v5.x / DOS and v6.x for Windows), Lotus Smartsuite (Ami Pro had some of the best grammer checking tools I have ever used) and an Amiga product called Wordsworth (developed by the now defunct Digita International, here in Devon, south west of England).
excited
I remember being quite excited when there where rumours of Ximian (original developers of the GTK Evolutions e-mail client and personal information manager) joining with Star Division back in 2001 (never actually happened, Ximian was acquired by Novell in 2003).

I do use LiberOffice on a daily basis (I use Libra Writer for creating technical documentation and Libre Draw for designing network topology diagrams), I also carry a copy of LibreOffice (portable Windows version) on a USB key and have a Android port (AndrOpen Office, reference Google Playstore) on a tablet and phone (device with a 5 inch screen, which is fairly usable with AOO). Also I have a Collabra / Nextcloud setup on a third party VPS.

Fun fact: IBM Lotus Symphony was actually a derivative of StarOffice / OpenOffice.

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Fun fact: IBM Symphony is practically dead inside of IBM itself, they use M$ Office now…

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@gabriele_bulfon,

I am aware that IBM has ceased all development of Symphony, I was attempting to demonstrate the lineage and history of LibraOffice / OpenOffice / StarOffice.

I remember that at the time (sometime around 2014), I was dismayed that IBM (or more specific, IBM Collaboration Solutions – subsidiary company of the IBM corporation) decided to cease production / development of the previous Lotus office suites. I remember a time when products like Lotus123 (spreadsheet application) where considered as de-facto standards (and now, for most users, MS office is the standard, ‘go-to’ office suite).

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I just gave an advertising ‘plug’ to NS on minds.com (within a conversation about the usage of free webmail services and their releated security / privacy issues)

Thought I just mention it here within this topic (due to this threads discussion about mail client software / services).

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Off topic: That’s a great news, can we test this yet? So we can write down some lines on it, explaining how it works.