Novell’s Hula says ‘aloha’ to open source

BOSTON—Novell Inc. will open source the e-mail and calendar functions of its NetMail enterprise collaboration server software. The open-source spinoff will be called Hula.By making portions of its messaging software available to outside developers, the company hopes to reinvigorate NetMail competition with Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes, CEO Jack Messman said last week at the LinuxWorld Conference.“Unlike many [open-source] collaboration projects currently on the market, this project will focus on the server side, not the client side,” Messman said. He added that the NetMail code “is quality stuff, built originally for use over the Internet.”The Hula project will utilize other open-source and standards efforts, such as the Simple Mail Transfer and the Internet Message Access e-mail protocols as well as the emerging iCalendar and the CalDAV calendar access and sharing protocols. The Hula team will also collaborate with the Mozilla Foundation of Mountain View, Calif., which maintains the Mozilla Firefox browser, Thunderbird e-mail client and Sunbird calendar.