Evolution Bug-Hunt!

Matt Beale writes "Ximian is slated to release Evolution (a mail client for Gnome/Linux) by October 1st. In preperation, they are offering awards for finding bugs in Evolution! A important open project to participate in, AND i can win a palm VII, sweet!" My bug was that it kept crashing ;) October release is ambitious but very cool.

Comments

I found a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't find Microsoft Word.

release timeline

[Proud Geek]

Ximian probably has to release quickly. I can't imagine they are in great shape financially. It could easily be that a quick launch is key to their survival, either by allowing them to show product and attract investors, or even by giving them some sort of revenue stream.

Re:release timeline

[kilgore_47]

I can't imagine they are in great shape financially.

I think their Stuffed Monkey sales will keep them afloat...

Re:release timeline

[ConsumedByTV]

Rupert is not just a stuffed monkey. He is so much more, with thos cute button eyes you can see your boss behind you when your writing rtml.

Re:release timeline

[jbrw]

Except when I try to buy Rupert I get:

[snip]
Warning: PostgreSQL query failed: ERROR: parser: parse error at or near "and" in /var/www/html/xproddetail.php on line 11

Warning: Supplied argument is not a valid PostgreSQL result resource in /var/www/html/xproddetail.php on line 13

Warning: PostgreSQL query failed: ERROR: parser: parse error at or near "," in /var/www/html/xproddetail.php on line 18

Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at /var/www/html/xproddetail.php:11) in /var/www/include/shoplib.inc on line 50
[snip]

D'oh!

...j

Re:release timeline

[Uruk]

I'm sorry, but why do so many people here care about the business aspects of Ximian? How is that that it's all about the benjamins? I thought it was all about the SOFTWARE!

Certainly, Ximian has business realities that they need to attend to, but I'm at a loss for why those types of things are interesting to slashdotters. When was it exactly that the site turned from primarily people interested in cool technology to people who are interested in the latest business news? When was it that we gained so many people who act as if their entire self-worth is tied up in whether or not "open-source" proves itself to be a viable business model?

Here's the reality of the situation - free software isn't going to die even if it CAN'T be made into a viable business model. If Ximian croaks tomorrow, that doesn't invalidate a single line of code that they put into Evolution. Sure, some businessman in a suit somewhere is going to be pissed off, but unless you are that guy, why do you care?

Enjoy the software. Enjoy life. Life is good! Don't spend time wondering about Ximian's revenue models, their overhead, whether or not their VC capital is dwindling, or even whether or not ESR was right about all that non-software-related business stuff he spews about "open source". Do your part and be a GNU/Linux user, and let the suits take care of themselves.

I don't necessarily think that suits and techies should be separated, but this vein of discussion is something that just isn't all that interesting.

Re:release timeline

[kilgore_47]

Rupert is not just a stuffed monkey. He is so much more, with thos cute button eyes you can see your boss behind you when your writing rtml.

Behind me? I'm pretty sure that my stuffed monkey was replaced by a seemly identical one with secret hidden cameras in the eyes.

So I'm pretty sure bigC isn't watching over my shoulder, but rather sitting the the air conditioned office watching a live feed instead.

The toilet-cam is probably more interesting anyway though.

Re:release timeline

[kilgore_47]

Warning: PostgreSQL query failed: ERROR: parser: parse error at or near "and" in /var/www/html/xproddetail.php on line 11

They'll never make any money if they go on like that!

Re:release timeline

[ConsumedByTV]

Man, its not funny when I realised that its true. Time for you to get a new job man. He seems to be what we are all fighting against. But then again perhaps you really take the Snog song "the prole song" to heart.... I doubt it thought. By the way ximan gnome is by far the easiest software i have ever installed... One thing that better about telecommuniting thats for damn sure.

Re:release timeline

[Khalid]

I agree with the fact that Open Source won't go away, but if developers can't sustain themselves and can't work full time on projects, these projects will take forever to complete. Freasmeat and Sourceforge are full of projects which have been dragging their fleets for years and will never reach a useful state.

