An open-source project that I pay a bit of attention to is SOGo, aka “scalable OGo”. It’s a project w/ a long history, much of which I don’t know well, but what’s interesting to me is that they’re trying to be the Yin to Thunderbird’s Yang. SOGo includes a web frontend, which is designed to look like Thunderbird, which is a fascinating choice.
The folks at Inverse, who are the primary drivers of SOGo, as far as I know, are also doing Thunderbird & Lightning add-ons (SOGo Connector and SOGo Integrator), including adding support for CardDAV, Free/Busy, etc. They’re also helping with patches to Lightning, for which we’re definitely grateful!
SOGo reached the 1.0 milestone yesterday, which is always worth celebrating. If you’re interested in the groupware space and looking at software that plays well w/ thunderbird, check it out.
by Jakob Perry
20 Mar 2009 at 16:15
We’ve been using SoGO at our office since November. It really is a sufficient exchange replacement!
Although there is talk of a SoGO presentation at Linuxfest Northwest, it looks like many people still don’t know about it. Hopefully this can change, which will help speed along Thunderbird and Lightning development!
by giorgio
21 Mar 2009 at 10:02
I think cooperation between an open source groupware solution like this and Thunderbird/Lightning would be vital. Even if not as an official Mozilla product, there should be a “turnkey Outlook/Exchange alternative” available through the TB website, including a mail/calendar server and web access and of course TB/Lightning. I truly believe that the future of TB/Lightning lies with business users, for whom such a solution (which certainly does not need to be as powerful as Exchange) would be more than just interesting, but I presume they would like to see it as a ready-made package rather than independent solutions from different providers. So if the solutions are there and they actually work together OK, then it is a matter of packaging…
by Joe R.
23 Mar 2009 at 05:44
Appreciate reply be CC’ed to my Email…
Having seen Thunderbird 3 Beta 2 since late February…was wondering why Thunderbird 3 is taking so long to finalize.
I realize that Firefox 3.1 or now 3.5 — pretty confusing really — is dragging on and on due to one or two very hard to fix code problems, but is that also affecting Thunderbird 3 as well ?
Thank you for any insights.
Joe
Knoxville, TN
Skype: josephrot
info@windowgroup.com
by Nick
24 Mar 2009 at 05:12
Anything that runs well with thunderbird is good in my book. I hadn’t heard of this until I came across this post…proves Jakobs point.
by Cantalou
25 Mar 2009 at 00:17
SoGo seems really interesting as a Calendar sharing solution and for Thunderbird users waiting for an Open Source alternative to Outlook/Exchange.
Unfortunately it is available only for Linux. So Windows users are not able to use it.
Based on Lightning statistic https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/statistics/addon/2313 ,it means that around 90% of Thunderbird/Lightning users can not use SoGo.
I would make the same comment for phone Synchronization. BlueZync: http://www.kaarposoft.dk/bluezync/index.html is available only for Linux. I am not aware of other phone synchronization extension on Windows.
I ‘m convinced that with a Windows Sogo and Windows BlueZync, Thunderbird would greatly increase its user community.
Does Mozilla Messaging give a look to thoses projects and support them?
Keep up the great work.
TB 3.0 will be a great release that will be the ground of great development including… calendar sharing and phone synchronization.