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Zimbra has been primarily focused on email (ala GMail, or Yahoo's own new beta webmail service), but they've recently begun working on adding office functionality (ala Google Docs & Spreadsheets, or ZoHo) to it's feature list. This would be really great for the business I work for as we'd much rather host our own web-based office stuff than lease it from Google or someone, and it's open source...I hope to God Yahoo doesn't screw Zimbra up.

According to Zimbra's own press release, "Yahoo! is also a major proponent of open technologies and this combination is a further testament to how serious they are about their intentions. You will continue to see active participation in developer APIs and forums. We are committed to keeping the current source open and available for use and we will continue to offer the network version that will contain value added proprietary features on top of the open product."

I do not work for Zimbra nor do I know anybody who does but I've been using the open source addition of the Zimbra server on my home email server for months now and I love it. While I've not used the offline email client for Zimbra, it was created specifically for people who want the web client functionality with the ability to work while disconnected. Here is a link. http://www.zimbra.com/products/desktop.html

I'm pretty sure Zimbra does this or something very close to it.

http://www.zimbra.com/

Integrated calandar in an Exchange type of feeling, all in a nice opensource package.

Windows/Unix/Linux compatible.

IMAP/POP compatible.

Live it, love it, use it.

According to this article: http://ajax.phpmagazine.net/2007/05/zimbra_and_com cast_new_communi.html Comcast has Zimbra do it's email, voicemail, etc. Zimbra is based off of Linux, and runs only on Linux/Macs. Assuming that the basis for the Comcast portal is the zimbra client, it will also run better on Firefox, as Zimbra has known slowdowns with IE, which is something they are working on for 5.0 http://www.zimbra.com/products/roadmap.html. Comcast focuses on its biggest market first. No one can disagree that Windows has the largest market share, so that is what Comcast will do most of its training and development towards. Plus, it may be easier to rebrand IE anyway. I agree with the above statement that the website probably hasn't been updated. However, it is a jump from the company doing what is easiest for them to their actions being malicious. Instead of assuming everyone is out to get us (They only support IE? Then they must want to destroy Mac and Linux!), let's look at their real motivations - the bottom line with the almighty dollar for the shareholder.

The only exception is the deployment of Zimbra I'm going to do. It requires Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 and NPTL

Last I checked, Zimbra runs on Ubuntu 6 just fine.

nothing else has done such a good job at integrating contacts, e-mail, and calendars.

This is no longer true. You really need to take a look at products like Zimbra. From my perspective it has everything Exchange has going for it, plus the benefits of running OSS and on my favorite platform. It even handles Blackberrys, Palms, and PDAs (via NotifyLink). In addition to Zimbra there is Open-Xchange and many more (though I'm not sure they're as solid as Zimbra).

Also have you seen GroupWise 7? I would say it has feature parity. I also hear a lot of places are fine on Lotus Notes (but I haven't used that product personally). Exchange is a nice product, but it simply isn't true that there are not Exchange alternatives.

Evolution has been available for Windows for quite some time by now. Get it here: http://shellter.sourceforge.net/
The question I have is this: how does Lotus Notes compare to Exchange+Outlook?
Check out Zimbra also http://www.zimbra.com/ (exchange replacement appliance).

Add Zimbra's ajax client to the list of ajax stuff that doesn't work in Safari 3w

I'm looking at the Admin manual and it seems like the only external authentication scheme supported is Active Directory. Looks like it can use OpenLDAP to store information about users, but the authentication itself is AD only. WTF??

Can anyone clarify this?

http://www.zimbra.com/docs/ne/latest/administratio n_guide/5_Zimbra_LDAP.5.1.html#1036410

-matthew

Actually you can migrate users one at a time if you want, http://wiki.zimbra.com/index.php?title=Split_Domai n. If you run a split domain you can move users at will using imapsync. After that you can import your calendars with zimbra's rest interface, http://wiki.zimbra.com/index.php?title=User_Migrat ion#Migrating_Contacts_and_Calendar.

