Can We Finally Ditch Exchange? 710
"With new releases on the way, like Mandrake 9.0 and the new Lycoris can we who try to use Free Software in business environments hope for any change? Do the commercial Linux distros have any plans to implement a free replacement for Exchange, including a Win32 client-side bridge? If not, why not? Do you feel it is too cost prohibitive to imitate Bynari in this case, or is it a decision more along the lines of 'we'd rather you used Evolution and Mandrake/Lycoris/Whatever, rather than OutLook and Win32'? If it's the latter I'd be severely disappointed, and I don't think I'm alone. Any discussion on this topic would be appreciated; but what I'd really love is a community push to get this done. Perhaps a running Web-A-Thon to raise the money to simply purchase the technology from Bynari? I personally think it would be a great move towards grabbing market share from some of the other distributions, some of which have the technology but choose to keep it closed, as well as from the Great Dragon. What do you think?"
no (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:no (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:no (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason for this is simple. Exchange uses the Outlook client; the Outlook client comes with Office; Office is the de-facto standard software for almost any corporation that uses computers.
At first I thought if there was an open source system that was compatible with Outlook that would do the trick, however HP offered a system that did just that, and even it didn't make a dent in Exchange's market.
Re:no (Score:5, Interesting)
Two things...
First, HP's product (now owned aparently by Samsung) wasn't really open source, although it did run on some open source platforms. It was certainly not free software.
Second, HP never really made much of an effort to try to sell their product. It sure looked like they were afraid of reprisals from Microsoft if it was too successful.
So I don't think we really know for sure what would happen if there were a free/open source calendar/messaging/groupware server that was compatible with Outlook clients... I personally think it would become quite popular, especially with small to mid sized businesses that would like to save some money in today's trying financial climate.
Re:no (Score:3, Insightful)
Open Source is a good thing for the simple reason that the app doesn't chain you to the OS. For instance, Sun Java will not run on the next versions of Mandrake and Red Hat, because of ABI changes brought on by gcc-3.2. If Sun's Java was actually opensourced (rather than their half-assed attempt), it would be a simple matter to rebuild it for new distros.
Re:no (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why it takes MS a month to release security patches. The patch itself could be out in a few hours (they have a 24-hour security team), but they spend the rest of that time testing it on every configuration possible to make sure it doesn't break other software.
Just more pro-Open Source FUD.
Re:no (Score:4, Interesting)
Fix it now and piss a few people off, fix it later and piss a ton of people off, or never fix it and be a nonstandard compiler.
GCC: A nonstandard compiler. Um, no.
Compilers, particularly C++ compilers (GCC broke ONLY the C++ ABI) are ENORMOUSLY complex pieces of software and that the things even work are miracles in and of themselves. This one had bug. It happens. Try to tell me that Microsoft's compiler doesn't have bugs, or that ANY other compiler does not.
You see, if you would have done a little homework rather than labelling that which you know little about as FUD, you would have known this. (Not that I am not guilty of the same thing every so often
Re:no (Score:3, Insightful)
This is what I'm talking about. It sounds like they "have" to release their code for it to work -- once again, not their problem. Windows 3.1 apps still run on my WinXP machine w/o a problem. I've never had my hands on the code. Perhaps there is a better solution than releasing the code... hmmm??
Re:no (Score:3, Informative)
That depends on your needs, motivations or opinions I guess.
I can understand the need/want to get off as cheap as possible. But, I think people need to realize there are expenses related to running a business. I personally would not be opposed to paying for a mail solution that had as many features as Exchange but worked on multiple platforms.
I'm not so idealistic either that I absolutely won't pay for software. I won't pay Microsoft for software, because I don't think they deserve my money, but I have and will pay money to those who I think are deserving of it.
That is a piece of the puzzle that is important enough in most companies that having a support contract, or at least a company to get ahold of would be a requirement for most.
I personally don't believe in support contracts. In general I think it is better and cheaper to pay only when you actually have a problem. I dislike dealing with companies that try to force you into paying for contracts by refusing to provide adequate service to those who don't have contracts or by charging ridiculous prices to people who prefer as-needed services.
Let it be based on open standards IMAP/LDAP/ and UCAP?? (universal calendar access protocol
The IETF standard for calendars is iCalendar, and is covered by RFC 2445.
I'd personally prefer to see a calendaring/scheduling system that wasn't so closely married to email and address book functionality... or at least that let me mix-and-match what I wanted to use for those. Allowing interface to alternate IMAP and LDAP clients and servers would certainly be a step in the right direction to me.
That way everybody and their mom can write a client or have tie-ins to different applications. And somebody can make enough money on the server to have a staff to support and extend the product. Just please don't go nuts like microsoft did on the pricing.
I wouldn't mind seeing something like that happen, but I'd really rather see something free and open source so that it could get included into Linux distros, for example. It would make it a lot easier to become popular if people could just choose to set it up like they do Apache, Samba, etc.
But if it is closed source for the server, please, please, please, no fscking client license fees, O.K.? If I have to pay, I'd much rather pay only a per-server license fee, or even a 'power unit' based server license fee (although I don't like those much either) than have to fsck around with damned client licenses. That isn't just based on price -- that is based on convenience.
Re:no (Score:2, Interesting)
RFC 2447 (Score:5, Insightful)
What about RFC 2447 [faqs.org]? The iCalendar protocol looks to have been developed jointly by Netscape, MS and Lotus. Exchange may support this, and even if it doesn't, this would be a good place to start.
As for the client-side, I think that I fully-featured web mail system can easily replace Outlook on the corporate desktop. They may all have Office, but they've got browsers too!
I totally agree... (Score:2)
If we had some sort of calendar protocol that could authenticate using some other standards and allow groups to login to their system with different access rights from windows/linux/java/everywhere I think that would put a huge dent in the side of exchange.
The Mozilla calendar is pretty sharp. It would be cool to see it evolve in this direction.
Re:no (Score:2, Interesting)
What ever happened to iCalendar [resource.org], sometimes known as vCalendar [imc.org]?
Aren't there any LDAP-based solutions [ietf.org] or proposals [netscape.com]?
Re:no (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, I should be more specific; it needs to work with Outlook. The reason for this is that given a choice, users will work with software that is already installed vs. installing something new; and this includes the users in the IT department. If you don't beleive me, look at browser usage statistics; why install Netscape when you already have IE installed? Why install AIM when you have MSN right there on your new XP box?
Make it work with outlook and you immediately have a client base. Make a tool to ease the migration and you're golden.
Re:no (Score:2, Interesting)
However, I disagree that it needs to work with Outlook. As I mentioned in another post, we were happily using CS&T side by side with Outlook, it was fine.
However, just as Outlook supports IMAP, POP, SMTP and LDAP (because it must), a calendaring standard that is in general use in other programs would inevitably be supported by Outlook as well. But it seems to me that such a thing would be worth doing in any case.
Re:no (Score:5, Interesting)
So it's not impossible. Perhaps a simple SOAP/XML-RPC protocol for an open source server to make it easy to build web-apps on top of, coupled with a MAPI Store Provider, and the problem is solved.
Hell, I'll volunteer the VOLUMES of knowledge and time I spent on this (3 years ago, so my NDA's no longer apply
chris.mapimsp@ckaminski.com for those who might like to take on such a project. Or how about this, anyone got a good calendaring system that I can just interface with?
Or a calendaring system coupled with an IMAP mail server would make it relatively easy to build mail functionality into the system without having to go to the integration levels that MS did with Exchange.
