ACM Technews Snippet [1]

Rob Weir rweir at softhome.net
Sun Jan 5 15:34:28 EST 2003


On Sat, Jan 04, 2003 at 08:12:19AM +1100, Steve Jenkin wrote:
> Summary: http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1227f.html#item12
> URL:    
> http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/globe_story.html?uri=/dailyglobe2/354/business/Sharing_the_riches-.shtml
> 
> "Sharing the Riches"
>        Boston Globe (12/20/02) P. D1; Gaither, Chris 
> 
>        Lotus founder Mitch Kapor is funding the nonprofit Open Source
>        Applications Foundation (OSAF) that focuses on bringing open-source
>        software to PC users in order to make information exchange more
>        intuitive. OSAF's centerpiece is Chandler, a program that will be
>        distributed for free download and will run on Windows, Apple, and
>        Linux computers. Kapor wants the software to be an alternative to
>        Microsoft Outlook groupware, and is pouring $5 million out of his own
>        pocket into the Chandler effort. "I think it's wrong to characterize
>        things that he's doing in competitive terms," explains software
>        developer and VisiCalc creator Dan Bricklin. "Mitch and a lot of these
>        developers are not competitive people, as much as they are creative
>        people who want to build something different that people will use."
>        Kapor's funding to the OSAF far exceeds that of other free software
>        nonprofits, such as the Free Software Foundation. His $5 million is
>        expected to last for about two years, after which the OSAF will
>        hopefully be able to support itself through contributions and licensing
>        fees to companies who use Chandler commercially. Rather than
>        concentrating on stealing market share away from Microsoft, Kapor
>        will focus on how well Chandler will attract users, lead to the creation
>        of successful companies, and spur Microsoft to improve Outlook. The
>        software is not expected to be released for at least another year.

That's actually kinda disappointing.  Wow, yet another outlook clone,
but this time it's proprietary.  I imagine spending five million on
getting Evolution up to scratch or that Kroupware thing would be a much
more worthwhile proposition.  That's what, a good one hundred hackers
work full time for a whole year.  What a waste.

-rob
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