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The way SenderID basically works is that if you have a CallerID record, Exchange will use it, if not and you have a classic SPF record, it will use that. The last time I checked, incidentally, the MS SenderID wizard generated totally broken records that do not conform to any spec (not even Microsoft's). Probably that's been fixed by now?

"Classic" SPF was (also last time I checked, about a year ago) the most widely deployed anti-forgery system in the world. DomainKeys is technically better but much harder to implement. I'm told that when Microsoft's Exchange group says SenderID is "widely adopted" they are counting all SPF records as SenderID records, because SenderID uses SPF as I mentioned above. Non-SPF SenderID has vanishingly small penetration among the dozens of MS Exchange admins I regularly communicate with - nobody actually turns it on, the most they do is use it in a point-scoring system. Perhaps that's just my circle of associates, though.

I'm not normally a "Microsoft basher" (I like Windows on the desktop, although I prefer more cost-effective solutions in the server room) but in this case they really engaged in some incredibly self-destructive stupidity. Meng Wong, the inventor of SPF, bent over backwards to try to help them and was willing to re-engineer the entire spec to suit their needs, but the whole effort was sabotaged by Microsoft's greed and duplicity.

Anyway, an interesting thing about anti-spoofing technology is that the spammers are very aware of it - probably because AOL honors it on their incoming.

As I'm sure you know, spammers use fake return addresses that they steal from web pages or people's Outlook address books. Since their "business model" (if you can call it that) works off small percentages of success, it makes sense for them to avoid spoofing domains that have SPF records published. Why use a fake address that is guaranteed to be rejected by AOL, after all?

Since you're publishing an SPF record for your outgoing mail, you probably have fewer problems from spammers faking email addresses from your domain than you would otherwise. I recently advised a small research lab that was getting hundreds of "bounce" messages every day (from spam that was spoofing their users) to publish SPF. They did so, and within two weeks the problem completely went away. They don't check incoming SPF at all, they just put up the one DNS TXT RR!

Obviously, that's purely anecdotal; I'm not a confidant of spammers. But it's widely reported to work, and it worked for me on two separate occasions.

I recommend "Classic" SPF for now, and DKIM for the future... mostly because that's what Eric Allman was pushing at Linuxworld. :)

Oh, and BTW, if you are looking for an Exchange replacement check out Scalix - they are based off HP's deceased OpenMail source base and they can provide Exchange- and Outlook-compatible calendaring.

OpenMail is no more. It was licensed to Scalix some time back. Scalix has taken it, given it a rather nice AJAX web client as well as other good things, and is giving it away (see the "Community Edition" on their site).

If you inisist on using outlook, there was a solution: OpenMail but HP decided to kill it. Which, btw, everyone is assuming it's Sun they are replacing (a safe assumption) but with goofy I'll-do-a-merger-to-keep-my-job-and-blame-company- problmes-on-someone-other-that-I Carly at the helm of HP, I wouldn't be surpised if it's HP they need to drop.

Bynari is another calendaring solution that has been mentioned before for Linux. No, it's not open source, free, or even just like exchange; but it works, is virus free, etc.

As for point 2, I've done the virus thing with a cheesy script on each system, and other such lame sysadmin duct tape approaches taking care of windoze network unfriendly boxes.

Your primary point, the question, "just what are they replacing" is a good one and your conclusions are reasonable. My problem is what I sense inbetween the lines. Your point is that exchange makes outlook really easy to deal with and win2k server takes care of windoze boxes easier. Well, ya got me there. Yup, Linux isn't as good as windows in dealing with windows non-sense. I don't suspect it ever will be, EVEN if they were to play nice as Mr. Stallman suggested oh so long ago. You are suggesting that linux will never be ready for IT b/c IT runs windows clients. This doesn't have to be. Things in a linux server/win client enterprise would have to be different. In some ways it would be better and some ways not. There are of course growing pains - I'm sure you're one of the millions that have had to suffer through years and years of M$'s growing pains, mistakes and lies. Now, "their solutions" (ahem) are mostly workable on few commodity (cough, cough) systems - such as the most expensive Intel systems you could buy. That's one approach. Another might be to buy an old unix server (say, a Sun E450) and centralize each offices services to one reliable system.

