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Drop-In Replacement For Exchange Now Open Source
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Sep 19, 2008 04:43 PM
from the another-one-bites-the-dust dept.
from the another-one-bites-the-dust dept.
Fjan11 writes "Over 150 man-years of work were added to the Open Source community today when Zarafa decided to put their successful Exchange server replacement under GPLv3. This is not just the typical mail-server-that-works-with-Outlook, it is the whole package — including 100% MAPI, web access, tasks, iCal and Activesync. (The native syncing works great with my iPhone!) Binaries and source are available for all major Linux distros."
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Ask Slashdot: Is There a Linux Client Solution for Exchange 2007? 385 comments
CrazedSanity writes "I have been working at my state job for about 7 months now, using the Exchange plugin for Evolution to check my email. Very recently the higher-ups decided to migrate to Exchange 2007, which effectively destroyed my ability to check my email through any method other than webmail (which means I have to constantly refresh/reload the webmail window). I'm sure somebody else has encountered the problem, but I'm wondering if anybody has come up with a working solution?" Note: CrazedSanity's looking for a client that will work with Exchange in a situation where replacing the Exchange install with an open-source equivalent isn't an option.
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Hell yeah (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hell yeah (Score:5, Informative)
That's right, Microsoft: open source software can gun for you too, motherfuckers!
I'm sure Microsoft is trembling.
The site is so hammered I it took about 4 minutes to load, and the first thing I noticed? Two colums for downloading. The first one says "AGPL3 Only" and the second says "incl. 3 users Outlook support".
Common--you know that that means. "We open sourced part of our software to try and suck you in--but you'll really find it limited until you fork over slightly less that you would have with Microsoft Exchange."
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Re:Hell yeah (Score:5, Informative)
That's exactly what they did: http://www.zarafa.com/content/versions [zarafa.com]
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Re:Hell yeah (Score:5, Funny)
#define PI 9999999.14159265
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Aren't there others like this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Aren't there others like this? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are plenty, but most seem to miss the point of Exchange in some fashion.
Point the First: Everything that you're likely to plug into Exchange must also work with whatever alternative or it isn't an Exchange alternative. That means things like Blackberries, other vendors' smartphones, seamless (yes seamless, not "install this plugin which sort-of works") Outlook integration, remote management of smartphones (including wiping them). Zimbra's pretty close here, but falls down on remote smartphone management and seamless Outlook integration.
Point the Second (Scalix falls down here): Exchange is only a small proportion of the overall licensing costs. You've also got Active Directory (which implies a Windows Server infrastructure) and CALs for AD. There's not a lot of point in having AD without having your workstations on an AD domain, so you've got to factor in all the necessary licenses for this as well. If you demand I supply my own AD infrastructure and you price your product at [price for Exchange - 10%], I might as well just pay the extra 10% and eliminate the risk of being passed between vendors in a game of telephone tennis in the event of support issues.
Point the Third: Whether you like it or not, the PHBs who like Exchange are often rather stuck in the Exchange way of thinking. I don't care how much better you think your solution is, if your argument is "it's cheaper but it's only better if you're prepared to accept a totally new way of thinking about groupware" then it's not better because the PHBs in question probably aren't. Citadel's a good example of this.
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Re:Aren't there others like this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Aren't there others like this? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not to say that all protocols developed by open processes are wonderful, but on average they seem to be better.
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Re:Aren't there others like this? (Score:5, Insightful)
The MS protocols are crufty because the direction of the design of them is left up to middle managers.
That should explain it fully to anybody curious.
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Re:Aren't there others like this? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Aren't there others like this? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Aren't there others like this? (Score:5, Funny)
>[A]n open source alternative to Exchange would not have Exchange's arbitrary limitations
Oops... if it's not bug-for-bug compatible, it's going to be a problem with some PHB.
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Re:Aren't there others like this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Aren't there others like this? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Aren't there others like this? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Aren't there others like this? (Score:5, Insightful)
"...they can finally have something that works!"
Hear, hear. And maybe they can finally have something that doesn't try to break protocol standards, introduce a non-interchangeable mail archival format, artificially create a need to have ten times as many server licenses as necessary... in short, businesses would do well to uh, swap it for something else.