Open Source software will catch up proprietary one only if companies who develop it can have enough money to fund development and R&D. Open Source can't relay forever on hobbyists programming in their spare time.

Re:release timeline

[Niac]

How is that tHow is that that it's all about the benjamins? I thought it was all about the SOFTWARE!

Naw, it's all about the pentiums!

Re:release timeline

[Anonymous Coward]

except that /. readers are "leechers" - and despite all the talk about Open Source and all bugs being shallow, they know someone has to write the code - and they're too busy dual booting into Windows 98SE to play Max Payne, use IE, and write a letter to grandma in Word to do it.

If Ximain croaks (oops, when), that'll make how many businesses that have proven there's no money to be made in Open Sores software? And Slashdork readers won't have any good linux warez to give lip service to.

Re:release timeline

[stefanlasiewski]

but unless you are that guy, why do you care?

Because we're the type of people who belive you can have your cake and eat it too. I agree that Open Source won't die if companies like Ximian do die, but I also hope that Companies like Ximian are able to make a couple of bucks, and will be able grow and prosper from Open Source projects, and that WE will be able to benfit from that prosperity.

They fix bugs, add features, and make great, useful products.Ximian is a great asset to the Gnome community.

Do your part and be a GNU/Linux user, and let the suits take care of themselves.

Suits? Sure, I'm sure Ximian has it's 'suits', but it has regular people too. I've met several Ximian developers in person and online, and I consider them peers, not suits. I wish my peers Ximian good luck and good fortune... both the Tee-shirt wearing peers and the suit wearing almost-peers.

Re:release timeline

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey there,

"This is rumor control. Please step away from the troll."

:-)

Just to make things absolutely clear, we have like $10 million in the bank, and are very very careful about expenses. Plus, we're busily growing our revenue streams.

So, like, don't worry about us. Please do feel free to purchase a copy of Ximian GNOME, however. Just go to store.ximian.com.

Love,
Nat Friedman
Co-founder, Ximian, Inc.

Re:release timeline

[Clovert Agent]

The business health of Ximian (or any other OSS company) IS important, a fact that escapes many users. It's not "all about the SOFTWARE", it's also about the future development of the software, the support, the advocacy, the integration.

Users don't need to care about that stuff because it's usually being taken care of, but too many OSS projects stick at the "it works" stage, and ignore the rest. So long as you're only serving the users who want the raw features, great, but OSS is moving into bigger markets, and needs to grow up.

The likes of Sun and IBM use Linux and OSS software because it gives value to their customers. They will (hopefully) pay companies like Ximian to do all the background work on software to maximise that value, and the value is NOT just in a checklist of features.

Historically, OSS developers have done an inconsistent, sometimes-but-not-always-adequate job of the soft issues I mentioned. Customers (especially enterprise customers) want Consistent, and they want Good. Business health is one indicator that a customer can use to gauge whether they'll get that or not.

Bug.. already?

[orangesquid]

I found a bug -- it doesn't execute Outlook macro worms correctly!

Re:Bug.. already?

[ajs]

main () { fork(); main(); }

Not as efficient as it could be...

Let's see, to avoid exess stack extension from infinite recursion of the exponentially growing process-count:

main() { for(;;){ fork(); } }

There we have a nice little system-killer. But, it's still not quite good enough becuase of that icky branch. If we fork n times, per loop, that's 2^n more processes before they all have to branch again....

main() { for(;;){ fork(); fork(); fork(); } }

Dancing in the dark... to the radio of love! ;-)

Re:Bug.. already?

[ChadN]

Any good forkbomb includes a payload...


#include <stdlib.h>
main() { char * foo; for(;;) {
foo = malloc(1025);
foo[0] = 'a';
foo[1024] = 'b';
fork(); fork(); fork();
}
}


NOTE - I do NOT recommend running this on a machine without proper ulimits set...

Re:Bug.. already?

