Mitch Kapor's Open Source foundation
A New York Times story (registration required) about the latest project from Mitch Kapor, the man behind Lotus Notes and who I believe helped fund Ray Ozzie's Groove Networks. Kapor has used $5 million of his own money to set up a nonprofit that's all about open source applications. Based out of San Francisco, the nonprofit has five employees and one full-time volunteer in Andy Hertzfeld, the original Apple Macintosh team member.
The foundation's first software program is to be a personal information manager, or PIM, as such programs are known. Code-named Chandler, the software is to combine e-mail and calendar functions with tools for sharing files among multiple users. Mr. Kapor said he planned to release a functional portion of the program by the end of the year, and hoped to have a finished product by the end of 2003. At this time the Foundation plans to release Chandler, both the production program and the underlying source code, as a free download, but Mr. Kapor said he would not rule out a commercial package, most likely from a third party.
"I actually think the PIM is the central productivity application, not the word processor or the spreadsheet," Mr. Kapor said last week. "Where people spend their time is their e-mail and calendar," he said. "I've felt frustrated that what is out there falls short of something satisfying."
Most large companies use Microsoft's Outlook Express for e-mail and calendars. But the program's more advanced features, like file sharing and collaboration, are available only when it is used with Microsoft Exchange, a more costly product requiring network server computers. Mr. Kapor said Chandler would offer this kind of performance to smaller organizations at much lower cost by using so-called peer-to-peer technology, which relies on the users' PC's and eliminates the server.
"Individuals and small organizations are at a disadvantage today," he said, "and I'm an old PC guy. I'm in favor of end-user empowerment and decentralization." Mr. Kapor said Chandler was aimed at filling an unmet need for smaller organizations, not at unseating Microsoft in large companies. Groove Networks, a company backed by venture capital and founded by the Lotus Notes creator, Ray Ozzie, has also produced a peer-to-peer e-mail and collaboration program, but it, too, is primarily aimed at large companies, Mr. Kapor said.
But Jeff Tarter of SoftLetter is skeptical about the need for such software.
"I haven't seen any evidence that there's a hole in the market here," he said. "But all the rational people have been completely wrong about most of these markets. So the fact that this sounds loony is probably a good thing."