Project proposal

[Armin Bauer <armin bauer desscon com>]

Hi,

I'm one of the developers of Multisync, a free modular program to
synchronize calendars, addressbooks and other PIM data between programs,
mobile devices, PDAs or cell phones. I contacted you since you are
either a developer of a synchronization application or write conduits
for these programs.


We recently ran into design limitations with our current Multisync
version, which was where we decided to develop a new major version of
Multisync. We started working on the new design but quickly noticed to
there are a lot of other projects in this field too. There are:
coldsync, gpilot, kpilot, agsync, j-pilot, malsync, multisync,
kitchensync, pilot-manager, pilot-mailsync and even more. There is a lot
of redundant code and a lot of work is wasted by rewriting what already
exists in another project.


So i would like to propose to start a project to create a standardized
sync framework which could then be used by all projects. This way a sync
conduit would have to be written only once and would immediately be
available to all projects. The idea is similar the the Netscape API
(NAPI) which provides plugins to netscape, mozilla and opera.


Thats why i started the project "OpenSync" on freedesktop.org and i
would like to invite you to join the mailing list to discuss if this
idea is feasible and possible to implement and what requirements we have
to meet to make it a success. If you would like to join, go to
opensync.freedesktop.org and follow the link to the mailing list at the
bottom. Even if you think that this is a stupid idea i would like to
hear why.


I really think that it is worth to pursue this project since we can
reduce redundant code in the sync projects, easy the life for the
developers of conduits and give a great possibility to programs that
which to use synchronization like Evolution to get access to a lot of
devices to sync.

Best regards, Armin Bauer