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A week??? You need new employees (Score:5, Insightful)
it's around 2,400-- but then you also require 25 outlook licenses.
once again, the price of the software is negligable compared to the cost of 25 employee's salaries...
go ahead, waste a week of each one's time teaching them whats different about the new program.
This is server software we are talking about here. The end users don't change their software (that's the entire point). So there is no cost for retraining end users.
You would obviously have to train the server administration staff, but even if you did put in a "Genuine Microsoft" Exchange server, you would probably still have to do this.
Besides, even if the front end did change, a week of training is a LOT. As it would be replacement software, the concepts are the same, it's only which button you push to do it that changes. So if you can't train them in a matter of hours, if not minutes, you really do need new employees.
Where I work, we use a non-MS stand alone calendaring solution. Our end user training takes a couple of hours.
How long do you think it would take to train users to use the new version of MS Office?
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Re:Aren't there others like this? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a nice long explanatory answer... for the first question! ;). Do you have an answer for the 2nd?
I might even add... do you have suggestions?
I have already checked out a few of 'em (not necessarily OSS):
...of which many of them have a great potential, but I always end up having some trouble somewhere or find 'em not user-friendly/admin-friendly enough.
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Hm, if this works as advertised (Score:5, Informative)
They better start hiring support personnel, because there will likely be profits to be had with service contracts. Maybe even a Redhat buyout/partnership
Over the last few months, I've been forced to use Exchange/Outlook a lot, and for the life of me I don't get the big deal. But I know that people consider it a big deal, so I wish this company the best, and fair
amount of profit.
Re:Hm, if this works as advertised (Score:5, Insightful)
Over the last few months, I've been forced to use Exchange/Outlook a lot, and for the life of me I don't get the big deal.
I don't think it is a very big deal. I've supported Exchange servers in companies of various size, and it's really not doing anything astoundingly complicated, and what it does it doesn't do all that well. But still it does a bunch of things that other solutions haven't done an even worse job at, and does them all together. Things like "I can send a meeting invitation to my boss and his assistant can check his mail, accept his invitation, and reply on his behalf without actually logging in as him."
I know, it doesn't sound like that sort of thing would be all that important, and it's not even clear all the time that it makes a lot of sense, but there are companies that run on this sort of procedure. So there are a bunch of random things like shared calendars and push-email to phones that people don't want to live without, and unless you can provide a seamless replacement, you're stuck with Exchange.
I, for one, am eager to see a suitable Exchange alternative. I have a real love/hate relationship with Exchange. There are some options out there, but none of the options I've tried have worked out.
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Re:Hm, if this works as advertised (Score:5, Interesting)
I know, it doesn't sound like that sort of thing would be all that important, and it's not even clear all the time that it makes a lot of sense, but there are companies that run on this sort of procedure.
Hell, I read what you described and thought "damn, that's a really good idea, hope it's also a well thought out and implemented feature". The idea that I can easily give you permission to act on my behalf is probably the single best way to kill account promiscuity. Plus the example you gave is also a damned practical one too, and a good way to prove that this is a feature, and not a solution looking for a problem.
So there are a bunch of random things like shared calendars and push-email to phones that people don't want to live without, and unless you can provide a seamless replacement, you're stuck with Exchange.
In other news, when a piece of software is truly convenient, you use it, even if it's not perfect.
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Re:Hm, if this works as advertised (Score:5, Insightful)
The executives typically have 100% trust in their admin's and this feature is absolutely necessary to the proper functioning of a senior management team. It may seem like a security risk, but in the cases that I am aware of, both users are aware of their status, and it rally operates like it did in the pen and paper days.
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Re:Hm, if this works as advertised (Score:5, Informative)
Messages sent by the assistant have a clear "Bob accepted on behalf of Alice" kind of structure. The logs also show that it was Bob accepting on behalf of Alice, IIRC. This is useful not only for the tracking perspective, but also so that the recipient knows that it was not necessarily directly handled by the person invited.
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Re:Hm, if this works as advertised (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Hm, if this works as advertised (Score:5, Insightful)
If others can be delegated permissions to act on your behalf in specifically designated manners without logging in to your account, then, if the system logs who did what under what account, there will be accountability.
OTOH, if others can't act on your behalf without logging in as you, and you have a business need them to act on your behalf, you have no choice but to give them your access credentials (dongle, password, whatever) and then there really is no accountability, and no control over the manner in which they can act on your behalf.
