Sam's got some more thoughts on collaboration in his blog. As I understand it, his question comes down to "getting people to collaborate and share". For me, the choice of tools is the constraint. Email works for me. When I get an email, I'll respond to it. If the email program I'm using sucks, I can get a new one. When email is the only tool, you don't need to ask people to collaborate; it just happens.
I've found that email kind of sucks. If you've got multiple authors on a document, and there's a lot of editing, it can be difficult to figure out who has the latest version. So this is where tools like Groove come in. My problem with Groove is that it's Windows-only and it requires enough CPU to make it unusable under Virtual PC. Ports of Groove to Linux or Mac OS X don't seem to be planned. So, the only workaround is to "get a cheap Windows PC, install Groove, plug it into your LAN, and go hide it in a closet" and access it with GWS. That's fine until I go on the road and can't access my GWS server.
I recently wrote up what I thought my workspace would look like in one year. I forgot to mention collaboration tools. Right now, my collaboration tools are email, Radio, instant messenger (iChat), and CVS (cross-platform, shell integration on Windows, what more could you ask for?). Unless I get a Groove client for Mac OS X between now and then (If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future), it's going to look pretty much the same.
I don't mean to be a Scrooge about this, though. Give me a user interface to Groove that resembles CVS, or a Groove to CVS gateway, and that would make a huge difference. If I have to fire up a separate machine or wait painfully for Groove under Virtual PC just to check out a Word document, it's not going to happen. Will the final version of GWS allow me to create something like this without needing my own Windows PC in a closet somewhere? More specifically, will Groove's relay server link me up to other users' copies of a shared space (provided they have granted me access)? That could be just the thing that draws me in!
9:50:19 AM 
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