-Chris
Re:no (Score:3, Insightful)
It may be possible to replace Outlook as a client with something like Lotus Notes or the like, but it had better be at least as good as a client (Notes is not.) Outlook is an excellent client. So is Evolution, but Evolution is still about 20% shy of serviceability - it needs to be 20% ahead to justify a migration (and the feature of virtual folders could be half that battle right there) - but it doesn't run in Win32 environments yet and there's no indication it will. Mozilla calendar still lacks a lot of finish, including basic sync conduits for Palm/Pocket PC and, of course, enterprise calendaring.
Re:no (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sure this applies to many sysadmins, and in reality, the only people with the power to swith over users software are sysadmins of one
This is a decision for IT heads or even presidents of companies to make depending on the size. If it makes economic sense to swith over they will, but not because it "isn't microsoft". If we actually want to create a viable alternative, we need to entice corporate decision makers with dollar signs, not with rhetoric.
Re:no (Score:4, Insightful)
2 reasons (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:2 reasons (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:2 reasons (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong. I work for a medium sized company. And I can't find anything that provides my clients the functionality that Outlook/Exchange provides. I've looked, but it just isn't there yet.
It has nothing to do with support. If you think anyone buying MS products actually expects them to be "suppported" outside of their in-house IT staff, you're imagining things.
Give me a product, open source or not, that provides my clients (on whose interests I act) with the functionality of Exchange, and I'll get the Purchase Order ready by close of business today.
Re:2 reasons (Score:5, Informative)
Give me a product, open source or not, that provides my clients (on whose interests I act) with the functionality of Exchange, and I'll get the Purchase Order ready by close of business today.
How about Centrinty FirstClass [centrinity.com]? Cross platform unified messaging and groupware. I can access my email, voicemail, calendar, contacts from any computer anywhere in the world at a fraction of the cost of Exchange. Don't laugh, it works!
Re:2 reasons (Score:3, Informative)
like me. I'm starting up a small company with a handful of folks - and First Class [centrinity.com] is doing just fine for us. We have caledaring, email, voicemail, reads emails to you thru the phone, can reply to those over the phone with voice emails (.wav files sent as attachements), conferences for group postings, a SMTP service, webmail...
for business users, its got predefined groups of users (management, financial people, marketing pukes, etc.) Security between groups is easy to understand and easy to implement. Even a MSCE can do it!
the list goes on and on.
the school i went to - Biola.edu - they are now running with well over 8000 accounts - with around a few hundred connected at once - if you care, ask me next week when all the students come back, and there will be thousands on at once. We'll know then if the dual Xenon will melt, or survive.
Its been used there since 1993, and its been just great.
I'm looking forward to getting some of that capital i was promised so i can run it on a real server.
its cross platform (Windows, Mac os 9, Mac OS X) and, like i said, and the web interface lets you do anything that the executable client software lets you do - including calendaring and multi-user chat sessions.
its not perfect, so here's some drawbacks... its missing a few key features..
- no "sent mail" folder (and no, you Can't make one),
- filters/rules.. all your email goes into the inbox... spam and all. bletch.
- amazingly enough, there's no good alert sound to let you know when you've got a new message - no pop-up, no flashing Dock/startmenuthing blinking..
- you can't back up the databases while its running - soooo... you'll probably do what i do, and that's mirror the drives, and pray to God there's no database corruption, but that its just a drive fault.
other than that, its a great and cheap alternative to Exchange - especially since you can try it out today for free. The server runs on Windows and Mac OS 9 (and classic, btw: my server is on a 10.1 server, but its running in classic). There should be a Mac OS X First Class Server out sometime in the near future too. No word yet if it will run on Darwin, but don't be a cheap-ass.. just buy 10.2.
Centrinity is a bunch of levelheaded business people who started out as mac guys, but expanded to windows too. They are also canadians.. what more could you want?
Re:2 reasons (Score:2, Informative)
I can't think of anything Exchange/Outlook does that a Notes client/server pair doesn't do.
-Rusty
Share the crack (Score:2, Insightful)
On the flip side it's horribly complicated, unreliable, resource intensive, and when it breaks it breaks BAD. But even with all those negative things going against it, there's NOTHING else we can use to replace it. There is no competition for our dollar in this area, commercial or free.
And as far as Microsoft support... try getting them to help you fix your broken Exchange 5.5 installation sometime. We don't call Microsoft for anything--we don't believe they could be of any real help. As with any software that the user has to modify after installation, there's not much a phone tech guy can do to help.
Alternative to "massive compensation" (Score:3, Funny)
I work as sysadmin on an Air Force base. We have a commercial support contract with Sun that specifies they get replacement parts to us in 4 hours. The other day a hard drive died, and I had the amusement of writing in the support request, "I know where Sun's headquarters are; get me a new hard drive in 4 hours or I call in an airstrike."
(Then I thought some more about it and erased that sentence. Damn humorless paper-pushers. (So of course it took six hours for the drive to get to me.) Oh well.)
I feel your pain. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I feel your pain. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I (don't) feel your pain. (Score:4, Informative)
However, there are two issues with it that bother the hell out of me: (Note: This is Exchange 5.5, not the latest one. Nobody where I work is interested in paying gobs more when there's free stuff out there.)
1.) The copy we have is limited to 25 licenses. This means that 25 connections are allowed at one time. More than that and Exchange punts you. "Sorry, you have to wait until a connection is open."
The IMAP protocol is particularly attractive, so it's used a lot. But it counts as 2 connections because it makes one for inbound and one for outbound. So you can have 12.5 simultaneous connections before Exchange says "Sorry, give me more money."
What makes it worse is that IMAP is rather persistent, as opposed to POP3 that just hops in and hops out. My company of 19 had to tighten control over who uses what and when over it. This alone is enough to make us move away from MS.
2.) You cannot uninstall Exchange 5.5. I boogered up the install once and had to reinstall WinNT because it wouldn't give me the option to remove Exchange and start over. Maybe a little more poking and prodding could have solved it without a rebuild, but I was in emergency 'We need it yesterday!!' mode and didn't have the keys to the company Tardis.
Exchange gets points for being very easy to use and run, but it is a huge moneypit. If I were running on less than 15 people, I'd be fine with it. However, for more than that I'm ready to learn how Linux works and build a server with that.
Re:I (don't) feel your pain. (Score:3, Funny)
How do you delete 21+ thousand groups from the server then? ONE BY ONE!!! You cannot select more than one group to manipulate.
ARGH!!!!!
[space] [delete] [y] [space] [delete] [y] [space] [delete] [y]
I killed a keyboard that weekend
Alot of us are waiting (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Alot of us are waiting (Score:2)
I've met quite a few people, who works on OSS, and quite a few developers and programmers, and I think that in total, I have met three people, who would be able to do it. And I doubt I'm even in their league.
Re:Alot of us are waiting (Score:3, Insightful)
Useless or worthwhile to whom?
Trust me, one day someone--most likely a corporation burned by Exchange--will fund the development of an Exchange replacement. These things tend to need a critical mass of outrage against the status quo before real changes begin. If Exchange is an anchor to enough organizations or just a single big enough organization, something will happen about it.
It is important to be patient about Open Source. Open Source software undergoes evolution on natural terms, not arbitrary business terms, which means it will always tend toward fufilling real needs but on a more realistic timeline.
