Dear Mr Shawn, THank you for your recent mail. As I said i a recent message, in order to move my institution towards open-source products and related services, I need the appropriate tools and services. For me, the KDE applications, aethera and kivio, you are developping, are such tools we ( = the community + I) have long expected. I need a groupware solution (that can use our LDAP directory) closely linked to shared calendars, shared folders, connection to PIM (IPAQ and Palm V), email lists ... As the ICT manager, I have a rather strong influence on where we will spend our money and how ( for me, this is rather buying services we can rely on than products that are closed and that will soon appear not open enough, and too limitative) We are decided to use more and more ZOPE as a backend and server. have you considered using ZOPE as the server , for example for the shared calendars, for aethera ? How coul I help you considering ZOPE for such a use : this would be really convenient for us as it would mean we could integrate aethera and the web based calendar+groupware+workflow we are considering. I suppose such requirements are similar to the ones many companies and institutions like mine have. Maybe, all these institutions could team up and support you along these lines. For me a VERY important point you satisfy, and for which once again I want to thank you, is that the application be free software. Some more questions: 1/ which standards are you following for example for the calendaing features or the taks and appointment requests ? 2/ will the application be compatible with Evolution ? 3/ You say
Python will be woven into all of our applications as a scripting component. It isn't there yet, but it will be.
For kivio and aethera, what are your plans (release dates ) ? 4/ How can I help you get further ? - Try and collect money, - find people/teams/developpers especially KDE who could help you and your company - or shoudl I say kompany at developping or selling local support ? I am better at that - convincing people and finding money - than at writing applications so I'll stick to what I am best of. Best regards, Nicolas Pettiaux -- Nicolas Pettiaux Avenue du Pérou 29 B-1000 Brussels