My point is that the gap between windows and unix/linux is getting smaller in some ways. Unix apps can be easily recompiled to run (slowly) on your pc, and that win box can now pretend to be a newtwork server. Large unix apps can now sort-of slowly run on small linux installations. But the windows boxes can't scale the same was as unix apps, and certianly can't scale as far and will never scale as big. They are different things, and it is very disingenuous for you to say that unix/linux will never cut it in IT b/c it's not windows. Unix can now go big or go small, and it always goes smart and dresses in style. Don't expect to run a better network with out some effort and growing pains - and if you're running windows, always expect to spend a lot more. This why they are replacing unix and you can bet that if this pilot project goes well, windows will be phased out.

Not sure I follow you...but if you're suggesting they add PDA support to OpenMail, they already have. They have a direct OpenMail client that runs on Palm devices and WinCE devices.

OpenMail will do all of the above. It is natively X.400 compatible, has its own SMTP/ESMTP gateway (used to depend on Sendmail), talks MAPI, IMAP, LDAP, ccMail, etc. Has a native client for Unix (Motif-based), Mac, Windows...but the native client has no calendaring. Supports Outlook calendars. Has WAP support, etc. It is an awesome product.

Look here for more info.

The downside to this is the they wont be open sourcing it. The upside I suppose is that it will be actively developed and will retain its corporate marketshare.

Outlook-like apps for Linux were discussed on Slashdot a few years ago http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/98/10/02/1729257.s html, and that discussion may have some (dated) info that might help.

It's not free or OSS, but HP has OpenMail http://www.openmail.com/cyc/om/00/index.html "...a UNIX and Linux based messaging and collaboration solution, currently used by 60% of global 1000 companies..." which also support LookOut calendaring.

A google search for "open source" "exchange replacement" turned up "The Exchange Server Replacement HOWTO" and Nick Petreley's commentary on why HP is dumping OpenMail, in which he comments "that HP OpenMail [is] a better Exchange than Microsoft Exchange".

An earlier slashdot story talked about an up-and-coming replacement for Exchange from Ximian , but I can't find anything on their site.

Bynari (www.bynari.net) makes a product called Insight Server which, while not free, less costly than Exchange and runs on Linux. Again, no experience with it. Links on their site point to something called tradeclient (http://sourceforge.net/projects/tradeclient or http://tradeclient.sourceforge.net/) that is a Linux client for their Insight server (don't know/can't tell if it'll do Exchange server as well), and something called TradeServer shows up on their site, which is unfortunately difficult to find stuff on.

Aren't HP discontinuing OpenMail?

Speaking of Exchange replacments, that page I linked to says that Exchange 2k and Outlook XP use WebDAV to communicate. I knew that public folders were WebDAV enabled, but it seems like the whole Exchange shebang is accessible by WebDAV!

I think I'll have to take a look at the Exchange 2k demo and see for myself ...

HP's OpenMail for your mail server. It provides most of the same functionality as Exchange at http://www.openmail.com/ this application is apparently being phased out or something but we use it and like it. For office type apps I would use StarOffice it really isn't that bad. Most everything else office wise should be easy to find as far as the utlities go. Also for webservices go LAMP Linux Apache MySQL PHP. The only caviate to this is if you don't know security you will be in the same boat as your NT solution. People always have these tendencies to configure things so they work and never look back. This means if it is something they have not used before the first time they configure it they will probably make the same mistakes as others leaving ther systems open to various attacks. The moral here don't convince everyone to jump ship before you really understand how to keep your network secure.

HP's OpenMail can replace an Exchange server. It allows Outlook as a client and supports calendaring. I don't know what other clients it supports, or whether other clients can use the calendaring features.

