Open source collaboration tools

written in 2008 1The collaboration between differententerprises and employees within onecompany is growing fast paced. Tasks andresponsibilities are shared within oneproject team by using interaction betweenall project or group members. There arealso cooperations over company boardersusing modern technology. For internationalteams or consulting companys it is usefulto use open source solutions for thedevelopment within intercultural projects.

Software support for collaboration

If this interaction is based on computersystems the term is “computer supportedcooperative work” (CSSW). The goal of CSSW systems is to exceed companyboarders.

One aspect is the groupware that is basedon a webserver / server in the internet or inthe intranet. The access may be granted viaa VPN connection. The typical architectureis plattform indipendent and thats makeproject interaction (exceeding companyboarders) so easy. The following figureshows the open source collaboration thatexceeds company boarders.

Figure 1: open source collaborationscheme

Advantages of open source collaboration

There are several advantages for opensource collaboration. The following pointsare advantages of open sourcecollaboration plattforms:

Schwarzer, Krcmar (2004)

economic perspective: open sourceproducts are in most cases free of charge.-

Adoptions: Because (depending onlicence type) the source code is freeto be adopted for every body;specific adoptions are possible-

Open development community:The community that could adoptsystem functionality is world wide(WWR, WWK)

Security: bcause a lot of developersadopt the functionality.-

Plattform independent; typicalplattform infrastructure is availablefor free in the internet.

Disadvantages of open source solutions

There are also some disadvantages foropen source collaboration solutions.-

Guarantee: there is no softwaredeveloper guarantee available-

Development: There is nowinformation about the developmentand the future of the development(if the system is developed furtheron)

System solution

The following figure shows some solutionsthat are available in the market. These arenot all solutions (only some of them).

Solution Webserver DB

LicenceOpenGroupware Apache PostgreeSQL,Frontbase,Open LDAPGNU, GPLSimpleGroupwareApache My SQL,PostgreeSQLGNU, GPLPHProject Apache, IIS,SambarMy SQL,PostgreeSQLGNU GPLeGroupware Apache, IIS My SQL,PostgreeSQLGNU, GPLnetOffice JavaScript,PHPMy SQL GNU GPL

WWR = world wide resources; WWK =worldwide knowledge for more information see:Simoneit, F. (2008); p. 10

DB = Database