However, I still encourage you to advocate ideas about Exchange, because public awareness is the most important weapon against companies like Microsoft and their less-than-stellar products. Just don't be disappointed in the amount of time it takes for real change to occur.
Re:Alot of us are waiting (Score:2)
It really does work very well.
Re:Alot of us are waiting (Score:2)
As a SMB consultant, I can tell you that every business I go to that has Exchange uses the individual and group calendaring functions. Larger businesses use it for reserving conference rooms and such. And 80% of the businesses that don't have Exchange want it, but can't afford the price for it. And I have very little alternatives to offer them.
Re:Alot of us are waiting (Score:3, Insightful)
You probably want atleast the email and calendaring closely coupled if not the same app. If I arrange a meeting an email is sent to all those invited. Those reading the email are given the option of accepting or rejecting the meeting. If accepted the meeting is automagically added to the readers calendar. I have used a couple of different calendaring systems. Those systems that work and are actually used have email and calendaring somehow integrated. Complete systems like this only make sense in an office type environment. Until you have worked in such an environment it is hard to understand why exchange is so popular.
<aside>
There is often talk of the next killer-app. Email is the basic killer-app of the Internet. Usenet and instant messageing are extentions of email. Calendaring *was* the next killer-app but no one noticed. I don't even think MS understands what makes exchange so popular. If MS is smart the next app they will included in Exchange is a proper multi-author versioning system similar to their current version system (SourceSafe??). That too will be killer. None of this is even close to new. A system like this already exists on IBM big iron. I understand that Lotus Notes does this as well. These are all bussiness killer apps. If you want to really replace Exchange you need all of this. Add an LDAP contact sheet, and input forms and you will have some killer software. The pieces are all there, it just needs a group of dedicated coders to put it all together.
</aside>
It's the administration costs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's the administration costs (Score:4, Insightful)
You know Notes/Domino runs on many different not Windows OSes, including Linux.
Note to IBM: make a native Linux client for Notes, so we can stop having to use the Domino webmail interface.
Notes Sucks (Score:2)
However from a user's point of view, Outlook runs circles around the crappy Notes client interface.
I'd much rather look at a ground-up mail server/mail client implementation than want anything to do with a Linux port of Notes.
Re:It's the administration costs (Score:2)
Re:It's the administration costs (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you kidding - who is going to sue microsoft if Exchange borks? or doesnt perform? or doesnt do what they promised?
They'll be lucky if M$ fixes their issue in the next version --- and they'll be charged for the privilage.
All this hooey about "Companies like someone to sue" falls apart when talking about MS. No one is going to sue MS. Now, OTOH, if someone bought support for the OS and an Open Groupware/Scheduler app from an GNU/Linux company, say redhat/suse/connectiva/mandrake who would their legal department be able to strong arm? M$ or the afore mentioned Good Guys?
Further, the argument about "Who are they going to sue" falls apart when presented with the source. Who would sue vs. paying one of the above to implement their feature?
Open Source, and the super value proposition (synergy* between companies paying developers to work on a codebase and keep the application Open) has yet to be realized, when it is, you'll see alot of big companies break down and say "why do i want to pay to rent (license) something when I can pay to the commons and have EXACTLY the features I want.
*excuse the corpspeak.
Re:It's the administration costs (Score:2)
Let MS have the Enterprise accounts. It's pretty tough to get Fortune 1000 companies to change platforms...but we don't need to. Roll out something that can be used in the thousands of small and medium size businesses who also use Exchange, if they can afford the licensing of it. If it gets out there, and then gets a little press coverage, larger companies will come looking to it.
Small businesses aren't looking for someone to sue or worried that much about support. They want something that sits in a corner and works...something Linux has always excelled at. When they have problems, they'll call someone to fix it...the same thing they do now with Exchange.
Clincher? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Clincher? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmmmm.. Looks like I got a bit carried away there, but you get my meaning.
Re:Clincher? (Score:2)
This really reminds me of the eighties and how IBM was the dominant company. People bought IBM PC's, because well it was IBM. It took about ten years before that switch was to Microsoft. What happened is not that Microsoft won, but a generation moved over to Microsoft. I was part of that generation.
Open Source and LINUX will have the same thing happen. Give it another ten years or so and things will change. Ok everybody has said that. But the truth is that MS is making the exact same mistakes that IBM did. IBM wanted the entire cake and no MS wants the same. When was the last time that other software was installed on a MS user client or server? And MS is doing the exact same strategy that IBM did in the eighties. Invest in everything and hope something works out.
If you look at the stock price of MS and compare it to the stock price of IBM in the eighties you will probably see quite a few similarities.
What I see happening is that some people will convert, but many will stay and a new generation of developers, admins, etc will all start using LINUX. It is already happening...
Re:Clincher? (Score:2)
Re:Clincher? (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually it is 180% of the functionality and 500% of the quality but might be missing one or two stupid features that the authors decided not to implement because it's stupid/useless/insecure/whatever, that the CEO fell in love with. There are plenty of non-Exchange calendaring solutions. There are plenty of mail solutions that exceed Exchange in every way - features, performance, and reliability. But they're not Exchange, and fuckwit CEOs aren't smart enough to grasp the idea of using non-Microsoft software.
Don't waste your time trying to write software that replaces [X] in the general case. The people you are trying to reach with it won't be receptive. They don't want the functionality or performance or other characteristics [X]; what they really want is the fact that it *IS* [X]. By definition nothing you write will be [X] and therefore only a few percent of the target market will be interested. Do not attempt to sell anything to fools based on its merit. Instead, take up golf and consider offering kickbacks.
If you are going to write software, write software that meets a need FOR YOU. You know, do it the way that got us here. Trying to rewrite Exchange in all it's bloated, slow, insecure glory just so that someone at Stupidity, Inc. will use it is pointless unless you work for Stupidity Inc. After all, if you wanted Exchange, you'd use it. Since you don't, why would you want to write it?
So either write something new that will be its own [X], or write or contribute to something that competes with [X] on its own terms, by offering different functionality, better performance, or other features that are more useful to you. There's no point in reinventing the wheel to take away someone else's market share.
Re:Clincher? (Score:4, Funny)
This goes both ways, and it is a matter of what people are used to. Whenever I use Windows I think:
Where's Bourne shell???
Where's vi, sed, and egrep???
Where's UFS and NFS???
What happened to root's ability to do anything worthwhile???
How do I get GUI applications to display over the network???
How do I read a PostScript file???
I know that many of these things can be done on Windows eventually, but there is always one more thing I can't do on Windows that I'm used to doing in UNIX.
Use Cygwin! (Score:3, Informative)
Where's Bourne shell??? Where's vi, sed, and egrep???
Here [cygwin.com].
How do I get GUI applications to display over the network???
With this [cygwin.com].
How do I read a PostScript file???
With this [wisc.edu].
I know that many of these things can be done on Windows eventually
Red Hat Cygwin [cygwin.com]. The future is now.
No, Red Hat is not paying me to plug Cygwin.
Re:Clincher? (Score:2)
Samsung's OpenMail (Score:5, Informative)
I've been surprised that there hasn't been more effort on the Linux side of things to create a replacement. I would have thought that Redhat would have come up with something. Since as the poster notes, Exchange functionality tends to be a big killer whenever you flirt with replacing in house systems. If you can't provide the integrated and shared calendaring it usually won't fly.