So, rather than destroying accountability, supporting delegation enhances accountability (and security).
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MORE than that (Score:5, Interesting)
I can give a meeting room, or a projector, or any other resource-- it's own exchange account- and set it to !automatically accept! some peoples meeting request, and other people's requests will have to be approved.. and when I send a meeting request to my boss, and two co-workers, and conference room B-- then conference room B will automatically show that it is 'busy' for my meeting.. and if I need a projector later-- I can send an invite to the 'projector' and reserve it as well..
I can de-invite individual attendees....
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Re:Hm, if this works as advertised (Score:5, Informative)
To answer your question, IMHO the big deal is collaboration, productivity, integration, and a lot of features "just work"*. I'd wager to say that the majority of medium to large companies use MS Office and MS Outlook as their productivity suite and e-mail client respectively of choice.
Collaboration
Setting up meeting requests are simple. I can easily see other people's calendars so I can pick the best time and I can even set a meeting location which will automatically reserve something like the meeting room for example. Meetings automatically get put on my calendar as tentative and I'll receive a notification in case I forget to accept the invitation. Updated meeting change my calendar as well without intervention.
Productivity
I can set reminders, flag e-mails for follow-ups, create folders to organize, create processing rules to eliminate common tasks. A lot of rules will run on the Exchange server without the need of a client running and I don't get unnecessary e-mails on my phone. Outlook maintains a constant connection with Exchange so e-mails are sent and received nearly instantly.
Integration and crap just working
Obviously most MS products can seamlessly integrate well with one another. In the latest version of Outlook I can preview a number of attachments within Outlook without actually opening them up in their designated app, thus a new window. I can set a folder to actually open up a webpage within Outlook to "Integrate" a webapp or just be sly on reading Slashdot.
Phone integration really is a big one for me. Using a WM5, WM6, or iPhone with Exchange ActiveSync is almost the best thing since sliced bread. I remember the days of having a PDA and the PITA it was to do a hard-reset or get a new one. Even getting a new phone and having to manually enter in each contact sucked (I've been a CDMA whore for eight years). All my contacts are kept on Exchange and this allows me to reference and edit them via the phone or Outlook. Having to do a hard-reset or get a new WM phone is no big deal; a three minute sync with Exchange over the air gets me all my contacts back and access to my e-mail. The rare third party apps I use are kept on an SD card. Life is easy getting the execs and lusers up and running as well.
Integration with Active Directory (LDAP) makes my life as an admin easier with GPOs and groups to divvy out permissions. And for some reason all this stuff works without much hassle.
The bad
Exchange and Outlook truly do have their faults. If I were to have my own company, I can't honestly say that I would run them. I wont get too far into the bad since I'm running out of time with the wife waiting on me. If I were to have my own company, I can't honestly say that I would run them. Exchange works great with communication within itself and other Exchange servers. It does a decent job at SMTP transmissions most of the time. The big headache I have right now stems from a tech at MS telling me that "the RFCs for the SMTP protocol are merely suggestions." It's not like SMTP is overly complex; there are only a handful of commands that are exchanged within SMTP communication and Exchange even F's that up. And don't get me started with how Outlook is written in VB.
I'm glad to see some open source Exchange clones out there. I'll eventually run one of them for my server at home just so I can keep my contacts synced when I leave my current company.
To put things into perspective, I'm not a MS fanboy, but I'm not a MS hater either. I know their products well and is a part of my profession. My real passion is UNIX; specifically FreeBSD and OpenBSD. I try to introduce them where possible and applicable. Not to mention there is some stuff I can get done easier and faster with UNIX than I could with MS Windows. Other products out there are just as buggy and bloated as MS's; they just get more attention since they're more widely used.
I hope that Zarafa and others continue to innovate and make a nice profit. Competition is good for innovation and lowering prices; both of which benefits us consumers.
* Setup can be a RPITA. When something doesn't work as expected it can be an easy fix or cause suicide.
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not vetted/tried and true (Score:4, Insightful)
I've not looked at this software, but Exchange is one hell of a piece of machinery. Say what you want about MS, but I've seen an Exchange server with terabytes of email, gigabytes per day, keeping up fine. It's a pain in the ass sometimes to be sure, but I wouldn't trust my production network to this today anyway.
