FAQ

If you, after reading the Frequently Asked Questions below, still have questions regarding KDE Kontact you can search the kdepim-users mailing list; your question might have already been answered there. If not you can send your question to the kdepim-users mailing list and we will do our best to answer it. For more info on KDE's mailing lists go here.

For more information on how to contact us please read the contact page.

Questions

• Kontact, Kolab, Kroupware... I get confused. What's the deal?
• Where can I get KDE Kontact?
• Is KDE Kontact related to Samsung Contact™?
• Can you please support <the_groupware_solution_my_company_uses>?
• I want to contribute to Kontact. What should I do?

Answers

Kontact, Kolab, Kroupware... I get confused. What's the deal?

Kolab is a groupware solution consisting of a server and a client part as well as an optional binding for Microsoft Exchange™. Kolab was developed by a consortium of the three companies Klarälvdalens Datakonsult (Kolab Client), Erfrakon (Kolab Server) and Intevation (project management, QA) which were contracted by the german Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) after winning a formal bid for a groupware solution.

While the Kolab Server has been designed from scratch using well-known free software server components, the Kolab Client which is based on KDE 3.1's KMail, KOrganizer and other components could not be redesigned from scratch to allow a generic groupware approach due to a lack of time. While the client is pretty stable and works reliably and does what it is supposed to, the Kolab Client is too specialized to ship with KDE

Therefore its functionality moved into Kontact. As of Version 1.0, Kontact replaces the Kolab Client. Furthermore, it supports other groupware servers such as SUSE Openexchange, Novell Groupwise and plans to fully support Microsoft Exchange 2000™, OpenGroupware.org, etc.

[Up to Questions]

Where can I get KDE Kontact?

For this question you should see the download page

[Up to Questions]

Is KDE Kontact related to Samsung Contact™?

Not at all. The authors chose the name "Kontact" before Samsung officially presented the successor of HP OpenMail™, which is now called "Samsung Contact™". Of course we are interested in supporting it, we just won't do it anytime soon because we lack a license.

[Up to Questions]

Can you please support <the_groupware_solution_my_company_uses>?

We are happily awaiting your contribution :). Because Kontact and the underlying resource framework is extremely easy to extend, adding support for new groupware servers should be relatively easy. If you want to contribute, please read the next entry. For your convinience we added an overview about groupware server currently supported by Kontact

[Up to Questions]

I want to contribute to Kontact. What should I do?

Have a look at the kdepim-users mailing list. Look if your issue has been discussed. Subscribe there and tell what you plan to hack on. Don't start to hack blindly! Kontact is a fairly complex system with many actors. Blind patches will mostly fix things or add features the wrong way and will get rejected. Save yourself the frustration. Trivial patches are an exception from this of course, except if you get annoyed if a 5-minute-patch gets revoked once in a while.

[Up to Questions]

[ Edit ]