This is something I see as one of the biggest obstacles for large scale acceptance of Linux/FreeBSD/... in business environments. Suits like it a lot, it seems they can't live without it. A viable alternative should be high on the priority list!

supposedly does Calandaring & Scheduling, supports clients on different platforms, etc.

(there's also Domino, which runs on all sorts of *nixes ... not 'open' by any stretch, but pretty powerful)

Actually HP still supports openmail.. and will for another 5 years.

From HP's web site:

HP will support our customers using versions 6.0 and 7.0 of the product for the next five years until March 31st 2006. The new 7.0 release further strengthens OpenMail's ability to support thousands of users per server and provide rich functionality when connected to the Outlook client. Support for OpenMail 5.10 continues until 31st October 2001.

It already exists. The trick is getting it open sourced. We should leave Ximian to ensure that GNOME 2.0 ships on time.

Nothing could help bring Linux to the backend for corporations more so than this... OpenMail and Mailone are costly, and OpenMail is also now dead. This is a needed project!

HP's OpenMail product had the distinction of being the only mail server software running on *nix (including Linux) with full Exchange Server functionality. It's been End-Of-Lifed, probably because of some Microsoft pressure.

Furthermore, I think it would be interesting to know what kind of open source OpenMail was based on. Suppose it was GPL-ed code, that would mean HP could be forced to open things up. But I don't think that will be the case, I can't imagine a company like HP violating GPL like that. Still it would be interesting to know where the fundaments of OpenMail came from.

I saw this posting, and thought that, if nothing else, the MAPI code might benefit the open source community in general, or the OGS project specifically.
I followed the link in the story to the OpenMail home page, and then the OpenMail contact us link.

I asked them to consider Open Sourcing the product at end of life. I asked them nicely. (If you do this, please ask nicely, too.)

I explained that there are projects that could benefit from their work, and asked them to consider that as a possibility.
Here's the automated response I got from them. I'm looking forward to a 'real' answer, too.


Re: If you're discontinuing this product, might you Open Source it?

Thank you for your enquiry.

As stated on our Assistance web page, we are pleased to respond to anything to do with HP OpenMail. Allowing for time differences around the world, we aim to respond to messages within 48 hours. If a full response is likely to take longer than this, or the volume of mail exceeds our expectations, we will still get back to you within 48 hours to tell you when you might expect a full response. (Please note that we can only provide responses to inquiries composed in English.)

If you have submitted an inquiry that is not related to HP OpenMail, we will forward your inquiry to the appropriate HP organization. Because different HP organizations provide different product support options, you should consult the Assistance page related to your inquiry to understand what type of support you can expect. To help find the appropriate on-line Assistance page, please use the Assistance directory page.

Thank you again for contacting us

The HP OpenMail team


Regards,
Anomaly


PS - God loves you and longs for relationship with you. If you would like to know more about this, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com

But that's what comes with inferior technology. If a technical design for an "Advanced Server" results in a pretty nice gaming platform, I find it to be a rather sad chapter in a bad book. NT once had a meaning on a LAN. I am of course speaking of 3.51.

On our Sun boxes here, there is only one problem that is fixed with a reboot. Oracle has problems when it's been up around 130 days due to some internal counter. Solution, Reboot...

I have never heard of that problem before. We have Oracle 8i running on a couple of 6500's. Been there since we set them up. Which was over a year ago.

Here various products are used because they provide X or Y. We use exchange, not because it's any good, but because of the scheduling stuff. I would rather use a real mail program, but that is not acceptable as people can't then add appointments to my calendar...

There is a product that fills that void, with a very nice price tag as well. It is called HP OpenMail and it runs on lots of platforms. It is much nicer to administer than Exchange and it is much better performing. It even runs on Linux. It has a message store which doesn't easily get corrupted and has very good support. A 24/7 contract with HP is cheaper than buying about 6-8 incidents from Microsoft.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against Linux. I just know what the arguments against using it that are brought up here are. I like Linux, I use Linux... But I work with a bunch of people, some of whom don't know anything about software development. They don't want to be able to read the source code, they want to be able to ask someone else why did your application/os/driver/hardware do THIS? These arguments are universally applicable and LinuxCare is a partial solution... If they were willing to go one step further and provide patches then I wouldn't worry. At least with MS the managers know if this fails because of a problem with the stuff Microsoft provided, then we can go ask microsoft to fix it.

