The Chandler Project

	An open source partnership
	Scott E. Siddall
	Denison University

This presentation

	The Open Source Context
	The Chandler partnerships
	Project Roadmap
	Current release

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

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

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

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

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)

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

A Balancing Act

	Delivering economically sustainable software
	(i.e., support)
	Advancing innovation for user expectations

Open Source Collaboration

	Capturing economies of scale in software creation and maintenance

“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

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

Chandler Roadmap

The Chandler Collaborations

	Common Solutions Group
	Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
	Mozilla Foundation board membership
	NITLE representation on advisory council

Westwood Advisory Council

	Two-way collaboration
	Updates through NITLE News articles

Westwood Advisory Council

	Spring 2004 college survey
	Early feedback on features
		129 colleges
		59% response rate

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

How important are these features?

Interest in Westwood?

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

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

Current Release 0.4

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

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

Resources

	Open Source Applications Foundation
	Chandler 0.4 Guided Tour

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