Samsung Contact (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Samsung Contact (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Samsung Contact (Score:5, Informative)
Ah, that's true, but a lot of people (like me) turn to it when the PHB's demand things like painless group calendaring. HP Openmail (Samsung Contact) is a product that does what the execs need for the company, yet runs on my *nix boxen, so I don't have to drop an Exchange server onto my network.
I've run HP Openmail for the last two years or so, and it's been as flawless as I can expect. Very flexible, configurable (all by CLI and
HP will support the product until 2006, so I have lots of time to wait for Samsung to get their act together with Contact. They're still sort of fumbling about, last time I stopped by their website. They've had a support rep contact me a few times about the switchover process, but he's not a tech guy, and just keeps telling me to be patient, which is fine with me. Detailed migration help is on the way.
So the short answer is that Openmail/Contact fills a niche that no free software does yet. People that need a mature and complex messaging backend (more than just an MTA), but don't care much for Exchange will love it.
Belloc
Exchange is very useful (Score:3, Interesting)
The IT guys think they may have found an exchange server replacemetn with SUSE but for now exhcnage is very useful and would be very hard to replace.
Thanks for reading
Good question. (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly, I had always thought that the Sendmail folks would be the one to deliver. They have certainly nailed down the mail side and I feel that they could do a great job integrating calendaring and other groupware features, most importantly a programming interface to make it an extensible solution like Exchange or Notes. Unfortunately, as of yet, they have not indicated that they are pursuing this.
OSS is still out in the cold when it comes to an OSS Groupware application that scales.
It's Not Just the Calendar (Score:2)
Someone else may have more information on this to acknowledge or debunk. I do sit by an Exchange tech who can give me an answer to this later, but not today.
I hope this happens--using the Outlook client in Mac OS 9/Classic while running OS X is a pain, and I noted a nasty bug for users who aren't in DST time zones that make the calendar worthless for half a year.
Re:It's Not Just the Calendar (Score:2)
Open Protocol and an Outlook plugin... (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the best idea would be to use an open protocol (and not an obfuscated MS-Protokoll (think SMB)) for client-server communication (perhaps there already are suitable protocols out there?) and implement a server and a plugin for Outlook (and other PIM applications as well, of course)... if it is possible to teach Outlook a new protocol via a plugin.
The reason to run Exchange (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The reason to run Exchange (Score:3, Insightful)
Corporate Board Meeting
_______________________
Mean Boss: What the hell is wrong with our email system? Why do we keep getting virii and trojans on our network filesystems?
Burned out IT worker: Because we were told to buy software that was known to have many exploits and a number of design flaws, against our better judgement.
Mean Boss: Whoever told you to do that should be fired, I wanna know their names!
Burned out IT worker: Sir, it was you...
Mean Bosses Meaner Boss: Well Bob, hope you've polished up that resume'.
__________________________
AP news story: Someone fired for buying Microsoft!
People are starting to get fired for buying MSFT (Score:5, Interesting)
I know of three people who did get fired for buying Microsoft.
A friend of mine is now providing consulting to the companies in question. Two are running Twig on Linux servers, the other has their old non-ms, non-unix server back up and working (again) while they slowly transition to Linux.
Despite all the "I'll sound wise and neutral if I make out to be 'admitting' free software's flaws and giving Microsoft its due" commentary one sees here on slashdot as either an effort at karma whoring, or an effort at pro-Microsoft propoganda and astroturfing, the fact remains that there are really very few shops that cannot do without Microsoft, and many that actually benefit from running other platforms.
What is very interesting is the number of non-technical people who are coming to realize that, and while they don't necessarilly embrace free software in general, or GNU/Linux in particular, they are beginning to recognize just what a financial, technical, and time drain Microsoft and their products have become to their enterprises, and they are looking for ways out.
Even to the point where, now, people are starting to get fired for blindly purchasing Microsoft, and treating MS propoganda as a substitute for technical research and savvy.
Its a rather refreshing change, actually.
I wish I had Exchange (Score:2)
the concept of exchange (Score:4, Interesting)
Here, we have one Exchange server for 150 people. But then there are 9 locations, from San Francisco to san Diego. They all hit the same server through the wan.
Remote users (15+) also use outlook web access (i't really Exchange web access if you think about it) to access their mail. We have to allow that traffic through the firewall.
And every single one of our people have one or more other email addresses (AOL, Earthlink, RR, whatever).
I would say: have better addressing handling.
Email was first created by geeks for geeks (at univs. and gov.) and served its purpose well. When the move was made to the company, the whole transition was just done wrong.
I say the Exchange servers should be totally eliminiated in favor of a non-lan/wan centric solution (watch your step, marketing words all around), namely a true internet application, shared, replicable, and reliable.
As far as calendaring is concerned, we don't use it much. Our corporate values promote face-time and intelligent conversation more than lines on a spreadsheet, so meetings are more dynamic, more fluid, and less apt tp be "scheduled". Usually it's a phone call.
Anyway, I digress.
But this may be the reason no open-sourcer wants to tackle that issue. It may subconsciously feel flawed to recreate the Exchange architecture.
The problem with engineers scratching an itch (Score:2, Interesting)
There is no personal motivation to build such a product. The people who really have a motiviation are companies like RedHat who would benefit from the support contracts they could sell as a result of having this software in their suite.
Big Companies like support, and RedHat is selling. It doesn't help however if the product physicaly isn't out there.
Someone complained about there being no 'Standard' for a calendaring protocol. Why don't you draw up and RFC? It's not that hard (Sure beats the guy who wrote up a joke RFC for TCP/IP over XML or TCP/IP over carrier pigeon). If someone would pay my salary, I would start work on an exchange replacement tomorrow, open protocol or not. It's sad that Open Source or any UNIX software on the desktop falls at the last hurdle: Microsoft Office and affiliated products. Open Office is pretty good, but it still looks like crap on the standard RedHat distro, and like it or not, most corporates are buying RedHat.
I purchased Applixware years ago, and it was great! I did bunches of stuff in it. But it's not a Visio/Outlook replacement.
My Top Three reasons it's not happening:
No Integrated Calendaring/Email
No Fonts
No Visio
I can get by with open office for Excel replacement, and Word replacement, but I'm not a power user of those products to start with. I'd rather write a perl script to process data than a Word Macro or VB Script.
Perhaps someone (RedHat/Madrake/SuSe) should get out there and find out what people really want.
Of course this is assuming that they are targeting the windows market (which RedHat for one isn't).
How to defeat Exchange (Score:5, Insightful)
Server Side:
1. The replacement must support Outlook as a client, people actually like Outlook as an integrated client.
2. The Replacement must work with the Sendto functions of Microsoft Office
3. The Replacement must be able to scale to 10's of thousands of users, in geographically diverse locations.
4. Must Support Multipule languages
5. Must be easily scannable for Virus protection, and must be able to deny delivery of messages that fit certain criteria
6. Easy rules based scripting of mail events stored on the server as part of the user's mail box.
7. Must support enterprise calendaring/scheduling.
8. Must inter-operate with Exchange during migration
9. Must support server and OS of choice at the company(You know what that means)
10. Must offer web mail capabilities equal too or better than OWA(this includes the ability to secure the web mail client via SecureID)
11. Must support massive data stores, on the order of 500GB-1TB(yes exchange can do this)
12. Must Integrate with our directory services, like exchange 2000 integrates with AD.
13 In short it has to do all the things that exchange can do, and more, and better.
Client Side:
1. Must have a client which supports all the functions of the server side. In short its gotta work like Outlook.
2. Must Support OS, and hardware of choice.
3. Easy Rules based scripting interface to server and client side rules(Think Outlook rules wizard)
4. Must be dead simple for users to use, users don't learn they want everything to work just like it always has, even if you give them a new application to do it. When we moved from Banyan Beyond Mail to Outlook when we went from a banyan network to an NT one it was a nightmare for all of the administrative assistants as their workflow was massively changed.
