OEone Discontinues HomeBase DESKTOP

Tuesday October 7th, 2003

MarkHB writes: "OEone, the company that gave rise to Mozilla Calendar and Mozilla Sunbird, has ended distribution of their Homebase DESKTOP product, the UI of which is written entirely in XUL. While they had said earlier that development was being frozen for a time, and they are still selling the full distribution HomeBase SUITE, I hate to see this truly-different desktop vanish. Any chance they could open-source the full desktop without killing the Homebase ANYWHERE (server storage space) revenue stream?"

#1 shame

by Down8

Tuesday October 7th, 2003 8:33 PM

It always sucks to lose an outlet.

-bZj

#2 Hope they do well

by rattaro

Tuesday October 7th, 2003 9:06 PM

Never tried the desktop, but I use the Homebase Anywhere for my business. It's awesome.

#3 OS

by wvw

Wednesday October 8th, 2003 12:42 AM

Sad. I still like the idea very much. Wasn't it fully open source already?

#4 No more download?

by krishy

Wednesday October 8th, 2003 2:58 AM

Is there some place where I can d/l and try this out? I know it's too late, but I would still like to give a little spin.

caio

#5 Mon Bidoux

by offmdan

Wednesday October 8th, 2003 4:45 AM

It is sad indeed. Interesting stuff, but not very practical from a dial-up point of view.

#6 What a surprise

by mesostinky

Wednesday October 8th, 2003 9:08 AM

No I don't mean that in a mean way, it's just that if you didn't see the writing for this on the wall you were asleep at the wheel. The whole Kiosk/Lite Desktop/3com Audrey/Computer foryourKitchen thing was just a fad, or more likely an idea before its time. The demand for this sort of thing just isn't there.

On the topic of Calendar I was pretty bummed that they couldn't sponsor it anymore. Calendar is a pretty important app IMHO. I really wish it had gotten more attention over the years. Not having it integrated with Thunderbird with Palm syncing for dates mean Thunderbird simply isn't an option for almost any corporation. I'm sure someday that will all happen, I just wish we were closer to having an Outlook killer. Right now that seems a long way off.

#7 I agree

by johann_p

Thursday October 9th, 2003 12:33 AM

A decent calendar/email integration with todos, email followup actions with a deadline, arbitrary classification etc. would be essential to make Mozilla/TB successful in companies. However it seems that developers are not very interested in this marked segment and - especially with FB/TB - target the "simple apps for simple minds" market segment. Something that MS already does and always will do better, IMHO.

#9 Simple is good!

by elempoimen

Friday October 10th, 2003 6:58 AM

"'simple apps for simple minds'"?!?

Simple is not always a bad thing. Why don't I use LiteStep? It's not because I can't figure it out--when I had more time in my life, I did use it. The reason I don't use it is because Explorer is effective and simple--or maybe it's just more polished. At any rate, I don't have time to play with complex apps and config files when all I need to do is a simple task, and do it quickly. IMHO, Mozilla/*bird still has a little too much manual config file editing for mass market consumption...but it's much better than it was at one time. And it's finally workable enough for me and the limited time I have in my life.

I'm smart enough to use a complex app. I've done it for years. Problem is, I don't have time for it. I just need something that works. Period. So, simple is good!

#8 They did open source the desktop....

by returnthis

Thursday October 9th, 2003 12:52 PM

http://www.oeone.com/developers/

Or at least the framework its built on.