Re:not vetted/tried and true (Score:4, Insightful)
Say what you want about MS, but I've seen an Exchange server with terabytes of email, gigabytes per day, keeping up fine.
BS. I've seen Exchange servers with gigabytes of mail and megabytes per day roll over and cry until we put a FreeBSD/Postfix/Amavis/ClamAV server in front to lighten the workload by 95%. If this is built on top of FOSS components, I don't doubt for a second that it'll run rings around Exchange.
Exchange has traditionally had exactly one reason for its popularity: vendor lock-in. If this really is a drop-in replacement without annoying CALs, we'll be Microsoft-free on our servers by Monday.
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Re:not vetted/tried and true (Score:4, Interesting)
after working the storage industry I have come to the conclusion that exchange is not very effective at handling heavy email load or large message database. How many of us get annoying emails when we have more than a few hundred MB of messages in our mailbox? Did you know that Exchange performs like crap when you run low on local disk space to keep the data. CIFS won't save your ass either, you end up having to go to using SAN (which looks like local disk from Exchange's point of view).
Some bullshit scripts with postfix, exim or qmail can spool and forward terabytes of email an hour. With the added advantage that you can cluster your IMAP services out to deal with the space and load in an incredibly simple yet scalable manner. You can use a SAN, but you can just as easily setup a new box for every 100 employees and still have a very usable system.
Exchange is inflexible and can only scale if you use on particular (and very expensive) setup. Microsoft only focuses on the operating modes of Exchange server that they use at corporate HQ. The inferior modes are just there so they can sucker companies into buying it at the low end, when in a short while the company will have to invest an exponential rate of money to scale the system.
The TCO of Exchange is very high. And Microsoft's way is not the only way to manage messages, events, meetings and users.
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Re:not vetted/tried and true (Score:5, Insightful)
Exchange inflexible?
What do you say to the Hundreds of Thousands of clients who get their Exchange via SBS (Small Business Server)? And that's just the 2003 version.
How many Enterprise apps do you know of by ANY vendor that dont degrade with low disk space? Come on, dude, that aint fair and you know it.
Exchange is one of those apps that can look bad if installed by an idiot. You would think a proper architect would have worked out space and usage requirements early on.
How do you reach a low space condition ANYWAY, if you are making proper use of quotas? No product takes more abuse due to stupid administration than Exchange server.
But please, inflexible? When you have dozens of 100K+ client installations of Exchange humming along at places like Chevron and others, while the very same product can keep 20 people happy on a $500 box, you cant call it inflexible. Thats just wrong, pal.
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Re:not vetted/tried and true (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you looked into tools like GFI's Mail Archiver or the Mimosa tools to get you some disk space back, and bump up overall performance?
See, it is very easy to just say, "management sucks, exchange sucks, yada, yada", but until or unless you have done all you can do to make your case, I repeat: IN DOLLARS, you have to bear some responsibility. This is what is wrong with IT these days. I'm guessing you didnt do a cost analysis, and you would not be alone in that regard, but someday, IT folks are going to have to prove that we are REAL professionals, or management has no good reason to pay any attention to us. IT is not just about technology, you have to sometimes be a teacher and a salesman to be effective, even when Management makes you not want to really give a shit.
Personally, if you had done what I suggested, and gotten the response you described, were I you, I would have walked out of there, before I let anyone put my name on a fucked up server.
But, that's me. (climbing down from my soapbox)
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GPL'd community edition has limited MAPI clients? (Score:5, Informative)
Last time I looked on the Zarafa website, it looked like the free community (GPL) edition had a limited number of MAPI clients. I guess this is still the case? If so, it's not really a practical replacement for Exchange unless you pay for the commercial edition.
Re:GPL'd community edition has limited MAPI client (Score:4, Insightful)
The nice thing about GPL software is that it's easy to go in and change arbitrary limitations like that.
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If it works as advertised... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If it works as advertised... (Score:5, Funny)
DEFINITELY
(If you're gonna write a word in all caps, spell it right :-) )
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Patent encumbered? (Score:5, Interesting)
I did a quick test with this product a few weeks ago, and it sync'd well with my phone. My only concern was that Microsoft appears to assert patent claims [microsoft.com] relating to ActiveSync. Anyone have thoughts or experiences on using this product in the US market?