So there you have it....rebuild exchange as an OSS roject and get back to us...this is not meant as Troll, this is a real world example of how a corporation is going to look at such a thing.
Re:How to defeat Exchange (Score:3, Insightful)
Exchange is like any other piece of server software; if you implement it properly, it's going to work fine for you. If you just shovel it onto a computer, you're going to get exactly what you deserve.
Re:How to defeat Exchange (Score:2)
Server Side:
1. The replacement must support Outlook as a client, people actually like Outlook as an integrated client.
With email they can use imap. that's what I do, most users won't know the difference. And on the linux side just use Evolution.
2. The Replacement must work with the Sendto functions of Microsoft Office
My sendto works fine with my imap setup.
5. Must be easily scannable for Virus protection, and must be able to deny delivery of messages that fit certain criteria
That's easy to do with procmail or some other linux email scanning software
6. Easy rules based scripting of mail events stored on the server as part of the user's mail box.
again, procmail would work perfect for this. I use it now for my mailling lists and spam sorting
7. Must support enterprise calendaring/scheduling.
This is the biggest problem I see. THIS is what management types like, nice shared, pretty, easy to use calendars and scheduling.. Once this is able to work, IN outlook, then there will be something..
12. Must Integrate with our directory services, like exchange 2000 integrates with AD.
LDAP works with outlook for address books, probably works with other stuff.
In short, a lot of the stuff does work, like email, sorting, directory services.. the big problems are getting it easy to use, and the scheduling stuff..
Excellent start. (Score:2)
Frankly, a good deal of your list can be done easily or has already been done in various different OSS apps. But there is no single app that has them all and none with good scheduling capabilities or APIs to allow for further expansion of the systems capabilities.
Regardless, the list you have provided clearly demonstrates part of the reason why there is as yet no such OSS app. Simply, it's a really big job. Furthermore, it's not something that most programmers might want or need, it's what corporations need. And that's the kicker.
Most OSS programmers do it to scratch their particular itch or enjoy providing a solution for the masses, the fame or whatever. It's what interests them so they do it. On the other hand, building a huge beast of an app that doesn't really interest them and will only be used by corporations doesn't really draw a crowd of developers willing to work for free.
open source in business land (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the fundamental problem with Open Source in business land -- you need a coder who has the time to code and actually cares about making it work. I see lots of sysadmin types complain about Exchange but no one seems to hate it enough to sit down and work on something better. Most of the businesses approaching Mandrake, RH, etc are looking to dump the Microsoft solutions entirely so Exchange is not a big deal there. Or they are only looking for server -> server solutions and not desktops.
Last but not least you have the problem that Exchange is 100% proprietary. Look at all of the "fun" Samba has had trying to get smb interoperability right. I also bet Microsoft would be VERY apt to sue a company that did this into the ground. Might as well paint a target on your head.
As with every other itch you just need to find someone to scratch it. You mentioned "clients", why not funnel some of that contracting cash to coders willing to work on the project.
A bit about these guys (Score:2, Interesting)
The guy I put in charge of programming (Krishna) what he was basically doing was going onto Soureforce and similar opensource sites and looking for projects that he can strun up and assemble into our product (sicne our product had generic thing that can be done like that -- it was multimedia traffic controlling unit). Krishna over a few beers (and after being laid off aftr the fall of etc etc.. ) told me that this is how everthing is done there, he went onto say that 90% of everthing in the product that I supposidly helped produce came from the net and opensource projects, one guy in the team was good in obsfucating code, the other was good in putting the different modules to work together.. I didnt know what to say, later I looked at the opensource projects in question and two of them have died off over time... This is sad, the guys at Bynari got over 1.5 million dollars for what we made. BTW, if your a journalist or some opensource person interested in this story, I could be reached at krugerfi@NOSPAM.GRIconsulting.com
OOogw (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Mozilla/OEone is working on it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Exchange stifles competition (Score:2, Interesting)
I can't count the number of software projects out there stifled by Exchange server, or free email services like Hotmail and Yahoo. Microsoft makes it very hard to develop for these services by keeping their protocols and methods under wraps.
Try getting into the corporate market with an email filter that doesn't support exchange [si20.com] ; or an email client that chokes on hotmail [incredimail.com]. Sad but true - even though free email services are a joke, especially to businesses with an IT department that can configure infinite email addresses for free, on the fly -- free email services are used in *every* business model. It's rediculous!
Open source needs to open the floor for innovation.
--Doug
Because groupware is a hard problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that mentioning Lotus Notes violates the Code of Slashdot Posting, but take a look at Notes sometime. The people who designed that system spent a long time thinking very hard about how to build a mobile, distributed, secure groupware system (note: you do not need to agree with the solution they built to acknowledge that they thought very deeply about the problem). Then - they spent a lot of time and money building what they had designed.
(Exchange is basically an imitation of the 45% of Notes' features that are most commonly used, without the thought, design, or security).
Who in the Free Software/Open Source world is going to spend that kind of time and effort? Particularly given that most Linuxians fall into the "don't like groupware" camp?
sPh
Ahem. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ahem. (Score:4, Insightful)
But to address your question, and the brilliant observations of the iarchitect.com web site: please do keep in mind that Notes was developed before Windows 95, and long before Microsoft released the Common Interface guidelines, at a time when there was no agreement on how GUI interfaces should look or work. Every application at that time (including the various Microsoft apps) had its own look and feel. The designers of Notes built a platform-independent GUI from scratch without any guidelines to use and before most of what passes for "UI research" today was published (I am no big fan of the Microsoft CUI standards myself).
As for iarchitect.com, the first thing they rip on are the fat double-click buttons and tabbed desktop. Whereas when I was supporting Notes, the first thing that non-geekaziod users would ask me after they had used Notes for a while was how they could add the fat buttons and tabs to their other applications! So I am not quite so convinced that was a bad choice...
I also find it funny that the denizens of this site post violent diatribes concerning Microsoft's stifling monoculture and lack of innovation, but when faced with something a little different rip on how it "doesn't follow standards"!
sPh
Wild Guess (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source shows a strong prediliction for solving interesting problems well ahead of boring ones. For instance, we had useful, powerful distributed databases, cryptography, new languages and C compilers long before we had a functional word processor and spreadsheet combo. Quite simply, we have already solved mail distribution and address-book sharing on their own, and have relatively little interest in peeling apart a proprietary MS standard for same which is liable to change next week. This is also the reason why OpenOffice is great for everything except reading and writing Word documents.
This flows into my new theory about how Microsoft intends to go about attacking Linux: A deluge of boring, repetitious, pointless APIs and interfaces for problems that were long ago solved but now must be addressed using these new, uselessly variant interfaces simply because that's what everyone else has to do. (Think dotnet.) A hacker's familiarity with extant interfaces is his or her number-one resource, and is therefore that which he or she will part with least readily --- even at the expense of the compatibility or useability of the code they're writing.