Actually you can migrate users one at a time if you want, http://wiki.zimbra.com/index.php?title=Split_Domai n. If you run a split domain you can move users at will using imapsync. After that you can import your calendars with zimbra's rest interface, http://wiki.zimbra.com/index.php?title=User_Migrat ion#Migrating_Contacts_and_Calendar.

Zimbra is a nice collaboration server with (web-based) email and calendaring. It's written in Java and has AJAX. I'm not sure how important it is to you to modify the calendar at the application level, but I'm sure you can at least export a (read-only) iCal feed from Zimbra.

Sunbird's goal is to support reading and writing of iCal via CalDAV, but Sunbird is very immature and highly unstable.

I haven't used these, but with Exchange server clones like Open-Xchange, you should be able to use Outlook. Not sure what Web interfaces they export, or what Web-based Exchange calendaring clients exist.

Of course, make sure you didn't dismiss Google Calendar prematurely. This should suffice if you don't need too many bells/whistles, and it relieves you of many burdens. If you really want an application to use, you can use CalGoo, but this (very early-in-development) program has always been excrutiatingly slow for me (and I tried their latest beta draft).

Try Zimbra at http://www.zimbra.com/

Zimbra also features modules that sync with zimbra servers for outlook and Apple desktop as well as Evolution syncing. Full compatibility with these would of course be necessary for any "Exchange killer."

Zimbra also features modules that sync with zimbra servers for outlook and Apple desktop as well as Evolution syncing. Full compatibility with these would of course be necessary for any "Exchange killer."

Products like Zimbra and Scalix are mostly open source, but their MAPI/Outlook components aren't. OSER was a grass-roots project aimed at developing open source MAPI-support, but has recently been put on hold by the developers.

It might be fair to say that if you have clients using Outlook you shouldn't complain about coughing up cash to have them connect to your exchange-replacement, but after all these years there (to my knowledge) isn't a fully-compatible server-side open source Exchange replacement.

Mozilla and Google? Yeah right. Tell that to a manager with 500 Outlook-using drones.

As a few have already stated, this is a good idea for a single user, but it may be tricky for collaborative scheduling.

Another opensource solution that has piqued my interest is zimbra, which includes collaborative e-mail, scheduling and many other groupware functions. All the functions work through a web interface as well, but they're now developing zdesktop to allow on- and off-line sync/viewing of e-mail, scheduling as so on. It's in alpha, however. There are also programs to use on your mobile devices.

I haven't used this system myself, but I'd be interested in any thoughts from sys admins that have successfully (or unsuccessfully) implemented this.

As a few have already stated, this is a good idea for a single user, but it may be tricky for collaborative scheduling.

Another opensource solution that has piqued my interest is zimbra, which includes collaborative e-mail, scheduling and many other groupware functions. All the functions work through a web interface as well, but they're now developing zdesktop to allow on- and off-line sync/viewing of e-mail, scheduling as so on. It's in alpha, however. There are also programs to use on your mobile devices.

I haven't used this system myself, but I'd be interested in any thoughts from sys admins that have successfully (or unsuccessfully) implemented this.

As a few have already stated, this is a good idea for a single user, but it may be tricky for collaborative scheduling.

Another opensource solution that has piqued my interest is zimbra, which includes collaborative e-mail, scheduling and many other groupware functions. All the functions work through a web interface as well, but they're now developing zdesktop to allow on- and off-line sync/viewing of e-mail, scheduling as so on. It's in alpha, however. There are also programs to use on your mobile devices.

I haven't used this system myself, but I'd be interested in any thoughts from sys admins that have successfully (or unsuccessfully) implemented this.

the memory footprint on that thing is far, far beyond ridiculous at this point, not to mention noticibly larger than even IE7's memory requirements.

Nice rant, but Firefox does not seem to use more memory than other browsers. See my above posts and the following links:
Radically New IE 7 or Updated Mozilla Firefox 2--Which Browser Is Better?
IE 7 vs IE 6
Firefox 2 - the lean, mean browser

If you can give a set of steps that causes Firefox to use "up to a gig of memory" and does not cause other browsers to use nearly as much memory, let's have it. Then whatever problem you're seeing can be reported and fixed.

