Mitch Kapor Finally Pulls The Plug On Chandler
from the years-too-late dept
More than five years ago, Lotus founder Mitch Kapor announced plans to start a not-for-profit foundation to try to create an open source competitor to Microsoft Exchange. At the time, we didn't think that Microsoft would be staying up at night worrying about it. In fact, we doubt anyone anywhere thought much of the resulting project, dubbed Chandler, over the intervening years. Every once in a while there would be an update, but many other projects seemed to make a lot more progress than Chandler ever did. So it's not much of a surprise to hear that Mitch Kapor has finally bailed on Chandler, and that the foundation behind it is going to scale back its efforts. This isn't an indictment of open source projects, but it does suggest that it does matter how those projects are set up. Successful open source projects seem to start small and grow over time. They focus on solving a specific need and then building out beyond that. Chandler, on the other hand, seemed more focused on coming up with a big idea and building a huge project around it. That makes it a lot less flexible and a lot less able to take advantage of the sorts of benefits that open source development provides, such as the ability to repeatedly release, adapt and adjust to meet what the market actually needs.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: chandler, collaboration suite, email, information management, mitch kapor
Companies: osaf
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
MicroSoft Exchange
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Say what?
Now it may be true that *most* FOSS projects start (and remain) small, but that makes sense given the whole 'scratch an itch' ethos that hackers work with.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Say what?
What they do is they release their crappy release for feedback and such.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
WTF?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mitch Kapor's Weekend at Bernies
The problem is that what Mitch initially envisioned never came anywhere near fruition. I blogged about it here http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/01/mitch-kapors-weekend-at-bernies.html
Hank
[ link to this | view in thread ]