[wiredog]

fork(); fork(); fork();

Am I the only one who thinks of the Swedish Chef when I see this?

Evolution 0.9 "shipping" now

[PCM2]

Don't forget that Evolution 0.9 is shipping as part of the shrinkwrapped Ximian Desktop product. Though that part of the suite, at least, is labeled quite plainly as a "preview release," it's definitely integrated into their overall office productivity offering right now -- no longer a separate download. (This, as of the LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco.)

Re:Evolution 0.9 "shipping" now

[luge]

Actually, the version on the CD is 0.11.

Re:Evolution 0.9 "shipping" now

[titrisol]

And it comes in Mandrake-Linux 8.0 too.
I like Evolution 0.9 as mailer.

Re:Evolution 0.9 "shipping" now

[PCM2]

You are right. I must have had some wires crossed.

Re:Evolution 0.9 "shipping" now

[jpr]

We are shipping at least beta 1 (0.11). Mandrake is also shipping 0.9 in Mandrake 8.0.

This is moving backwards

[allknowing]

This will make programmers WANT to put holes in software, then they will be a part of this and somehow "FIND" these holes at a later date.

Re:This is moving backwards

[kilgore_47]

A contest like this surely states in the rules that ximian employees and/or anyone who has anything whatsoever to do with the project is excluded from participating (or from receiving prizes - i guess they should still let ximian staff submit bugs ;-)

Re:This is moving backwards

[silicon_synapse]

A contest like this surely states in the rules that ximian employees and/or anyone who has anything whatsoever to do with the project is excluded from participating (or from receiving prizes - i guess they should still let ximian staff submit bugs ;-)

Sure enough, you're right: http://www.ximian.com/devzone/projects/evolution-e ligibility.html

Re:This is moving backwards

[baptiste]

This will make programmers WANT to put holes in software, then they will be a part of this and somehow "FIND" these holes at a later date

They pulled this stunt at NORTEL one time and IIRC it worked fairly well. We all laughed and said the same thing - designers will just toss in bugs to fix for moeny later - but they did have some smart rules and it seemed to work fairly well - the designers sure spent a LOT more time in teh lab tested the betas :)

i love ximian, but

[S. Allen]

what exactly is their revenue model. I hope it's not just selling this or this...

and I think they dropped the whole services idea.

Re:i love ximian, but

[EvlPenguin]

Nah, they sell t-shirts too.

Re:i love ximian, but

[Skeezix]

No, it's not just selling shrink-wrapped versions of their software. A few examples of how they're bringing in revenue:

• CorporateConnect , Red Carpet Express, and Red Carpet partner program
• Partership with Mission Critical Linux
• Other partnerships

Re:i love ximian, but

[stueyb]

My understanding was that they were going to start charging for Red Carpet. Therefore, our software is free, but if you want a really easy way of updating it, you need to have a Red Carpet licence.

Re:i love ximian, but

[jpr]

Untrue. RC installation and updating is still freely available, RC Express is basically just a bandwith thing.

http://www.ximian.com/about_us/press_center/pres s_ releases/red_carpet_services.html

too bad MSFT doesn't do this

[Eslyjah]

if i had a nickel for every bug in windows 95...

Re:too bad MSFT doesn't do this

[JordoCrouse]

if i had a nickel for every bug in windows 95...

Gates already does....

Re:too bad MSFT doesn't do this

[robvasquez]

Mod that up to Funny, 5

here's a bug

[Greylin]

it *bugs* me that you have to download all sorts of extra libraries just to get the fscking thing to work...why can't it just be one download and install with the favorite package mode of your choice -- ./config|make|make install, rpm, or dpkg?

I think I'll stick with sylpheed...

Re:here's a bug

[SquadBoy]

apt-get install does it all in one download. Maybe more than one package but it is as close to possible of what you are asking.

Re:here's a bug

[MeNeXT]

That is why you should order a CD. If everything was simple on a download the only people who would buy the CD's would be those connected by modem.

