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GNU Groove clone

Posted: Tue Jun 13, 2006 10:27 pm
by ^rooker
In a company I'm working in we are currently using some communication tool called "Groove" (http://www.groove.net).

Unfortunately it's a very "closed" system and it has a lot of annoying characteristics which led to the idea of replacing it by glueing some already existing, open applications together.
(btw: it's also got exploits: http://secunia.com/advisories/15421/)

first of all a list of features that Groove provides:
  • Instant Messaging (with online status)
    Forum
    Calendar
    File container with locking
    Separate workspaces (each workspace has own forum, members, ...)
Here are "our" (Gil & mine) ideas how to accomplish that:
  • IM: IRC / Jabber
    Forum: phpBB2
    Calendar: Mozilla Calendar Project / phpBB Mod: Calendar lite/pro
    File container: Subversion
    Workspaces: IRC channels and separate forums
Everything is replicated to every computer that's participating in a workspace.[/list]

The challenges are:
- Centralized point for administering users (requires some sort of user-replication between Subversion, IM and Forum)
- Replication between clients/server
- Packing all that together so that even Windows-Users will be able to install/use it.
- Making it pass firewalls easily (Groove tunnels traffic through external servers over HTTP at port 80)


The server-side is clear:
phpBB & Calendar mod, Subversion (with Web-access for easy file browsing), IRC server, mySQL, Apache

The client is mostly browser-based, but the replication would require a local Apache/mySQL/phpBB installation. I think it would be possible to make a nice installer which puts everything in place.
The replication would be done on mySQL level (requires v5+)



hm.... Currently I'm still evaluating this, but I really think it's worth the effort. (Really: I HATE groove!)