[sync] SyncML and funambol client

[Jan Schneider]

Cc'ing to the sync mailing list, I hope this is fine.

Zitat von Cyril <xryl669 at gmail.com>:

> Hi,
>
>   Just to tell you my experience with Funambol's WM client.
> With the last version (7.x), the client won't accept any other
> server except Funambol, because of the well known
> "configuration" database which is missing (and, of course
> not standard).
> No option, even in the registry. The WM client is locked to
> download its configuration on the funambol server

This is a big time annoyance, and I can hardly believe that they go  
down that road. Do you have any reference that shows that this is  
really their intention?

> From the point of view of Funambol, this is a required change to
> avoid third party server from using the client.

What's a standard about if you still lock your software down to only  
work with your own products? This is Microsoft'esque.

> This is expected as Funambol's going to more and more closed
> licenses.
>
> So, the question is will funambol either interesting for us, horde
> user ?
> Is it interesting to mimic unstandard funambol server to support WM
> syncing ?

Not really. We already have far too many workarounds for proprietary  
SyncML implementations in Horde IMO.

> I'm pretty sure it's time to drop funambol "one-way"
> policy, and fork the client part so it's possible to use the work
> they've done with whatever server we want. It's open source, so let's remind
> them what that means.

That's always an option.

> The problem lies within their license :
> In layman's terms, Community Edition can be freely used for
> manypurposes. The most notable exception is if you change or add to
> the code and you use the software as the basis of an Internet or
> network-based service, you must publish your code or buy a
> commercial license.
>
> If I understand correctly, this means that the modification should
> be in the AGPL3 license, and I don't know if it's compatible with
> HORDE's license ?

Since it is a separate software, independent for Horde, it doesn't  
matter which license we'd have to use for it. Horde doesn't force any  
license on its modules, as long as they are Open Source.

> What do you think ?

A fork is always a last resort, but I don't see how we could put any  
(developer) resources into such a project. If it's just about hosting  
the code, that's not a problem, though I assume that something like SF  
is a better place then, to attract more developers. Funambol even  
started as a SF project (Sync4j).

Jan.

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