Re:here's a bug

[PingXao]

That's not a bug, it's a feature! Seriously, though, having to download all that extra stuff put me off as well. I just know that at least 3 of those things will require me to download and install something else besides. No thanks. I just don't have the time or inclination right now.

As you said, if it was just one tarball to deal with then I'd have it running already!

Re:here's a bug

[vukicevic]

If you are compiling from source, you will indeed have to build a number of prerequisite libraries that track Evolution development, such as gal. This is no different than including all these libraries inside the evolution source tree -- except that these libraries are also used by other projects, and as such are independent modules. Now that bonobo, oaf, and others are stable, this isn't as big of a problem.

If you just want to install Ximian Evolution, you can easily use Red Carpet to do it -- it will figure out exactly what packages you need and take care of the whole problem for you.

Re:here's a bug

[diamondc]

yeah, just let them rewrite every library that has the features they want, into one single program. smart thinking, huh?

Re:here's a bug

[Skeezix]

This is the way software works. You build applications on platforms. In this case, Evolution is built on on the GNOME platform which is made up of libraries. It's no different in Windows or any other platform. One of the things that causes you to feel that perhaps it is different, is that free software moves so fast...so in order to get the latest you need more software than just what your distribution shipped with. That's precisely why, by the way, Ximian is selling shrinked-wrapped versions of their software. You get it all on CD's with documentation and support. If you don't want to pay money for it, Red Carpet will happily resolve the dependancies for you. 99% of the problems people had with earlier version of Red Carpet have been resolved in recent builds. If Red Carpet is too slow for you, consider subscribing to Red Carpet Express when it's available.

Re:windows

[manon]

And that is the answer on the big question: "why doesn't Micro$oft reward bugfinders"!

Re:Dilbert?

[AnonymousComrade]

Like Wally said: "I'm gonna code me a minivan!!!"

Important?

[Jeffrey Baker]

Someone explain to me why this is important, as asserted by this slashdot article. It's a mail user agent, no more, no less. It doesn't allow people to collaborate more efficiently. It isn't groupware. It's just an MUA with LDAP, an RSS viewer, and a calendar. Fun, but why important?

Re:Important?

[ethereal]

It's important if it allows you to replace Microsoft Outlook, which is one of the last reasons people are stuck with Windows desktops. Or at least it was supposed to replace Outlook; I don't know if it really does or not.

Re:Important?

[NonSequor]

It's got a scheduling component, a to do list, an address book. There's already some stuff for calendar sharing. It's supposed to eventually synch with Palms but I don't think that's ready yet. It is already very nice though.

Re:Important?

[stikves]

Because it is supposed to be what you have listed above and also slashdot community is interested in linux companies.

Re:Important?

[Skeezix]

Because Evolution is one of if not the premiere Workgroup and PIM free software solution. You can schedule appointments with other Evolution users or with any client supporting the iCalendar standard (Outlook/Exchange, Lotus Notes...). It offers the best integration I've seen amongst mail/PIM suites, and best of all it handles extremely large volumes of mail better than anything I've used. When you get 200+ emails a day, this is a lifesaver. Its Filter/vFolder capabilities are pretty powerful.

Re:Important?

[image]

One word:

mutt

Trust me, I've used them all. I even used to be a program manager at Microsoft (where we had rather integrated groupware, and a *lot* of mail), and nothing else has come close to handling the volume of personal email, work email, mailing lists, etc., that mutt does.

If you haven't tried it, give it a shot. If you have given up on text based email readers because pine doesn't cut it, or GUI clients because eudora and outlook express don't do it for you, then you likely haven't taken the time to realize the potential of mutt.

Re:Important?

[Skeezix]

I've used pine, mutt, and several others, yes. But mutt isn't a full workgroup/PIM suite. It's like comparing apples with oranges to compare mutt with Evolution.

Not too abitious

[rgmoore]

October release is ambitious but very cool.

