[CentOS] Email/GroupWare Suite

Thu Jan 8 01:45:57 UTC 2009
Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam at whitemice.org>

> otherwise, um, if you really do want self hosting...     pick your 
> favorite email server (postfix, sendmail, etc), use cyrus imap, let your 
> clients use any imap email app they prefer (Mozilla Thunderbird, 
> Microsoft Outlook or Live Mail, etc) 

Agree strongly with PostFix+Cyrus.  It is a very solid e-mail platform
and it provides delayed expunge and unexpunge (data retention), shared
folders included shared seen state, full-text indexing, and quotas.

> and use openLDAP for a directory service.    

I'd discourage this.  LDAP is great, and OpenLDAP is a solid DSA, but
LDAP makes a miserable "groupware" platform.  No client other than
Evolution supports updating LDAP, every other client is read-only.  And
no clients agree on schema.  It's pretty awful for usability.

> A wiki like DokuWiki can provide for group shared 
> stuff...    add in a calender server (webDAV wth iCAL files, or similar) 
> that can be used with Thunderbird's  Lightning Calendering plugin, and 
> you've got quite a bit of groupware functionality right off the bat, 
> including meeting invitations.

One needs to carefully define what you need and what features you want.
"Calendaring" is very vague.  Do you need resource reservation, conflict
detection, participant roles, etc...   For addressbooks GroupDAV is
reasonably supported by most clients at this point (including
Thunderbird).  Calendering is more complicated.  Most importantly, you
*MUST* have GroupDAV or CalDAV for group calendering/collaboration -
iCalendar is *not* a groupware solution, it just doesn't work for
technical reasons.
-- 
Adam Tauno Williams, Network & Systems Administrator
Consultant - http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com
Developer - http://www.opengroupware.org