2005-03-09: Groupware GOOD!

There seems to be a lot of misinformation being passed around the 'net, particularly in the Open Source community, about what exactly this whole 'groupware' thing is about.

Our definition of Groupware is a very loose one: it is, quite simply, any software whose purpose is to connect groups of people together and help them to interact with each other.

You may have read elsewhere a rant which strongly criticized the word 'groupware,' claiming that all software using the word is strictly the domain of pointy haired executives, and nothing an end user would ever find useful or productive. (This article was quite self-congratulatory and somewhat inflammatory, so we will not give it any more undue attention by linking to it here.) This misguided assertion could not be any further from the truth. True, there are a lot of software packages which perform these mundane and tedious jobs; the functions in question are usually given names like 'workflow' and 'process management' and yes, they do fall into the groupware category. That hardly defines the entire category, though.

Even a simple e-mail system could be considered groupware, although a primitive form of it. I suspect that most people will begin to consider an e-mail system to fall into the 'groupware' category once it has an address book and a calendar integrated into it. (Let's be realistic here: for much of the world today, groupware means Microsoft Outlook connected to Microsoft Exchange – one of their best available set of lock-in tools, and the exact ones we hope to dislodge with Citadel and other software in the open source groupware category.)

One might even argue that BBS's were the original groupware. People logged in, sent mail to each other, coordinated events, exchanged files and other data … sounds like groupware to you, doesn't it? Therefore it's no coincidence (note: shameless plug appears here) that a groupware server which evolved out of a BBS platform can potentially provide the best framework for connecting computer users to each other in a dynamic, productive, meaningful way. Please browse the rest of the Citadel web site to see how.

The central theme, though, is that it's all considered groupware, and groupware is GOOD. Groupware puts the people back into the equation. It's not the computers that matter … not the software that matters … not the ranting of armchair 'experts' that matters. What matters most is that we build software that helps groups of people do the things they do best – together.

Please direct comments, suggestions, etc. to the Citadel room on UNCENSORED! BBS, a community BBS which runs (of course) Citadel.