"successful" is ambigous (Score:5, Insightful)
...Zarafa decided to put their successful Exchange server replacement under GPLv3. This is not just the typical mail-server-that-works-with-Outlook, it is the whole package including 100% MAPI, web access, tasks, iCal and Activesync...
While I hail this development, I wonder what "successful" means in this story. Here are questions I might want answered:
Was it "successful" at sales? If so where are the figures? I would not really praise them that much if the original goal - to make money, could not be reached making these fellas to opensource everything...much like what Netscape did years ago.
Was it "successful" at actually replacing Exchange with no [significant] trouble for Systems Administrators? I need to know. How come it is not that known in IT circles? What's going on?
In other news . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Office Depot, Office Max, and Staples reported a shortage of office chairs in the supply chain. When asked, representatives were unsure to the exact nature of the shortage.
"According to our suppliers, someone in Redmond, Washington has decided to corner the market on office chairs," one company spokesman said.
----------BREAKING NEWS-----------
This just in! According to NORAD, the nation's defense system went on alert after controllers detected a large number of unknown flying objects coming from the Pacific Northwest. While the status has not entered DEFCON 1, a spokesman for the Defense Department assured the public that this was a precautionary measure as the objects themselves do not appear to be very large and that they originated from the Northwest rules out an nuclear attack from either China or the former Soviet Union.
Also (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, not this shit again? Come on.... (Score:5, Informative)
Drop in replacement, you say? Will MOSS or CRM play with it? Will it pick up AD rules and GPOs? What about BCM and Project Server?
OR, is it just another glorified POP/IMAP box?
I read the feature set from the web site.
I know Exchange, I was in the original product group way back when. This AINT no DROP IN REPLACEMENT.
That said, for what it does, good for them!
But people should watch their words. Side by side against Exchange 2007, it would not be a fair fight.
Outlook support = pay to play (Score:5, Informative)
From their FAQ:
If I build Zarafa from source, can I still buy a license for Outlook access?
Technically this is possible, but you always need to have the Zarafa-professional package for Outlook support. This package is available for the default supported distributions.
No different than all the others... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another open source exchange replacement that didn't open source everything required to interact with outlook.
Without that, whats the point?
150 man-years of work (Score:5, Funny)
Quick! I need a baby in a month! Find me 9 women!
Umm... and why does this matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a former MAPI programmer (don't worry - I've largely recovered) I have to point out that this is utterly irrelevant.
The only compelling reason to use an Exchange compatible server is to support Outlook. The issue is that Zarafa charges for the Outlook connector. This is not a new business model, people, and truth be told its been a fairly common paradigm of 'Exchange-killers' for quite awhile now. Nothing is killed until the connector is free. Full stop.
So why doesn't anyone offer a free connector? Because it is ridiculous amount of work to build and it is something corporations are willing to pay for. It's not that replicating the server functionality is difficult, it's that Microsoft twisted and violated open standards into something utterly unholy known as Exchange to ensure that nobody but Microsoft could communicate with it. MAPI is Microsoft's obfuscation of traditional messaging protocols and is infamously poorly documented.
I wrote about this issue for Redmond magazine about 2 years ago and nothing's changed. The connector is still the kicker and, regardless of how nifty the back-end is, until an open-source Outlook connector appears Exchange will remain one of MS's top 5 products.
Nothing but PR to see here. Move along...
Nice crippleware slashvertisement (Score:5, Informative)
Re:EAT SHIT FAGGOTS!! (Score:5, Funny)
Linux is for the garbage can!
Sweet! What won't Linux run on these days?
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Re:EAT SHIT FAGGOTS!! (Score:5, Funny)
Can you imagine a Beowolf cluster of those? Take THAT, big iron [wikipedia.org].
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Re:Not GPL, maybe not Free Software (Score:5, Informative)
Hey, look! FUD!
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Re:Not GPL, maybe not Free Software (Score:5, Informative)
If FSF considers it to be free software, how it is not free software
One of the requirements of Free Software [gnu.org] is "[t]he freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1)." The Affero GPL explicitly denies this freedom:
I don't care who endorses the AGPL; by the FSF's own definitions, it is not Free Software. Get pissed off and mod me down all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that the AGPL is a EULA in that it governs the behavior of people who merely run the software, even if they do not distribute it (by any reasonable definition of the word "distribute" that has been in common usage during the history of computing).
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