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The users see the mail client, calendering, and the like, as essential.

Calendaring is one a business task that is critically important to many businesses, but is quite widely ignored in the open source world, at least with respect to easy setup.

In my small office, we use Apple's open source Darwin Calendar Server: http://trac.calendarserver.org... It'll serve calendar data to the mac calendar client, as well as Mozilla's Sunbird client, probably others too.

It works great and it has been extremely stable (I have it running on a debian VM), but it isn't totally trivial to set up. Not hard exactly, but certain OS defaults don't work (e.g., requires extended atrributes, which requires editing fstab, and if you don't, it will never ever work): https://wiki.debian.org/HowTo/...

Anyway, a simple to set up calendar server would be a substantial contribution to the open source business software stable.

Apple does open source their calendar and contact servers.

I think it's likely to be relegated to calendar server duty, and I'm going to move mail, web, and FTP to some variety of Linux.

You don't have to keep the Mac around for serving calendars. Apple open sourced the server and you can run it on your favourite *NIX flavour.

What does it offer that any other *nix would not?

Among other things, iCal Server and Addressbook Server which, when combined with a *nix LDAP/IMAP/SMTP setup, become a credible replacement option for Exchange.

I'd be happy to be informed otherwise, but I don't think FOSS and *nix have applications that offer equivalent functionality.

Well, there's this open-source thing called Calendar and Contacts Server; it might offer similar capabilities to iCal Server and Addressbook Server. :-)

(...because the guts of iCal Server are Calendar Server, and the guts of Addressbook Server are Contacts Server. I don't know how hard it would be to make them work on other UN*Xes; they're mostly written in Python, using Twisted, and the Wikipedia page for Calendar Server says that "It is currently possible to install it on FreeBSD and several flavours of Linux." but that it "uses ... extended file attributes", so it might have some trouble on arbitrary UN*Xes. OS X Server might offer some GUI front-end stuff atop Calendar Server to make it iCal Server, and atop Contacts Server to make it Addressbook Server, but the underlying servers are open-source.)

I'm using Darwin Calendar Server in my office: http://trac.calendarserver.org/ You can install it on a linux box and it's even in the Lenny and recent Ubuntu repositories if you don't want to deal with dependency hell. The only real "gotcha" is that you _must_ enable extended attributes in fstab -- without that, you'll pull your hair out wondering why it doesn't work. Sunbird will sync with it, although Sunbird always downloads all the data when it starts, so if your calendar is large (2-3 items per day spanning 2 years), it'll nail your calendar server's resources for about a full minute. After that, your server can get back to doing whatever else it does -- DCS uses very little resources while runnig. During this time when Sunbird is downloading everything in the calender, Sunbird is not responsive, so just let it sit for a minute or two after loading Sunbird. Sunbird will also completely fail to load the calendar beyond a certain size. This is BTW, the linux version of Sunbird. No idea if Windows version works better. With those exceptions, Sunbird works fine and Apple's iCal (if you have any Macs) works flawlessly of course. For remote access, just VPN into your office and sync.

Many of the UNIX command line utilities are based on open source projects covered by a BSD (or similarly entirely free license), and some are covered by GPL licenses (which are more restrictive and by simple definition are thus less "free" or "open"). The most important GPL software in Mac OS X is arguably the GNU compiler, gcc. Apple is a major contributor to the LLVM project, which will at some point replace gcc as the primary compiler tool chain on the Mac OS X.

Apple has also sponsored a few other interesting open source projects such as Darwin Calendar Server, WebKit, and of course the Darwin UNIX kernel. Most of these projects are covered by a BSD or similar license.

Apple's implementation of the Cocoa Framework is not an open source framework, but it is based on an open specification, OpenStep specification, although it has evolved past the specification. There is an alternative, open source implementation, GnuStep.

There. Fixed it for you.

Before Apple, shared calendaring in the linux world sucked or was very expensive. Get the source for Darwin Calendar Server here:
http://trac.calendarserver.org/
Or the Deb:
http://packages.debian.org/stable/python/calendarserver

If it's on Debian, it's pretty darn open.

Nonsense, CUPS was open source before Apple.

Exactly. Thank you.

That said, Apple has both benefited from and contributed to open source projects. Aside from adopting and supporting open source technologies like CUPS and WebKit, Apple has initiated projects including launchd, calendarserver, Darwin streaming server, etc.

W

Can you give examples of good Exchange replacements?

Yes, for that see DVL. Seriously, though you have to define what activities you need to do before you can ask for a replacement. MS Exchange is marketed in many niches and fails (on the surface) in most. The most spectacular is its failure as a mail server replacement, if you look at it as such. If you look at the wonderful cover of plausible deniability it gives executives by randomly losing and delaying mail, then that is a success.

Anyway, try looking these. Keep in mind that, unlike with M$ products, you can combine pieces of several packages.

• Kolab — http://www.kolab.org/
• Citadel — http://www.citadel.org/
• Dingo Calendar Server — http://andrew.triumf.ca/dingo/
• Darwin CalendarServer — http://trac.calendarserver.org/
• Bedework — http://www.bedework.org/
• Zimbra — http://www.zimbra.com/
• OpenGroupware — http://www.opengroupware.org/

If you are simply looking to improve reliability of e-mail they a plain Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) will do. Before it became too embarrassing for M$, it used to be recommended practice to put one of these in front of MS Exchange to improve reliability and security. Also look up ClamAV, Spamassassin and how to do greylisting.