I don't think it's that ambitious. I've been using Evolution as my primary mail client for almost a year. It's improved a lot in that time, and for the past several months it's been quite reliable and has all the features I need. I don't think that getting it up to release quality on that schedule is an unreasonable expectation.

Better Idea.

[PopeAlien]

..It'd be much cheaper if they just used the DMCA to arrest people that find bugs.. Hey, it works for Adobe.

Award?

[hwaara]

Yay, so if you win, you receive a free copy of the buggy operating system? Who-hoo!

MyEvolution Bug?

[idonotexist]

Why is it I cannot add a rss/xml feed to myevolution? Yes, I see the option to add news, but once I input the url, nothing changes. The news source is not added to the left or right window. I'm using debian with ximian btwian, and I do input a valid feed.

Re:MyEvolution Bug?

[TwP]

Might wan to report this to Ximian and not /.

I have a hand spring.

[ConsumedByTV]

I want to be able to sync it to my desktop. Does evoloution or any other program with all the normal features work? I am looking for a calandar, contacts, perhaps even an emulator to run it. Any Ideas about this? I mean outlook can sync with my hand spring, can evoloution?

Re:I have a hand spring.

[dhamsaic]

Evolution supports Palm devices. I would imagine that it supports Handspring Visor as well, but I don't have one to test it with...

Re:I have a hand spring.

[NonSequor]

The Palm device sync isn't ready yet. You can get it by compiling it in yourself though.

Re:I have a hand spring.

[ConsumedByTV]

I couldnt find this info on their site, could you like me to your source?

Re:I have a hand spring.

[luge]

Palm Sync will be in the packaged binaries soon; hopefully next week.

Re:I have a hand spring.

[ConsumedByTV]

From where can i get this or instructions on how to do it?

Re:I have a hand spring.

[diamondc]

it's a ./configure --help option.. you probably need to download some other libraries, though.

Re:I have a hand spring.

[dhamsaic]

http://www.ximian.com/products/ximian_evolution/fe atures.html

Great idea!

[Cyno]

This is very cool. Insentive to help out. I'll try to take a look at some of ximians software starting next week, but I'm not at all optimistic. The last time I looked at ximian software they wanted me to download the gnome source from gnome.org and wouldn't support distributions like slackware. I'll see what I can do and try to include this in the distribution I'm currently working on, if all goes well maybe I'll even find a bug.

Let's go back to black & white

[Wrexs0ul]

Oh where oh where has my little pine gone?

I don't know about you guys, but I actually like a nice quick and easy telnet-into mail reader over and beyond outlook et al.. It's great being able to check my email from work/university/friend's house using what's normally pre-installed software (a telnet client) on every OS :)

-Guy Incognito

Re:Let's go back to black & white

[TwP]

Pine, it's not just a car freshener anymore!

I do like pine myself, but telnet is way evil - cleartext passwords and login names :( Now pine and SSH is a good combination and a little more secure. My only remaining beef is that pine does not currently support the "Maildir" format made popular by qmail. <sigh/>

Re:Let's go back to black & white

[Wrexs0ul]

Sorry, meant ssh, my bad.

Then again, not sure why I should even bother with ssh considering the OS it's used on is Windows :)... SSH programs here are nice enough to remember my passwords as plaintext in the system registry... yum.

Re:Let's go back to black & white

[essell]

Who says you can do this using evolution?

There's this nifty little protocol called "IMAP". Read your mail in Pine, organize it in folders, do whatever. Connect to your mail server via IMAP, and see these same emails, see the same folders you created in Pine, in your GUI mail app. It's all about choice.

Cool, huh?

Re:Let's go back to black & white

[TwP]

Yeah, that's what the Pine webpage said as well - at least the bit about never support Maildir formats :( Some other much smarter / more persistent person than myself did create a mod for Pine that would support Maildir formats, but alas, the URL has been sent to the /dev/nul of the brain. See what I get for not writing things down.

