1	The Chandler Project An open source partnership Scott E. Siddall Denison University
2	This presentation The Open Source Context The Chandler partnerships Project Roadmap Current release
3	The Open Source Context “When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.” The Open Source Initiative http://opensource.org The open source manifesto The Cathedral and the Bazaar Eric S. Raymond, 1997
4	Open Source is a Culture Complex software development By loosely coordinated developers and contributors In an informal (chaotic) meritocracy software specifications are rarely written continuous design instead virtual project management a gentle hierarchy with little overhead a model for content projects as well as programming
5	Why open source? Build your own? Bear all the development costs Provide all your own support Buy? Share development costs with others, plus a vendor profit Pay for support from vendor Borrow (open source)? No licensing costs, or share the costs Provide your own support, buy it, get it from the community
6	Why open source? Open source software (OSS) costs less than proprietary software Lower licensing cost – yes Lower total cost – perhaps as cost allocations are shifted
7	Why open source? OSS can be adapted, is more flexible OSS is more reliable, more secure and has fewer bugs Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow (Linus Torvalds)
8	Current perceptions EDUCAUSE CIO survey: September 2004 235 institutional responses 78% use open source Mission critical, enterprise-wide applications 65% are tracking open source developments 57% think higher education should be involved
9	A Balancing Act Delivering economically sustainable software (i.e., support) Advancing innovation for user expectations
10	Open Source Collaboration Capturing economies of scale in software creation and maintenance
11	“Community Source” Not the cathedral, but not the bazaar either Purposeful coordination of work within a community Based on the principles of open source development A greater reliance on Defined roles Responsibilities Funded commitments “People think just because it is open-source, the result is going to be automatically better. Not true. You have to lead it in the right directions to succeed.” - Linus Torvalds
12	What is Chandler? “New age” personal information manager E-mail, contacts, calendar, tasks, notes “Email is a verb, not a noun” Break down silos of information Fully collaborative tools
13	Chandler Roadmap
14	The Chandler Collaborations Common Solutions Group Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Mozilla Foundation board membership NITLE representation on advisory council
15	Westwood Advisory Council Two-way collaboration Updates through NITLE News articles
16	Westwood Advisory Council Spring 2004 college survey Early feedback on features 129 colleges 59% response rate
17	Westwood Advisory Council Email servers: 37% use Microsoft Exchange 29% use Unix All are centralized repositories 27% support multiple email servers Email clients: 41% use Microsoft Outlook 18% use Eudora 17% Netscape Messenger Most require IMAP Calendar 77% have calendaring systems 37% Microsoft Exchange 24% Meeting Maker 9% Oracle 53% provide calendaring to all
18	How important are these features?
19	Interest in Westwood?
20	What do you want to know about Chandler/Westwood? Product timetables Notice of upcoming conference presentations Feature comparison with current products Technical details on mail storage, backup, recovery Why isn’t the private sector developing Chandler? Specifics so we can plan for testing, piloting, use How will Westwood be supported? When can we test it? Why should we be interested? Expected features and when
21	Must have features PDA support Integrate with office suite Integrate with LDAP Support and user documentation Easy migration path Spell-check for email Anti-spam features Instant messaging compatibility Print daily calendar
22	Current Release 0.4
23	Current Release 0.4 Functionality Experimentally usable: Enter and edit items & collections Organize and label items & collections Share and communicate items & collections UI landscape: Sidebar, Tabs, Summary & Detail views Initial functionality for: Email, Calendar, Tasks, but not Contacts Elementary end-to-end collection sharing: Calendar and Item Collections but not Contacts Base security framework
24	Lessons Learned Underestimated cost of ambition Hard decisions about product strategy and focus could have been made earlier Proved harder to build engineering organization Cross-platform and rich clients are hard Implementation and integration work is non-trivial
25	Resources Open Source Applications Foundation Chandler 0.4 Guided Tour
26	Return to home