<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<chapter id="intro_mgw">
  <title>Introduction to moregroupware</title>
  
  <section id="intro_mgw_what">
    <title>What is moregroupware?</title>
    
    <para>To make a long story short: moregroupware is a web-based
      groupware application.
    </para>
    
    <para>Some of the features that are worth being mentioned:</para>
    
    <itemizedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>Contact/address management</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>Webmail</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>full-featured Calendar</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>ToDo management</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>News</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>Project management</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>Some preferences for each module</para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>Skins based on Cascading Style Sheets</para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>
    
    <para>The best thing is: it's free. The software is available as free
      software, complete with source code.
    </para>
    
  </section>
  
  <section id="intro_mgw_why">
    <title>Why moregroupware?</title>
    
    <para>Oh dear, another groupware I hear you say, and yes you are
      right, there are many open source web-groupwares available, so why yet
      another project?
    </para>
    
    <para>The answer is, we wanted a groupware that satisfies our needs,
      so we decided to program our own. The software was started at Morelogs
      GmbH in Germany, and at first there wasn't the idea to open source
      it. Back then we only wanted to have our own groupware, without any
      commercial interests.
    </para>
    
    <para>There were some inquiries from business partners that wanted to
      have it, so we decided it would be a good step to open source it,
      because we just didn't want to sell it with the closed source
      modell.
    </para>
    
    <para>So we started of to create the infrastructure for the project,
      picked up a productname and waited to see what would happen. We use it
      on a daily basis at morelogs right now.
    </para>
    
    <para>So why use moregroupware? We created an easy to understand
      framework and we didn't blindly use 3rd party modules and try to
      incooperate them. We wrote main modules like calendar and contacts
      from scratch and therefore have no code overhead because of different
      approaches of different projects.
    </para>
    
    <para>And the story still continues...</para>
    
  </section>
  
  <section id="intro_mgw_demo">
    <title>How can I try moregroupware?</title>
    
    <para>We used to have a demo server on the website. This server is not
      available currently. But if you want to try moregroupware, and have a
      computer that can boot from CDD-ROM, we have a wonderful solution for
      you.
    </para>
    
    <para>Thomas Bley prepared a special version of Knoppix, that comes
      preloaded with moregroupware. Just boot from the CD, and you have a
      running moregroupware server ready to play with. And there won't be
      any changes to your computer - just reboot without the CD, and all is
      back to normal!
    </para>
    
    <para>More details can be found at the moregroupware website at <ulink url="http://www.moregroupware.org/knoppix.php">http://www.moregroupware.org/knoppix.php</ulink>
  </para>
  
</section>

<section id="intro_mgw_who">
  <title>Who is developing moregroupware?</title>
  
  <para>moregroupware is developed by developers pread worldwide in a
    collaborative manner, following open source principles. We are using
    the services provided by sourceforge.net, therefore you can get a
    developer list at <ulink
    url="https://sourceforge.net/project/memberlist.php?group_id=32034">sourceforge.net
  </ulink>
  .Or
  you take a look at <ulink
  url="http://moregroupware.sourceforge.net/developers.php">this
  list
</ulink>
on the moregroupware website.
</para>

</section>

<section id="intro_mgw_users">
<title>Who is using moregroupware?</title>

<para>Here some case studies will be presented, that show
who uses moregroupware, and what it is used for.
</para>

<section>
<title>Somewhere in Australia</title>

<para>An australian Apple reseller uses moregroupware to manage their
  customer contacts. The module has been customized rather heavily, but
  still moregroupware is the basis...
</para>

<para>They have around 75.000 contacts (businesses and contacts in
  total) in the database, and the thing is running on an Apple xServe
  dual processor 1GHz PowerPC machine, and "performs like a dream". That
  sounds like some setup, no?
</para>

</section>

<section> 
<title>Local government, south - west part of Norway:</title>

<para>A calendar system like Exchange with Outlook clients was needed
  for an office situated at two different places. With only 15 users it
  would have been expensive to buy a new server and licenses to run
  Exchange.
</para>

<para>In stead Moregroupware was installed. It does not need the big
  system resources and could happily run at the already existing Windows
  NT server. And it was totally free.
</para>

<para>At the moment only the calendar part of MGW is in use.</para>

</section>
</section>

</chapter>