Red Hat provides this kind of support and they do provide patches. I know that you can buy a year of tier 3 support + a distribution for under $1,000.00 from Red Hat. Microsoft doesn't even give you a mail service, web service and OS for that kind of money.

To quote from HP's site

If you wish to continue using the fully functional evaluation version of OpenMail after the six month evaluation period, we offer a FREE license key for up to 50 users. Once again, this is the fully functional product, but phone-in support and upgrades are not included. Manuals can be downloaded from our web site.

In order to receive a free license key for up to 50 users all you have to do is send an e-mail to linuxkey@openmail.com. This license key expires every six months, so you will need to get a new license key via this mailbox.

You could try Openmail for a non-free solution. It is supposed to have all the functionality of an exchange server without needing NT to run on. It's available on HP-UX, IBM AIX, Sun Solaris and Red Hat and used to be on SCO Unix and NT. Supposedly it is free for up 50 users if you are willing to get a new license every 6 months. I've downloaded the Linux version and have just started installing it so I don't have any real feedback yet.

I would absolutely shoot my self in the head if I had to try and come up with a *NIX solution as feature rich, easy to implement and maintain as Exchange.

HP OpenMail. More details at:

http://www.openmail.com/cyc/om/00/i nde x.html

V7 is in beta now (for Linux).

And no, I don't work for HP. I just like this product (extremely scalable - it's unreal how much it can handle).

Management looks at exchange for features, you need to meet the features head to head.

Your should look at HP Openmail. It will run on Linux/Solaris/AIX/ and HP-UX. So it's much more flexiable that Exchange.

Openmail provides native support for Microsoft Outlook functionality including synchronization iwth PDA's. From an outlook user standpoint they will not know if they are on an Exchange or an Openmail server. From an administrator stand point they will know that they are not on an NT box.

Check out hp's openmail product and the Linux download to test it out.

I agree with this post. Find out why you are being pressured to use Exchange. If its for NT zealotry and you are resisting it because of Unix zealotry, you're in a tough (and not particularly smart) position.

Identify what features the people in power want from Exchange, and find a Unix alternative. Groupware calendaring? Shared addressbooks? If the benefits of a solution under Exchange outweighs the cost of converting to NT (hardware AND retraining AND licences), the security implications, and the support headaches that Exchange tends to bring, then go with Exchange. If the Unix alternative (MailOne or HP's OpenMail are a couple) will cause fewer problems and cost less, go with that.

Don't forget that your job is to pick the right tool for the job.
--

Searching hp's openmail web site [www.openmail.com] for tnef reveals these results:
OpenMail MAPI Service Provider (B.05.00) Release Summary [ID:100-0590]

Filecodes for Microsoft Applications [ID:200-0189]

Outlook MAPI Support [ID:300-0142]

Searching hp's openmail web site [www.openmail.com] for tnef reveals these results:
OpenMail MAPI Service Provider (B.05.00) Release Summary [ID:100-0590]

Filecodes for Microsoft Applications [ID:200-0189]

Outlook MAPI Support [ID:300-0142]

Searching hp's openmail web site [www.openmail.com] for tnef reveals these results:
OpenMail MAPI Service Provider (B.05.00) Release Summary [ID:100-0590]

Filecodes for Microsoft Applications [ID:200-0189]

Outlook MAPI Support [ID:300-0142]

Searching hp's openmail web site [www.openmail.com] for tnef reveals these results:
OpenMail MAPI Service Provider (B.05.00) Release Summary [ID:100-0590]

Filecodes for Microsoft Applications [ID:200-0189]

Outlook MAPI Support [ID:300-0142]