SQL-ledger is a good bookkeeping package (and a whole lot more) and SugarCRM can handle the CRM side of things. There's even some glue scripts out there to keep the client info sync'd between them.

I'd also add Zimbra to the list of very good non-SourceForge projects. However, to be fair, the original poster was referring mostly to word of mouth being the primary source of info, nothing in the post said, "anything not on SourceForge is te suxors!"

Albanach wrote:
What really astonishes me is that open source has made such great leaps in other areas yet there's no apparent replacement for Outlook & Exchange.

Um...

1. Outlook -> EVOLUTION. I use Evolution all day, every day at work to read email and calendars from our Exchange server.
2. Exchange -> SCALIX and ZIMBRA are the two front runners. We're about to evaluate Zimbra to replace our Exchange server (150 employees). Other possible candidates include: Bynari Insight Server, KerioMailServer, @Mail, and the venerable OpenXchange.

Those seem fairly apparent to me.

It's already been mentioned in these comments but it's worth repeating - Zimbra ( http://www.zimbra.com/ ) is an excellent alternative to Exchange for companies that aren't mandated to use an all-Windows infrastructure stack. The company I work for is small and flexible enough that I have the luxury of considering many options. Of those that I reviewed for calendaring, Zimbra was the clear winner.

Zimbra-the-application is a mail/calendar/docs sharing server with an excellent web interface and native client support for all the protocols you mentioned. Zimbra-the-software is the integration code that turns a collection of important-but-separate technologies (postfix + mysql + openldap + about a dozen other open source technologies) into a well designed, manageable, drop-in "solution" a la Exchange.

I'm not an employee, and I'm not even a customer yet because the "open source edition" meets our pilot project's needs. If your user population doesn't demand to use MS Outlook as their mail/calendaring client, then the open source version is all you need. The commercial version is basically the open source version plus a half-dozen proprietary connectors for cranky client applications, such as MS Outlook. I suspect that we will need to buy those connectors in order to get the CEO and the Director of Professional Services onboard; if it turns out that we need to buy some licenses, I'll be happy to give these people my money. They've earned it.

What really astonishes me is that open source has made such great leaps in other areas yet there's no apparent replacement for Outlook & Exchange.

...no apparent replacement for Outlook & Exchange.

Sure there is - Zimbra.
(Disclaimer - we are a Zimbra reseller, but a very happy one, along with our clients).

http://zimbra.com/

This looks promising

It is fast, stable and uses about 1/3rd of the memory FF does.

http://www.zimbra.com/

Zimbra is probably the closest thing to Exchange in the FOSS world.

I'm not trying to troll, but what kind of open source project is Zimbra? A quick look over the editions page (http://www.zimbra.com/products/product_editions.h tml) makes me think the OS edition is missing some basic features (e.g. outlook sync). Am I missing something?

"...I didn't use Zimbra because they didn't offer an open version."

clicky

Didn't Zimbra beat them to the punch anyway?

There is also a nice web interface for Exchange that can be accessed securely. It has about 60% of the features of the thick client outlook.

I know that its a paid solution, but http://www.zimbra.com/ will do just that. They have an opensource solution, but this doesn't allow syncing to mobile devices. But their network edition supports syncing with Outlook, Mac Mail, iCal and Address book. Also has full sync with Palm OS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian OS devices. If you want blackberry support you will have to purchase a third party service.

One other compelling reason to go Asterisk based is Zimbra and click to dial functionality. While there exists a way to get Outlook to integrate with an Asterisk box, we are kind'of belong to the anti-exchange group and don't want users of Outlook. The split is 85/13/2 Mac/PC/*nix. So, we went to Zimbra for email and such for our 700 or so users. It may be possible to integrate Zimbra with Asterisk as Digium and the Zimbra folks are part of the Open Ajax Alliance. http://www.zimbra.com/partners/open_ajax_partners. html To be clear, I have the Asterisk Zimlet running on a non-production box and have seen no recent advancements in this arena. I figure once someone catches their breath...That they will put some energy back into Zimbra/Asterisk. As it is, Zimbra displays NXX-XXX-XXXX phone numbers as calto: links and http://www.asteriskguru.com/idefisk/index.php has a VoIP client that accepts this tag and will place a call. In six months or so I see full directory integration with Zimbra/Asterisk. Possibly being able to drag multiple contacts to a conference bridge and have 2-10 way audio conferences on the fly. Robert

