The aim of this project is to provide a simple contact sharing Address Book for Thunderbird using MySQL as the back end.

We have many customers in the 5-50 seats market who don't need the expense and complexity of MS Exchange but would love some shared contacts in a simple to use database.

The LDAP functionality built into Thunderbird is clunky and is Read Only - not much use for small businesses.

DATABASE SCHEMA

This has not been written and is part of the project - it would be most useful if it matched the fields in the Thunderbird address book and matched the LDAP Contact Schema that Thunderbird uses.

The schema needs to incorporate a UID (Unique ID Number) for each contact and a MySQL TimeStamp field to show when it was last altered.

SECURITY

For version 1 all users can have open access to the contacts.

FUNCTIONALITY

The current Thunderbird Address Books are very good and it would be nice to mirror this functionality.

Our users use the Lightning Calendar extension and this is a good example of what I am hoping for.

It adds another bar at the bottom left of the screen and is available either full screen or as a sidebar.

It seems that full CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) is not impossible for this project and that is a splendid goal.

It would be nice to have 2 views - individual address cards and a table

BUILD ENVIRONMENT

I would like to request details of the build environment so I can make changes in the future.

We are currently using Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 and there would be continued development to make sure it works in future versions.

LICENSE

I would like to license this software as GPL3  with full credits to the developer and sponsor.

WELCOME GETaFREELANCERs

I never considered outsourcing this work before and was overwhelmed with the response to my initial enquiry.

I am now excited as I have several other projects which I am going to post once this is underway.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

Import/Export from normal Thunderbird address books

Custom Fields to allow freeform data entry

Selectors and filters to allow mailing lists and mail merge (OpenOffice.org ?)

LDAP Backend

ACLs or Full Rights vs Read Only

VCARD Export/Import

Active Directory integration (OpenChange)

Database abstraction - SQLLite, Postgress, etc

Language abstraction

OTHER PROJECTS

Convert WebCalendar to use CalDav as the backend
http://webcalendar.sourceforge.net/

Simple address book Web Frontend for LDAP

Python MORK API for manipulating Thunderbird Address books