Hula (software)

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Hula

Hula's webmail interface
Developer:	Novell (NetMail code base) / Hula community
OS:	Linux
Use:	Webmail Mail server Electronic calendar
License:	GPL
Website:	hula-project.org

Hula is an open source mail and calendar project based on open standards announced on February 15, 2005 by Novell.

It is derived from an existing product by the same software house, called NetMail, and retains many of the architectural features of that software. However, important components such as the mail store are being re-developed to integrate new functionality (such as search) and new features (such as calendaring, using the calendar server protocol CalDAV). As such, when complete it will be a more modern system with better support for common standards in comparison to the earlier NetMail product.

Hula aims to expand in three main directions:

a calendaring tool
a web-based rich mail client
and a search facility for all mail and calendar information within the server.

It comes with a web-based client to access information, but desktop applications are readily supported. Novell Evolution released with Hula support in version 2.6, and other clients are expected to support Hula closer to Hula's release. Hula 1.0 is expected later this year.

Screenshot of the Hula log-on screen (with Firefly)

Hula is an open-source effort sponsored by Novell and developed by Dave Camp and Joe Gasiorek, amongst others. On November 28th, 2006 Novell announced that it would no longer have anyone work on it full time.^[1] On January 30, 2007, The Messaging Architects announced an agreement to acquire NetMail and take over leadership of the open source Hula Project from Novell. Currently due to the move of Hula from Novell to The Messaging Architects the project's web site just contains an announcment of the transfer rather than the project.