• simta — http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/simta/
• Dovecot — http://www.dovecot.org/
• Postfix — http://www.postfix.org/
• Exim — http://www.exim.org/
• Sendmail — http://www.sendmail.org/
• qmail — http://www.qmail.org/

However, before you can think about "replacing" MS Exchange, you will have to get rid of the staff that selected and deployed it in the first place. They ignored all the licensing shortcomings, the bad reviews, high price and ongoing technical failure to instead push ideology over technology. People making decisions based on ideology are not going to accept any technical or economic arguments...

Can you give examples of good Exchange replacements?

Yes, for that see DVL. Seriously, though you have to define what activities you need to do before you can ask for a replacement. MS Exchange is marketed in many niches and fails (on the surface) in most. The most spectacular is its failure as a mail server replacement, if you look at it as such. If you look at the wonderful cover of plausible deniability it gives executives by randomly losing and delaying mail, then that is a success.

Anyway, try looking these. Keep in mind that, unlike with M$ products, you can combine pieces of several packages.

• Kolab — http://www.kolab.org/
• Citadel — http://www.citadel.org/
• Dingo Calendar Server — http://andrew.triumf.ca/dingo/
• Darwin CalendarServer — http://trac.calendarserver.org/
• Bedework — http://www.bedework.org/
• Zimbra — http://www.zimbra.com/
• OpenGroupware — http://www.opengroupware.org/

If you are simply looking to improve reliability of e-mail they a plain Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) will do. Before it became too embarrassing for M$, it used to be recommended practice to put one of these in front of MS Exchange to improve reliability and security. Also look up ClamAV, Spamassassin and how to do greylisting.

• simta — http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/simta/
• Dovecot — http://www.dovecot.org/
• Postfix — http://www.postfix.org/
• Exim — http://www.exim.org/
• Sendmail — http://www.sendmail.org/
• qmail — http://www.qmail.org/

However, before you can think about "replacing" MS Exchange, you will have to get rid of the staff that selected and deployed it in the first place. They ignored all the licensing shortcomings, the bad reviews, high price and ongoing technical failure to instead push ideology over technology. People making decisions based on ideology are not going to accept any technical or economic arguments...

"it's looking at whether Windows 7 favors Microsoft apps over third party programs"

Doesn't Apple very heavily lean towards Apple software?

(This isn't starting flaming, this is a legitimate question - what separates Apple from Microsoft in these regards?)

Currently no viable solution exists on a Windows box. There are things like Sunbird and Yagoon but they don't work well with Outlook (i.e. no real integration). Currently there is a project called Open Connector that exists to bring caldav support to Outlook. It is quickly reaching beta but the main developer needs help. I am pitching in and hope that others will as well. Check it out at http://www.openconnector.org./

Also, the calendar server that is used in Leopard is nothing more than the open-source Darwin calendar server at http://trac.calendarserver.org/projects/calendarserver

So, although nothing exists in ports that I can find you can run the Darwin calendar server on FreeBSD.

Calendar sharing is something of a problem. Fortunately, Apple seem to be working on solving it. In Leopard, the updated iCal supports CalDAV, a set of extensions to WebDAV for better supporting calendaring. Oh, and they've released the server as open source software. Mozilla Sunbird already supports CalDAV, as do a few other projects.

Calendar sharing is something of a problem. Fortunately, Apple seem to be working on solving it. In Leopard, the updated iCal supports CalDAV, a set of extensions to WebDAV for better supporting calendaring. Oh, and they've released the server as open source software. Mozilla Sunbird already supports CalDAV, as do a few other projects.

This should be the number one priority for the Sunbird team, if it's not already working (anyone have info on this?). Apple will have iCal 2 out with Mac OS X v10.5 in October, and the iCal Server with Mac OS X Server v10.5. Darwin Calendar Server is available for testing on Mac OS X v10.4, and should also run on any UNIX-like system.

Oh yeah, and Leopard's calendar server is (or will be) open source.

Apple do publish the modified kernel source code, though. And they have contributed a few interesting things as open source, such as launchd and the upcoming Darwin Calendar Server.

They have also, of course, released their modified version of KDE's KHTML as open source (WebKit), as well as their changes to GCC and other GPL licensed projects.

So they do release source even when they're not forced by the license. Presumably to gain goodwill. Just freeloading would probably hurt their chances of appealing to the Linux/BSD using market.

If only we could convince someone to write the Exchange competitor on an open database...

What, like this?

Why do people use Outlook and Exchange? Because Outlook is more full-featured than any other email client out there (I admit, this isn't always a good thing, but just try getting someone who *wants* those features to use a generic IMAP application. And Outlook will *never* do IMAP right, because that eliminates most of the reason to buy Exchange), and because Exchange gives you the calendaring and scheduling side of things in a way that is far superior to any other application out there except for the old CS&T/Netscape/Steltor/Oracle Calendar Server.

How is it that the entire software industry has sat back and allowed Microsoft to completely dominate with Exchange and Outlook for the last ten fscking years? What the F are people thinking? Of course, once again, it's Apple that has to pull everybody's collective asses out of the fire, and no one will end up appreciating it.