You know I would prefer OS X based. But as we all know, that just isn't possible yet. One thing I didn't mention is that our (new) mail system is the Zimbra Network edition running on RHEL (which is available on OS X.) It may be possible to integrate Zimbra with Asterisk as Digium and the Zimbra folks are part of the Open Ajax Alliance. http://www.zimbra.com/partners/open_ajax_partners. html Robert

Good news... There are several reports that Firefox 2 uses less memory than IE 7. Only a small percentage of users ever had problems with memory usage to begin with.

Did they really mean qualified to learn? Or did they mean qualified to apply properly?

You are - of course - totally wrong. ;-)

Developers who leverage the GNU GPL or the GNU LGPL to combine powerful ideas with a friendly user interface - at a console or in a GUI - abound in the free software ecology. Savannah, Sourceforge and Freshmeat and similar sites are the obvious places to start looking for these possibilities. I'll mention just three that I've found exciting:

• For developers - Wikicompiler - develop software using a wiki. This is exciting because both developers and documenters only need a browser any where in the world to collaborate.
• For the office - Zimbra - groupware using AJAX web interface. This is exciting to end users in the office because it is nicely integrated and you only need your browser, meaning you can have a "one icon desktop" where the software is up to date as you open it anywhere on the LAN (or WAN over SSL).
• For gamers - Tremulous - combining FPS and strategy using a Quake-like engine. This is an exciting network game, because - being on either a human or alien team - your team need to protect your area, build defense, and kill the other team. Personally, I like the alien team, which lets you crawl the walls, and jump down and bite the enemy's necks.

Quite a few actually - you've probably just never heard of them:

• BlinkSale invoicing (which I actually pay for)
• BaseCamp and half a dozen other 37signals services.
• Zimbra webmail
• Zazzle
• Tons more that i'm not linking to...

zimbra

and/or

postpath

are worth looking at.

Oops! Alfresco is a great document management server for the office, with check-in/check-out, version control, etc. I really mean that.

I often confuse it with Zimbra, though, which is perfectly complimentary solution for email, calendars, what have. Zimbra has the ultra-nice Ajax stuff.

But the two make a *nice* office setup. :-)

Zimbra has collaboration software...

http://zimbra.com/

pieces of it are free, too.

it looks like a nice product.

I wonder how difficult it will be to write degradable applications with this toolkit. The demo applications I played with do nothing at all with javascript disabled... they're just a script tag in a body tag, so they make no attempt to render the application using plain HTML. I know they're just demos, but it won't save any time if you have to develop the non-js version separately... which is a problem particularly for those of us who have to develop to accessibility standards.

Also, this is coming right on the heels of the buzz about Oracle's AJAX Framework... and of course there's the Eclipse AJAX Toolkit Framework, which uses Dojo, Zimbra, and OpenRico (which in turn uses prototype)... others have mentioned Yahoo!'s toolkit and Atlas, as well, not to mention Rails... My point is that there are suddenly a ton of frameworks that all have slightly different approaches to the whole AJAX idea. Some are higher-level, some lower; some target a specific server backend; some offer UI libraries... Any or all of these might merge or die off or be made irrelevant at any time. It's almost harder to develop AJAXy applications now than back when you had to write your own HTTP request code... sure, you can knock one out in ten minutes now, but you spend the time you saved choosing the toolset beforehand.

I think I'll wait a bit... we've put the scorpions in the box and shaken it, so let's see who survives.

Apparently you haven't looked too deeply. In addition to the other obvious alternatives others have suggested, Zimbra http://www.zimbra.com/ does all the group scheduling stuff that exchange does. They've even added resource scheduling recently. Best of all it uses a bunch of great open source projects and glues them together nicely. The "network" version is far, far cheaper than exchange.