Novell Creates Project Hula Open Source Collaboration Server

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Software maker Novellannounced a new open source collaboration server project at the LinuxWorld expo in Boston last week. Project Hula, as the collaboration server is to be called, will be based on source code Novell will donate to the open source community from its own NetMail Web-based email and calendaring product. Jack Messman, Novell's chairman and CEO, said the company would release over 200,000 lines of NetMail code to Project Hula.

You might think with GroupWise for Linux and NetWare and Openexchange Server for Linux, the last thing that Novell needs is another way to get emails and manage our calendars. But the email market is very broad. Companies like Stalker Software, with its Communigate Pro servers, and Scalix, which has a widely respected email and calendaring server, have the backing of venture capitalists. These and other companies present a threat to Novell in that both Groupwise and Openexchange Server are overkill for many customers. That is one reason why Stalker, Scalix, and others are getting traction. Another reason is that many companies are getting frustrated with Windows Server operating systems and Exchange Server groupware servers from Microsoft.

In his keynote address last week, Messman launched the product naked into the Linux community, and then turned around and implored them to get behind the project and contribute alongside Novell's own 25 engineers that have been dedicated to Project Hula. (They also work on the Evolution email client and NetMail proper.) "The goal for Project Hula is to become for Internet collaboration what Apache is for Web serving," said Messman. "Together, let's build the future of Internet collaboration, and let's do it together as open source." The Novell press release did quote some bigwigs in open source, including Lotus founder Mitch Kapor and Mozilla Foundation president Mitchell Baker.

NetMail is a Web-based email, calendaring, and address book server that is used on some 4 million clients worldwide. (GroupWise has about 35 million seats, by comparison.) NetMail runs on top of NetWare and the NetWare Services for Linux environment, and Novell says it can scale to 250,000 registered users on a single X86 machine, which, in turn, can support 50,000 active users. That's pretty lean, and that is one of the reasons why Messman ultimately believes that if Project Hula succeeds, it can become a player among enterprises wanting to deploy something short of groupware as well as Internet service providers who want to offer similar services on a subscription basis. Novell says Project Hula will be built around various Internet standards, including SMTP, IMAP, iCalendar, and the emerging CalDAV.

Nat Friedman, vice president of collaboration and desktop engineering at Novell, said the Project Hula code has all the necessary basics on the server side, but Novell believes it needs some polish, plug-ins, and patches to make it a workable product. It sounds like Novell smells an opportunity, but in keeping with its relatively new-found open source religion, Novell won't simply do the work to make NetMail what it envisions it to be and then put it out as open source. If Novell gives, as it has done with the NetMail code, then it expects that the open source community will also give, and help it knock Project Hula into shape. Once that is done, of course, Novell and others can productize it and sell services and support around it.

Frank Hoberg, CEO of Germany's Netline Internet Service, which created the groupware behind the Openexchange Server sold by SUSE and soon to be released as an open source project called Open-Xchange and running on any normal Linux distribution, says he is not in contention with Novell on Project Hula, and will in fact contribute to the project as well and coordinate with Novell as it does so.

The code that Novell is donating Project Hula will be released under the GNU Lesser General Public License and the Mozilla Public License. Novell expects to release a roadmap for Project Hula next month, and hopes to productize it by the end of 2005 after the open source community works its magic. The company intends to sell and support GroupWise, NetMail, Project Hula, and Openexchange Server going forward, but Messman concedes that he is not sure what will hapen to these products over the long haul. "But if you think we are walking away from GroupWise," he warned, "you are making a mistake."