Chandler is a major Open Source project to be the next generation e-mail/IM application/platform. The project is being run by some pretty major software stalwarts such as Andy Hertzfeld, Mitch Kapor, and Rys McCusker. Kaitlin Sherwood transcribed her notes from a Chandler session at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.
On the surface this should be amazingly attractive to me, but I find myself somewhat skeptical. Chandler is buzzword/open source compliant using RDF, Python, Jabber, BEEP, P2P etc. The development team seems really sharp. A very noble endeavor indeed.
But my source of skepticism is twofold. Attacking the e-mail space seems equivalent to directly attacking the Maginot line. Lots of deeply embedded and entrenched competitors, many of whom are quite good. Also, the goals of Chandler seem to have it destined to be jack of all trades, master of none. For example, building on a cross-platform GUI toolkit guarantees it'll be okay on all platforms, but not excellent on any of them, (c.f. Mozilla). If the user experience really matters, cross-platform toolkits ain't the way to go.
Good luck and godspeed guys. Ignore my stop energy.