Re:Let's go back to black & white

[TwP]

Okay, go easy on the newbie! Notice the large user ID number. [S]he is merely trying to fit into the larger /. community. Be graceful and considerate O' cowardly AC! <grin/>

wait...

[fjordboy]

if it is opensource...i could configure it, write my own bugs, and then find them!!! Woohoo! I'm gonna write my self a couple of Palm VII's tonight.

Re:wait...

[EvlPenguin]

if it is opensource...i could configure it, write my own bugs, and then find them!!!

Uh, no. That's just stupid.

Fnord? Hail Eris!

SlackPack

[(startx)]

I found a bug! No slack pack availible, or even source gzip'd tarball for that matter.....

Ximian and Distribution Support

[stcanard]

In all honesty, there are three things that Ximian needs to do quite quickly in order to get a wider distribution:

1. Support more than Red Hat

2. Support more then Red Hat

3. Well, you get the idea

I was hooked as a user of Ximian Gnome for some time, and even went through the effort of downloading and compiling Evolution. Then they stopped making builds that would work on Suse 7.x. After getting frustrated waiting ("any time now") I gave up and installed KDE to see how it had come along. Now Ximian is really going to have to do something special to get me to go back.

Watching the Suse mailing lists, I'm not the only on in this situation. Outside of North America (and even inside if I'm any indication) Suse is quite heavily used -- it is definitely not a good idea to alienate a potentially large user base

Re:Ximian and Distribution Support

[chetohevia]

Ximian supports the following operating systems:

> Red Hat Linux 6.2, 7.0, and 7.10
> Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (Potato) on x86 hardware
> Linux Mandrake 7.0, 7.1, and 7.2
> SuSE Linux 6.4, 7.0 and 7.2 on x86 hardware
> LinuxPPC 2000
> Yellow Dog Linux Champion Server 1.2
> Turbolinux 6.0
> Solaris 7 and 8 on UltraSPARC hardware

We'll be working on more in the future-- HP/UX should be out in a few months, for example.

We had some trouble with SuSE 7.2 and it took longer to do it than we thought it would, but we have got those packages available now as well.

If you're interested in using Slackware, visit my home page for the unofficial explanation and workarounds: http://primates.ximian.com/~aaron/slack.html

Yours,
Aaron Weber
Ximian, Inc.

Re:Ximian and Distribution Support

[JoeBuck]

I run Ximian Gnome on my Debian 2.2 system
(it's potato + Ximian Gnome 1.4 + KDE 2.1.x).
Works fine.

Exchage Client

[(startx)]

But will it work with an exchange server, or do I have to keep loading Outlook in wine?

Re:Exchage Client

[Skeezix]

From the Ximian Evolution FAQ:

Q: If we are a Windows based company with Unix users, can we use Ximian Evolution?

A: If your server uses standard open protocols like LDAP, IMAP, POP, and SMTP, you can use Evolution with it. You can share addresses with vCards and calendar items with iCal appointments. We do not, however, support proprietary protocols at this time.
...

This applies to Exchange. You can use it with exchange if you're using industry-standard open protocols.

Re:Exchage Client

[DA_MAN_DA_MYTH]

This applies to Exchange. You can use it with exchange if you're using industry-standard open protocols.

But often it's not our decision (as users), whether or not we use industry-standard protocols. My companies M$ zealots, ... errr... I mean IT department, honestly believes that M$ software and technology is industry standard. A mail client that use to support M$ exchange servers was TradeXch, but I can't seem to find a download. I hope Ximian Evolution does decide to eventually support the M$ format, I mean why shouldn't they? They are going to be supporting .NET anyways.

Re:Exchage Client

[Skeezix]

Of course you may not have a say in the matter. The issue is with feasibility--implementing proprietary, undocumented protocols is a bitch.

Re:Exchage Client

[LWolenczak]

I have found that that Mozilla's client is damn good on an exchange server when using IMAP.

Re:Exchage Client

[mimbleton]

" I mean IT department, honestly believes that M$ software and technology is industry standard."

