[nzlug] (slightly)OT - huge OSS opportunity

[anru chen]

Hi David:

we have a local php developers mail list, probably a better place to
rant about business software, and many people in that list are
business owners. (phpug at phpug.org.nz).

from my point of view, a winning groupware does  not need that ( OO
RAD web app framework like Ruby on Rails, Python's TurboGears or
similar good Java  equivalents) to be a winning groupware, what we
need is a good solution.

all of those new tech like AJAX,ROR, TurboGears, they are just lastest
buzz words.
what kind of new thing they have bring to developer ? just some old
techs changed to a new name.

if you need a customized groupware, better find some good developers.


regards,

anru

On 8/26/06, David McNab <david at rebirthing.co.nz> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> (apologies for OT post - this is about OSS and business, not
> specifically linux)
>
> Over the last few days, I've been going through dozens of web-based
> groupware apps looking for something to suit our consultancy business.
>
> <rant>
>
> The bottom line - all the web-based groupware apps suck!
> SugarCRM sucks slightly less, so I've gone with that. But it still has
> major problems.
>
> The groupware development scene is a fascinating phenomenon. Sourceforge
> and Freshmeat list hundreds of groupware apps, which vary only in their
> position on the suck spectrum, various places ranging from 'severely' to
> 'extremely' to 'impossibly'.
>
> It seems that people start up a new groupware app, aiming to come up
> with something less painful than the existing offerings, but end up with
> something just as bad or worse.
>
> So what I'm saying is that IMHO there exists a tremendous opportunity
> for someone with great web app dev skills to steal a huge chunk of the
> market.
>
> Firstly, I need to get specific about the existing groupware suckage:
>
>  * all groupware apps do one or two things well, maybe many things well,
>    but no app does everything well
>
>  * the set of features I'm looking for is diffused among many
>    different groupware apps, and not available in a single app, features
>    such as:
>     - composite to-do tasks (tasks with dependencies)
>     - ease of sharing tasks, appointments, contacts etc between users
>     - good level of AJAX usage
>     - categories management - allow categories to be assigned to:
>         - contacts
>         - appointments
>         - to-do items
>     - bleeding obvious - a 'schedule meeting' button on the display of
>       a contact's record, which sets up a meeting with that contact,
>       and avoids the name to type the contact's name into the 'subject'
>       field for the meeting
>     - rich-text editing for emails, notes etc
>     - bulk-mailing (not spamming) to opt-in clients
>     - good xml-rpc or SOAP interface
>     - product catalogue, with order processing
>
>  * nearly all the existing OSS groupware apps are written in PHP, which
>    is one excruciating language which by its very structure tempts
>    people into poor design/programming practice, introducts exponential
>    growth of complexity and hikes up development costs.
>
>    A winning OSS groupware app should use an OO RAD web app framework
>    like Ruby on Rails, Python's TurboGears or similar good Java
>    equivalents
>
>    Also, a good groupware app should have facilities for users to set
>    up custom views, forms etc
>
> </rant>
>
> Cheers
> David
>
>
>
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