Yet Another Exchange Killer? 333
jmertic writes "SuSE Linux now has the latest Exchange killer, but this time for Exchange Server. Openexchange Server is designed to be a drop in replacement for Exchange 5.5 users who don't want to pay the MS tax of going to Exchange 2000. They say it will be available mid November."
Re:MS Tax? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not. (Score:4, Insightful)
woo.hoo.
I mean, yeah professional support is a great thing that will get a little bit into companies, but seriously, nobody is going to rip out an exchange server, dispite its distatefulness; then reconfigure every client to use smtp-auth/imap/ldap not to mention *loose* outlook's calendaring feature, just for clientside flexibility that they never wanted in the first place?
Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
OSS == non oringal names (Score:3, Insightful)
Thoughts?
Still a tax (Score:1, Insightful)
Exchange killer or not. (Score:5, Insightful)
Calendar, Task Requests, Free/Busy? I wish.
Like it or not, Outlook users in corporate mode use a lot of exchange _server_ features. Outlook (and Express) users that use it in POP/IMAP mode exclusively could care less. Maybe this is an Exchange killer for POP/IMAP users, but so is Cyrus.
This is no 'drop in' replacement; its not any kind of a replacement in unless a lot of drugs are added.
Am I saying its no good? No; we haven't seen it yet. It's not an Exchange replacement. It looks like Bynari.
Interesting use of "Open" (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it doesn't sound as though the "Open" in "Openexchange" means that it's going to be open-source. SUSE mentions that they have a much friendlier licensing policy than MS, only paying for people who are actually connected to the server instead of per seat that can connect. That's nice, but it just means that you're getting hooked into a proprietary system that's likely to be less well developed and possibly even less reliable than Exchange, without any of the advantages of Free/Open Source software. Very disappointing.
Re:MS Tax? (Score:5, Insightful)
well, all the time i order machines that i intend to install linux on from vendor X, and i say, "i don't want windows installed on the machine, and i don't want to pay for a windows license". however, thanks to microsoft's bulk licensing approach with vendors, this is not possible.
no guns, but i am forced to buy what i don't want, and put $60 in the coffers of a company i don't like.
now, one could say that exchange is a totally optional product, and that one is not forced to buy it, so the concept of "M$ tax" doesn't apply to this case. fair enough. however it does apply to some cases, and is a valid term.
-- p
Re:Not. (Score:3, Insightful)
A real drop in replacement, the end user wouldnt even know about back end changes.
Obvioulsy you've never used Exchange (Score:5, Insightful)
Typical Scenerio.
User: I want to be able to share my schedule contacts and project info.
admin: sure we can install exchange it will cost $$$$$$, ohh yea it also runs on Win2k.
user: wtf? are you nuts. aren't our win2k servers the ones that all went down because of that mimlinda, in lisa and melissa and code red,
admin: well errr , lets see
moral, SuSE (my distro of choice) is giving users an option to MS that will not be as much of a bite in the butt. ohh yea it runs on linux.
ps. I dont give a damn about the spelling errors
What about Outlook and Calendaring?! (Score:3, Insightful)
I know I'm not the first, nor will I be the last person to make this observation.
Re:MS Tax? (Score:1, Insightful)
You are not "forced" to buy anything. You are whining. Nothing more.
Not likely. (Score:3, Insightful)
This implies that there has already been an exchange killer. As should be blatantly obvious to everyone involved, this is hardly the case.
Do what MS does.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Show me 5 major companies that did the switch (and did it painlessly) and we'll talk. Otherwise, keep smoking.
Re:OSS == non oringal names (Score:2, Insightful)
Nautilus/Konqueror != Explorer
Mozilla/Galeon/Phoenix != IE
Evolution != Outlook
Gnumeric != Excel
Blender != Maya
Apache != IIS
The list goes on and on. While some opensource products have names similar to proprietary ones (Abiword, OpenOffice, Lindows), the vast majority don't. For that matter, many proprietary products have names similar to others (WordPerfect Office). Open source projects are not disproportionally guilty of name theft.
Hardly a replacement.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I know I'm going to unpopular for saying this... (Score:4, Insightful)
...not an exchange killer without Active Directory (Score:3, Insightful)
Until Exchange 2000, and open source Exchange "killer", OutlookXP, Linux exchange clients can coexist within the same Active Directory infrastructure, there won't be a true Exchange "killer". I think we'll just have to wait until the Samba team can assist us with that.
And I hate to be pessemistic, but Microsoft seems to be staying ahead in this game with their new "Titanium" Exchange.
Why all this playing catch up? (Score:3, Insightful)
We are now inline with MS and has the chance to run away from them. To embrace their technology is to justify it when we could cevelop better things than they can.
My C++ book is in the mail and im going to start making a difference too. I know i shouldnt be voicing about theese things when i dont do anything by myself so i decided to learn programming and do someting about it. See ya!
This may be a bit off-topic, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
We also have our own free versions of something similar to Outlook Express.
We have a GUI similar to Windows, and Debian recently announced a fully-graphical install interface. Wow.
Looks like Microsoft are setting the standards these days, allright.
And I always thought of *nix as something different, why is everything pointing towards Microsoft?
Re:Obvioulsy you've never used Exchange (Score:5, Insightful)
- User: I want to be able to share my schedule contacts and project info.
- admin: sure we can install exchange it will cost $$$$$$, ohh yea it also runs on Win2k.
- User: Fine, whatever, just tell me when it's done and don't bug me with details.
- admin: what about all of that mimlinda, in lisa and melissa and code red stuff?