Microsoft's strategy is reminiscent, in some ways, of an ancient Incan technique for pacifying politically difficult villages and towns. By forcibly migrating the entire settlement to some distant part of the empire, the usefulness of the skill-sets of these hunter-gatherers was greatly reduced, making them dependent on the (massively centralized) government for handouts, and therefore suddenly rather polite in their relations with the regime.
In the same way that a hunter-gatherer depends on his knowledge of the land, a geek depends on knowledge of the problem and solution spaces. Furthermore, most OSS projects are extremely long-term endeavours; think GCC, think Emacs, think the Linux kernel(*). OSS developers work by building things slowly and correctly with a minimal expenditure of precious manpower; Microsoft works by using more coders, more money, insane work hours and a blase attitude toward standards (even difficult, complicated, important standards) so that they may get to market early , recoup such expenditures, and get to work on the next total (and totally incompatible) revision of their product, which people will use simply because of the upgrade path that MS will kludge together with exactly the same bloodyminded application of superior capital.
Simply put, we need stability more than they do, because they have more time and money. We write things right the first time, whereas they have the luxury of making as many mistakes as they need to in order to grab market share. But more importantly, we need the projects of the past to have been written right the first time; we need a working libc, kernel, and so forth, otherwise OSS simply doesn't happen. Microsoft has no such prerequisites to its growth, as, in a pinch, *it can simply replace its foundations by fiat*. Their hunter-gatherers can, metaphorically speaking, simply create (with a certain expenditure of time and effort) the landscape best suited to their requirements. Thus they can march along beside us, setting the pace, forcing a speedup, replacing good APIs with new because every step into new territory costs them less than it costs us, dissociates us from our well-known and powerful (if somewhat lacking) APIs and encourages our work to depend on their own work, which will then be changed, etc, rendering ours much less useful.
Ultimately, the strategy is designed to encourage hackers to go take up billiards or chess or something with a potential of being useful to remember or think about or use five minutes hence. The ultimate goal of cycling APIs is to induce *indifference*, as we face a choice between working harder on minutia or walking away, hands in the air.
(*)Note that, of these projects, two are sufficiently low-level to be immune to all but the most radical shifts in design; this is again indicative of what OSS excels at.
Replacing Exchange is not a trivial task (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this is part of the problem with any existing attempts or lack thereof to replicate it...Exchange very elegantly handles messaging, calendaring and basic groupware with elegance.
For instance Exchange uses databases with transactional capability to provide extreme scaleability and reliability on the back-end. It has backup APIs that support amazing throughput for on-line hot backups. The database reclaims pages and defragments itself essentially in real time. Exchange supports every protocol in the book...but most customers implement it with their proprieatary MAPI protocol because it actually works a lot better than things like POP3, & IMAP.
Single instance storage allows Sally from marketing to send out her corporate spam to all internal unsuspecting users and the message will only be stored once in the database, there are semaphore links that track who has read the message or deleted it from their mailbox, disk consumption and server I/O load is dramatically reduced, especially when the message is 5 megabytes across 15,000 users!
I could easily come with a design document for a system that would essentially clone Exchange, the problem is around actually programming the system.
You would need a robust database back-end with excellent management support for things like hot backup and real-time database page reclamation, powerful & scaleable MTAs, an arm's length list of supported protocols and APIs, a user friendly cross platform client...
The ability to get all the developpers to agree on how to solve all of the above would be the biggest challenge.
Re: (Score:2)
integration (Score:4, Interesting)
If I thought there was a serious contender to market as a replacement of Exchange, Open Source or not, I would certainly look into it. But, I really don't see that happening anytime in the near future.
Enterprises who ALREADY use Exchange (and are upgrading to Windows2000) will continue to use Exchange. Exchange2000 integrates into the Active Directory and allows for one place to manage both your users AND their mailboxes. You don't have to jump through hoops to synchronize usersnames or passwords or servers. One place. That sounds like an administrative PLUS to me.
Any serious contender would have to have: tight integration into Windows2000 or *NIX, collaborative calendaring, task delegation/tracking, Enterprise-wide addressing, Public Folders, integrated management, and a client that ROCKS.
The typical end-user wants to click on their Outlook icon and everything work. As much as I hate to give Microsoft kudos for ANYthing, they've got the messaging/groupware thing locked DOWN. My end-users can send emails to one another just by finding their names in the GAL...even if they don't know that's what they are doing. Distribution Lists are (relatively) easy to maintain. Publishing content to other Exchange users is pretty brain-dead. I have no compelling reason to even LOOK for a change right now.
GroupWise? Hah, if I had a nickel everytime that friggin' GW client blew up on a workstation of mine, I'd've lost my ass with a majority share of Enron...
-PONA-
Standard Consulting Answer (Score:2)
Have you explained/demonstrated your proposal, indicating potential benefits?
Have you addressed any relevent business concerns and needs?
Have you demonstrated an understanding of their concerns about moving from their current solution to your solution? Have you provided an explantion about how these are mitigated?
Have you kept it relatively free of politics ("Open Source Rules. MS Sucks!"), but provide an objective basis for a decision?
If you have done all this in a professional fashion, and the client still insists on using this solution, then no, you cannot get rid of Exchange.
Or Word.
Or Oracle.
Or GroupWise.
Or SendMail.
Or OS/2.
Or Linux.
Just a few thoughts... (Score:5, Informative)
Essentially I talked about how to get IMAP/POP3/SMTP with a global Address Book and authentication and user accounts via LDAP. I've been watching this space with a lot of interest since then. The lack of updates to the HOWTO should give you some idea of what's changed, not much.
As far as calendaring goes, here's the skinny: CAP is the current IETF draft, and has been for some time, although when it will be finalized is anybody's guess. Why aren't there any shared calendaring servers? Cause there's no shared calendaring standard. You can get asynchronous calendaring in IMAP by having a decent IMAP client and using a Calendar folder, but that's hardly as feature rich as Outlook/Exchange. libical [softwarestudio.org] has kept up with the draft but has no server process. It's used in Evolution and the Mozilla Calendar client. So we have calendaring on the client side, but nothing on the server side. From what I've been able to discern, nobody wants to write a CAP based server till CAP is finalized, since it's gone through too many changes during the drafting process already.
The other problem is the outlook clients. The way Bynari and OpenMail (Contact) have gotten around the proprietary Exchange RPC call stuff, is to write a MAPI driver for Outlook that intercepts the client calls and sends them to the server in whatever proprietary method they might have. Integrating Outlook clients will either require a server side project on the level of Samba or a client side MAPI replacement that uses CAP, unless M$ has a change of heart and decides to support it.
In order to replace the functionality of Exchange you would need, a Calendar Server (none exists in the Open Source world), a searchable document share (WebDav on Apache can't index M$Office documents AFAIK), searchable email w/ public folders and mailing lists (Cyrus + majordomo or Sympa could feasibly work), a global address book (OpenLDAP).
Now,the real kicker, it has to all be integrated, single point of management and have a web interface for users to boot. There are a million and one PHP/Perl based web interfaces to one piece of this or another. However, trying to integrate all of this is impossible. Why?
For starters, everyone seems to want to do LAMP, as if these apps all live alone and users want to log into a seperate web interface for each function then cut and paste data between web pages and not be able to search everything as one data repository, if they can search at all.
