Getting Laid With Hula

Interesting open-source anecdote about the recently released mail and calendar server, Hula.

As Nat Friedman described in his launch announcement:

Take a second and check them out. Some of this came out of conversations with Jamie Zawinski, and he deserves credit for focusing us on calendars instead of floating off into, I dunno, voice over IP integration or something.

Sure enough, jwz gives the entertaining and illuminating full story (with Creepy Netscape Ghost Stories as an added bonus).

Nat was in town, and he stopped by to say hi and chat, and he said, "So we've got this big pile of code we're going to release, and we're going to build an open source groupware system! It's going to be awesome!"

And I said, "Jesus Mother of Fuck, what are you thinking! Do not strap the 'Groupware' albatross around your neck! That's what killed Netscape, are you insane?" He looked at me like I'd just kicked his puppy.

...So I said, narrow the focus. Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?

P.S. Bonus points for this entry on the Hula FAQ.

I'm a hosting provider (ISP/ASP/etc) and am looking for carrier-grade software for organizations and individual users, which I can centrally control and administer. Is Hula what I'm looking for?

Yes. Thank you for asking.