CRM:
So have been continuing my headlong dive into possible CRM systems. Currently it looks like we are going to go for SugarCRM as it has a very simple and straightforward install combined with most of the features we need.

bilboed pointed me to ERP5 but it seems more like a ERP solution than CRM. Thomas suggested we use a groupware solution instead as it would allow us to use Evolution more as an interface. Basically I have come to like the idea, as a solution like the very cool Noodle setup, being put together by Imendio among others, around OpenGroupwareOrg and Evolution contains a lot of the basic functionality you want from a CRM system. Unfortunatly Noodle is still a bit early age and there are functionality which I want and which I have in SugarCRM which isn’t in Noodle (as it is not actually a CRM system). What would be perfect of course was a CRM system like SugarCRM which used Noodle as its backend for calendaring, email and so on. It would make SugarCRM tens times nicer to use and make my choice more obvious. The most suprising part is that none of the CRM solutions I have found seems to support syncing with a calendaring server even.

Flumotion: One problem we would like to solve with Flumotion is that of combining video with slides. So that when you stream a conference talk you see a video of the speaker and some readable slides combined with it. The solution we are looking into for this adding an image stream to the Ogg stream. Rillian of Theora fame has some ideas on how this should be implemented so we probably try going with his approach. Anyway due to this we are wondering wether to use the established MNG format or go with the new and flashy apng format developed by the Mozilla people. Rillian is leaning towards MNG, and I got some other people expressing APNG scepticalness to, but on the other side if Mozilla is going with apng it will probably quickly be a more popular and better supported format than MNG. Which in turn might make it easier to get more people to support the planned image in OGG solution. Never any end to decisions.

GStreamer:
I have also been working on writing up a licensing advisory/policy document for GStreamer. Part of it is just codifying established practise, but other parts are new. Sent it to the GStreamer list so far and got good response, so the next step is sending it out to the GNOME and KDE multimedia lists for wider review before making it part of the GStreamer website and documentation. Also think I try sending it to a couple of legal sources for review as I am not 100% sure about the wording of the legal intepretation statement linked from the main document. Maybe Debian legal would be a good place to get some sane feedback.

Also found out today that I am getting my mother and youngest sister on a visit closer to the end of the month. Hope I can get Thomas and Wim to shave and keep their desk tidy so they don’t embarass me in front of my mom :)

I also pulled GStreamer and associated libraries from gnomefiles.org yesterday on Eugenia’s request. She only wants GUI stuff on gnomefiles which I am not sure how much I agree with. True enough GNOME is a GUI environment and most people using gnomefiles are end users are looking for applications for their desktop, but I still think central gnome libraries are of general enough interest to warrant a listing. The again it is her website, which she has done a splendid job with so far IMHO, so I complied without too loud complaints :)