LDAP has been available for years, and the guys at OpenLDAP have been there to solve a lot of these problems for years. Quit using an RDBMS for everything, for data that applications should share, use LDAP, stuff like authentication and application user information. LDAP has seemingly been ignored by a lot of open source programmers. Evolution's LDAP support has flat out been broken, everytime I've tried it. Mozilla's works but lacks some functionality. Granted LDAP takes about as much knowledge as learning an RDBMS to understand, but ther are currently about 3 decent LDAP management tools (lape, Directory Administrator and GQ). With LDAP you can essentially have a database schema that all apps can program to, cause it's standardized (inetOrgPerson, etc.)
Other apps seem to be developed without a thought to integrating with other apps. I tried to integrate Sympa, OpenCA, cyrus, sendmail and OpenLDAP with a custom web front end about a year ago. I paid the salaries of myself and 2 other developers for about 8 months, trying to do this. It was a failure, especially in the cases of the Perl pieces. The CPAN Perl libraries didn't do LDAPv3 extensions, isolating code in most of these projects to use a different front end was hopeless and providing an interface to manage the configuration files for the servers was a lot of work. We got about 80% done before I sold the company (and codebase). We had originally planned to GPL our work then sell support and customization, with a calendaring solution and MAPI driver for outlook in the 2.0 feature set.
Most of the frustration we had and was due to using other people's code that was not extensible or modularized. If I had to do it over again, I'd do it in Java on JBoss (esp considering the BEEP servlets JSR for CAP and the great LDAP support via JNDI).
I don't think that developer's of various open source projects need to have some overreaching design group (a la GNOME or KDE) to implement these projects with integration in mind. There are plenty of standards already out there. It just takes some good design and up front research (something I've done a lot of) and thinking about how other developers and users might want to use this stuff for their projects.
Now, I don't want to sound like I'm whining about my own failures, I should have made sure we had enough capital to do it all from scratch. I'm more concerned about our ability to compete with the Exchange servers and Lotus Notes of the world and have a stable, customizable platform that we own. Quit rewriting the same stuff over and over and build new stuff... innovate, be creative, push the industry forward.
There is a glimmer of hope, the Open Source Java community is doing fantastic stuff. I've never seen more modularization, code reuse, integration and faster development in any environment or community. JBoss really takes the lead, the feature list is amazing and I've used it in several corporate environments where it beat out commercial J2EE app servers. JBoss pulls from Ant, XDoclet, Jetty, Tomcat, JacORB, Axis, HyperSonic SQL and a bunch of other projects. Struts and the Java commons and taglib projects at Jakarta are another example of really cool work.
The point is, it all works together. End users don't care if you wrote it in Perl, PHP, Python, C or Java... Just that it makes their lives easier, if we want Open Source to get more places we have to make sure we can deliver on this. Considering most of us make a living programming, supporting or administering networked systems, which would you rather have, propietary crap or really good open source stuff? So next time your designing that project, or writing some more code think about how you can make integration easier. Documentation helps too... we shouldn't have to know fifteen languages and countless codebases to get stuff working together. Most of us specialize in a couple of things.
Well, that's been my experience and is currently my struggle, so hope you get something out of this... BTW, I'd loved to be proved wrong on any pessimism I may currently have.
Re:Just a few thoughts... (Score:3, Interesting)
We avoided Exchange (there are all kinds of plusses and minuses there).
For email we use iPlanet's messaging server but are in the middle of switching over to Cyrus+postfix.
Our email clients are mostly netscape with some mozilla/outlook/outlook express/eudora. We plan wholesale conversion to Mozilla.
Many users prefer to use a web interface for email. Inital feedback on IMP has been good.
For a global addressbook we use Rolodap http://rolodap.sourceforge.net which is LDAP based. Rolodap has a web interface for searching, word processor use, data entry, etc. and also provides integrated autocompletion services to all the emailers we use. We also can extend its searches to include the local University (also LDAP) and Bigfoot if the sought address is not in our own database.
We use a central employee LDAP server (not the same one we use for Rolodap--rolodap has 35000 contacts in it) to manage email/mailboxes,web access, etc from a single interface. Though we are a touch "broken" now because of the conversion to Cyrus we will shortly be back to the goal of adding, changing, delting users, forwarding email, etc. through a single central interface. LDAP is our vehicle for that.
We like LDAP. A good open standard has all kinds of collateral benefits.
We use Steltor as our calendar -- calendaring is an important app for us and we are worried about its purchase by Oracle. LDAP controls Steltor as well.
Our documents are organized by client so the client network directories are what we use for shared files. We are about to add a means to email documents to the client file using Postfix and a little home grown app. Sharing files outside the client directories would cause us some concerns about whether we would meet our professional needs of maintaining a coherent client file.
A few observations:
First, we do not necessarily want a "one server does it all" solution. In our experience that compromises security, reliability, and redundancy. It kills flexibility, if for instance, to chnage your calendar you have to change your email server and addressbook. We much prefer to keep functions separate so long as we can have a rational presentation to the user.
Second, our users largely prefer web based interfaces if they have high performance. They find them simpler to use and more understandable. We find it simple to do "cheap" superficial integration by just giving them a master web page. Web based also provides an easy way for us to do remote access.
So for us, the key to replacing Steltor, if the Oracle acquisition doesn't work out, is a shared calendar that offers the same features, has good performance, integrates via LDAP. I do not know of an OSS app that does this.
I think both we and the original enquirer are looking for the same thing. A shared OSS calendaring server. We have email, contacts/addressbook, shared files, covered. We don't, outside of Steltor, have calendaring covered.
The original enquirer wanted calendaring that worked in Outlook. Browser based would be OK with us.
yes, I have looked at phpGroupware and its ilk and at SUSE Mail Server. All of them however provide me with too much integrated together or have deficiencies in the features/performance side of things.
There's a thought for IBM (Score:3, Insightful)
For:
1) Would be a huge boost to their Linux effort, and might convince a lot of companies to get a Linux solution from IBM.
2) As open source, people could finally start to address all the things they don't care for in Lotus. Perhaps a license could be arrived at which retained for IBM exclusive rights to distribute binaries for non-open platforms, and include on those platforms innovations submitted by the open developers. For open platforms such as Linux and BSD, full availability.
3) As a free and open solution, Lotus might begin to do some serious damage to that end of Microsoft's business, and at the same time focus more IT departments interest on IBM.
4) Support contracts could still be offered, and in large scale operations would probably still be bought. Even with an open Lotus, IBM is still the logical supporter for the programs.
Against:
1) IBM wouldn't get any direct license fee income from Lotus on Linux.
2) Legal issues with releasing the code could be considerable.
Surprised noone feels insulted (Score:3, Insightful)
This AskSlashdot is trying to demand code from the Open Source community. That is rude in my opinion. If he wants a copy of Exchange and Outlook, I expect him to put the effort into it. Learn to code and then start a project. Demanding that people who code on things for enjoyment start working on something else just because you need a free alternative to a costly product, that is arrogant as well as rude. From the sounds of it, he wouldn't even like to contribute to the project only use it.
We are working on an Exchange replacement! (Score:5, Interesting)
No calendaring yet, I'm afraid. We're still finishing up the server foundation. As soon as there are some decent calendar clients out there to test CAP (Calendar Access Protocol) with, we'll start building the calendar server.
I am absolutely serious about this project. This is not vaporware.
BillGroupwork (Score:3, Informative)
The link:
http://www.billworkgroup.org/billworkgroup
Its being done... (Score:3, Informative)
They are all projects in very active development, i know of medium to large enterprises installing this kind of setup and working very fine with it, thank you. I cannot disclose right now who those enterprises are, but they will come forth as soon as the deployments are stable.