- User: Which part of 'don't bug me with details' was unclear? Just do it.
The open source/free software world desperately needs a drop-in replacement for Exchange, where "drop-in" means "will work with Outlook without having to explain stuff to Outlook users." There are open source functional replacements, and there are proprietary drop-in replacements, but no open source drop-in replacements.For that matter, we could use an open source drop-in replacement for Outlook, where "drop-in" means "works with Exchange." I've heard that Evolution [ximian.com] does it, but I've also heard that Evolution employs a proprietary module [ximian.com] to get to the Exchange Calendaring functionality.
If I'm wrong here, I'd love to be corrected. Preferably with URLs pointing to code :-)
Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc. [wirex.com]
Immunix: [immunix.org] Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase [wirex.com]
Exchange? (Score:1, Insightful)
There are a LOT of companies that think the new licensing programs stink. I, personally, know of a couple making the transition away from MSFT products. Just give them a way to go. Forget Microsoft and move on ahead with the invasion. We can come back and mop up later.
Huh? UnRelated Links (Score:1, Insightful)
It has absolutly *no* relation to the story at all. Zero, zippo, nadda. I know slashdot are desperate to advertise, but this is just getting silly.
Re:Obvioulsy you've never used Exchange (Score:3, Insightful)
I admit I am not an administrator but I interned at a company who was an all Groupwise Novell shop. They mentioned to me that exchange sucked, was not stable, expensive and was a burden to administer. Of course this was in 1999 so things may have changed in more recent versions of exchange.
Are IT managers really still niave in the old thinking that nobody ever got fired for buying microsoft? I thought they learned their lesson with the NT crazy of the late 90's. I know many companies are switching to linux or back to unix for the their core mission critical servers and keeping NT around on the low-mid end. Motorolla tried the NT switch a few years ago and everything blew up. They switched back to unix and left only the small things to NT.
If Novell is still an option then why is everyone complaining about exchange?
Yet Another Exchange Killer?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, this isn't an Exchange killer. An Exchange killer will be an open source software that:
-- includes at least the features of Exchange Server 5.5;
-- interoperates with the e-mail, contact, calendar, task, and note features in Outlook and Evolution clients;
-- has source code available for download that is warranty-free, license-free, royalty-free, and price-free;
-- makes money for its author(s) by charging for the installation, setup, configuration, and on-going support.
Where are the features? (Score:0, Insightful)
FIrst no mention of single instance storage. The money you save in licensing you'll spend in increased storage costs.
Second where is the server based mail storage? Again the money you save on licensing you'll spend backing up mail downloaded on users' computers or home folders.
Third, I didn't read anything about a web interface to read your mail like Outlook Web Access.
Fourth, unlike Exchange 2000 it doesn't seem to have any mailbox recovery except for back up tape. Exchange 2000 if you accidentaly delete a mailbox you can recover it easily without back up tapes.
What about mail restore for terminated employees? Exchange you just restore it into the same mailbox and give others access to it. Not with this.
On the surface you'll save in licensing. But when you dig deeper, you'll spend more on storage, back up resources and help desk costs. And don't start with the daily BSOD's. My company's exchange servers run, and run and run. I think we reboot once every quarter or so. And the better architecture more than makes up for UNIX's superior up time.
Re:Prediction: It will be available in november.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should my company (50 users) migrate? No new features, dubious availability of support (on the other hand MCSE are a dime a dozen here) and inclusion of proprietary software from a relative unknown aren't exactly compelling.
Re:This may be a bit off-topic, but.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Does Windows have a net-based install that only requires a couple of floppies to get going? Does Windows have a unified scheme where you can pull down whole libraries of software from either a command line, text-based, or full GUI interface? Does Windows have the ability to customize its kernel? Does Windows have tab-based [cs.tut.fi], minimal [sourceforge.net], and even mouseless [sourceforge.net] GUIs?
Linux offers choice. People are choosing to make programs that are similarly functional to those offered by Microsoft, but that doesn't mean that Windows is setting the standard for everything.
Besides that, there's a lot of crossover. A lot of programs run on both Windows and Linux. Emacs. Vim. Mozilla. Perl. Python. Ruby. Nethack. Windows doesn't set these standards either.
If you still don't believe that Linux is different than Windows, try doing a LFS [linuxfromscratch.org] or Gentoo [gentoo.org] install. Then come back here and tell me that Windows is setting the standards for everything.
Where's the MAPI? (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone got a pointer to solid MAPI documentation? It's amazing that a samba-like project for it hasn't sprouted up..
Re:Not. (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, Outlook talks MAPI. Period. You need to understand MAPI to talk to Outlook. Then about half of your troubles are solved. Outlook and Exchange do not use the iCalendar protocol for calendaring. Just because that's a protocol defined in an RFC doesn't mean Outlook uses it. Think about it. Why in the world would Microsoft do that? They would lose money to whoever writes the better Exchange server. No, what's needed here is a samba-type approach. If one really needs iCalendar, one would have to write fudge layer between iCalendar and whatever Exchange and Outlook speak.
POP is out of the question. IMAP retains much of the functionality that Outlook has when managing mailboxes, but IMAP doesn't use MAPI. In which case there would be a need for a kludgy layer between IMAP and MAPI to make it all work.
I think it would be easier to try to replicate that which Exchange does with Outlook and vice versa. The issue here though is that we're so far astrayed from standards that they're not even applicable anymore. What is the goal? To maintain an open standard or try to play catchup with Microsoft? Both?
Also, what kind of enhancements were you talking about?