The projects ive mentioned even have some methods/scripts and knowledge to migrate from Exchange to this setup.
Give it time, by the end of the year, this combined suite of Free Software projects will have a fully enabled intranet collaboration suite.
Is it as easy to install, configure and administrate as exchange?? NO, its not. But it saves a bundle of dough (pays well too).
So, sit tight, contribute to this projects, and you will see.
Now, on the other hand. If you dont need windows on the desktop, evolution is a GREAT groupware suite supporting icalendar and other open protocols which include the sending/receiving of calendar data, tasks and contacts from one evo to the other. Of course the damned thing is b0rken in debian for which some people should be shot or...err... helped or whatever....
Exchange Replacement == Teamware for Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
It's made by Fujitsu, and runs on Linux, Solaris and NT. It has a really good web client, and fat (desktop resident) clients for WinX.
It does calendering, email, forums, file sharing and syncs across multiple sites. Directory services use X400/LDAP.
It's really cheap compared to Exchange and you can talk to it via IMAP, NNTP and, in version 6.0, webdav.
Check it out at www.teamware.com [teamware.com].
Chris.
Re:I'm working on one (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm working on one (Score:5, Interesting)
Eww, sourceforge! Actually, there's not even a webpage- waste of time until there's something I'm willing to put up. ;)
But there are about seventy-five pages of analysis of Domino and Notes in real-world settings, some design documents and a few prototypes of critical components (probably about 200-300h of work so far). I like doing things the right way, which takes time.
Things like Domino and Exchange can be pretty effective if used well, but frankley they're not very smart. My personal research interest is managing the complexity of business and research processes, and I've found that Domino and Exchange don't really help the problems much: they don't help manage the complexities, they simply space-shift them. There's a lot of really interesting and hard problems when you start trying to solve the failings of these two systems. :)
Work on the way to get there.. not the destination (Score:2, Insightful)
However creating something , even Opensource that does what Notes and Domino do is quite a task. Do they do it well ? not hardly.. but its effective and a great many places are as entrenched with domino as others are with exchange..
you need to make your solution protocol compatible.. you need to make your solution make the transition as painless as possible.. and then provide all the functionality that was had before.. but in new and better ways.. its the only way to get it accepted. Many many great software packages go unused because they came along after inferior products were entrenched and didnt provide a solution for seamless painless cross over.
If you want to kill Domino (and god knows i do too).. then dont only create a replacement.. create a bridging application to get the corporation from the ugly wasteland that is Domino to your utopia... that my friend is where the true battle lies.
Re:Going the wrong way? (Score:3, Interesting)
I know that the small software company I work for would love to have Evolution on every desktop (windows and linux) using LDAP for a shared address book and calendar, but it just can't happen today. Oh well, here is hoping that the Kompany can get Aethera right sometime this decade...
Re:Going the wrong way? (Score:5, Insightful)
- An OSS backend that replaces Exchange for calendaring at least. We can use IMAP and LDAP and such for the other functionality because at least there exist standard protocols, but there is no competetive backend for calendaring applications. It would be really nice to have an OSS all-in-one that does IMAP/LDAP/calendaring, but first things first.
- An OSS front-end like Evolution, but one that works on Windows as well as Unixes.
At our organization (a small university), we are desperately looking for a comprehensive calendaring solution -- one that supports teams, conflict resolutions, notifications, palm synching, and can be used either at home or at the office. I am the OSS advocate in our IT department, but I just can't find a suitable OSS solution. In fact, the only solution I can think of that even remotely fits the bill is Outlook and Exchange.The unfortunate part is that we're using Netscape 4.x here, mainly because of its mail client. (We're using IMAP and LDAP on our backend and NS 4.x Messenger is still pretty good, even though the browser sucks.) Netscape 7.x / Mozilla 1.x is nearly there, but not quite. If there was a calendar solution that worked with Mozilla/NS7 that had those features and had a OSS server, it would be like a dream come true. As it stands, I may have to roll out a small deployment of Outlook and Exchange just to solve this problem (which has come down from the president BTW, so it can't just be ignored until a suitable OSS solution comes along). Now suddenly we're mix-mashing between NS 4.x over IMAP with Outlook and Exchange. You can see what is going to happen with that nice IMAP/LDAP solution in a year.
I think what we really need is a standard protocol, de facto or otherwise, for network calendaring. There is iCal, but from what little I know about it, it's just not comprehensive enough. (Does it deal with network transport?)
Jason.
Not just a matter of need. (Score:2)
Sure, Exchange can be used as a voicemail server where you can listen to your voicemail from Outlook and there are even a few places that do this but, most never will. But, they all like the idea and hope to implement it one day therefore, their groupware server must be capable of doing it and, Exchange is.
I would guess that 98% of Exchange shops use it only for email and scheduling. Most probably don't even use the public folders. But they all bought it with some pipedream of using it as an all encompassing enterprise level meail server, voicemail server, document management system, coffee warmer and back massager.
In the end, if your product can't do all that, they'll buy Exchange.
Re:Other Groupware (Score:5, Insightful)
I use IMAP and POP3 through GWIA for 700+ users, off one box. It's been up 60 days, and that's because we moved offices two months ago.
- They still havent integrated GW's user/password database into Novell's famed eDirectory/NDS database.
Maybe not, but I manage them using the same utility. Nobody has anything better, really. And because of the way the post office works, you have to communicate with a specific server agent, not just any server in the tree, so intergrating passwords wouldn't really help any, unless you have no tape backups.
- Very little administrative control over the mailboxes.
What complete bullshit. In NWAdmin, I can control every option of the GroupWise client, I can set it remotely, and I can grey out the option so the user can't change it. What the can't you do? You want to add rules or specific proxy access, just go in to their box with the client, and do it.
- Poor backup solution (you MUST shutdown the email system to get a reliable backup). No, the GWTSA's dont cut it (based on my personal experiences, and statements from senior techs at Novell)...
Not based on my experience with Backup Exec 9.0. Even if you don't use the GWTSA's, you just make everyone access the post office over IP, instead of file access, and backup the directory. The files locked by the agent can be rebuilt from the files that will never be locked.
- Novell has POOR support for automated administration and report generation out of GroupWise - GWCheck just does not cut it...
Hmmmm... I've never cared about getting a report, really. Besides, GWCheck is for repairing the system, not reporting. But since I don't know what kind of reports you'd like, I'll leave this one alone.
Groupwise is *great*. No, I don't work for Novell. Yes, I do administer a 2000 user enterprise system that runs Groupwise 5.5. We don't even need a dedicated e-mail guy, even for all 2000 users. And it doesn't even take up a big chunk of my time. I have 15 domains, 22 post offices, two internet gateway agents, and WebAccess set up. No issues, anywhere.
*ever*
I think you're doing something wrong.
Re:No, and to the Wannabe's, Put up or Shut up (Score:3, Funny)
Bullshit. Exchange is #1 because Office (and hence Outlook) is #1. Nothing else.
The only thing difficult about making an Exchange replacement is the technical (and legal) difficulty of deciphering MS' proprietary protocols. If the Justice Department made MS disclose that interface you'd see Exchange's marketshare drop overnight.
Hell, I remember when Lotus Notes installs had to cross their fingers every time they sent an attachment.
Hmmm, I remember when MS shops had to reboot their Exchange servers nightly to avoid lockups. Oh wait, people still have to do that.