Well, they are right.
Exchange is one of the leading email and collaboration software packages which makes them industry standard.

Re:Exchage Client

[LWolenczak]

tipical crack smoking ac....

Re:Exchage Client

[LWolenczak]

err typical.... oh well...

Re:Exchage Client

[flacco]

I have found that that Mozilla's client is damn good on an exchange server when using IMAP.

Now if they'd just put a damn calendar in Mozilla that I can share with the rest of the office I could give up outlook for good.

Re:Exchage Client

[LWolenczak]

I forget what exactly you can access on an exchange server thru imap, but i think its everything but a small handful of things....

Re:Exchage Client

[GooberToo]

It seems that Bynari's TradeXch no longer exists. They renamed the product to "Insight". If you look here, you'll see that they also removed the native Exchange Server support, so it too, now only functions as a standards compliant MUA.

I'm not too terribly surprised to see that the proxy that was used was removed as it had lots of issues depending on the version of CDO and MAPI that was installed on the machine that runs the proxy. Furthermore, lots of people just didn't like the idea of running a proxy. Between the hard sale of a proxy and the problematic support issues, it makes complete sense for them to focus on just making a good groupware product. While I haven't seen the latest, I suspect that it has lots of improvements since i last saw it.

As I understand it, the story about that city using Linux as it's desktop, is using Insite (servers and clients) as part of their solution.

MS business model!!

[GdoL]

This really seems to be similar to what people think is the MS business model. Buggy software to the masses, they will find the bugs, then sell them a little improved version, wait for more bugs, sell again,... And do a lot of cash in the mean time. And build a reputation of constantly improve your software.

Gome is great!!

Bugs?? Hehe? This is fore me.

[magi]

Computers hate me. Software hates me. Gods of Information must be angry at me, for some unknown reason. This kind of challenges are just made for me.

But really. I haven't seen a mail client better than Pine so far. Pine is small on the screen (80x25 or whatever you like). It reuses the entire view area in all different views. It's fast to use with keys, and keyboard control of most Linux/KDE/Gnome software is next to nothing. One of the best features of Pine is saving messages by the username of the sender (in incoming mail), and by the username of the receiver (in outgoing mail). 10x faster than moving messages to a long folder list with mouse. Yack, I hate (computer) mice (furry ones are ok though).

Re:Bugs?? Hehe? This is fore me.

[PurpleBob]

It's sad to see a text-based e-mail user caught in the Pine trap.

Set aside a few hours and learn to use Mutt. It's open source (Pine isn't), and it does everything Pine can do (except for Pine's brain-dead menu system) plus a lot more. You'll thank yourself later.

Re:Bugs?? Hehe? This is fore me.

[Ben Hutchings]

Pine's licence fails to meet the OSD, on at least two counts:

1. It does not permit distribution of binaries built from modified source code, as required by section 4.
2. It restricts distribution for profit more than is allowed by section 5.

It's currently that (more or less).

[Chuck Chunder]

But it's groupware ambitions are clear. It's important not because of what it currently is (A pretty decent MUA AFAICT, vfolders are sweet), but for what it credibly promises to be in the future.

Addressbook

[cnkeller]

I've been keeping up to date with the nightly snapshots (okay they are really semi-nightly). Very stable. Only had one go bad I think; it was a gtkhtml problem.

Evolution actually rocks, mostly. I was very impressed that they simplified encrytion so it works just like Outlook. Press this button to sign then press this to encrypt. Very nice.

Now, how about enabling the address book?

Re:Addressbook

[cnkeller]

Whoops, as someone pointed out you have to create sub-folders, then add contacts. Strange. Ah well, rant revoked. Well done.

Re:Addressbook

[Nodatadj]

I think this is caused by the addressbook.db file in the root contacts folder being in the wrong format. runing killev and removing it, then restarting evolution should fix that, but you'll lose any contacts in that folder, so you might not want to do that :)

Re:Addressbook

[cnkeller]

Good call, thanks. Works as expected now. If I had 'em, you get a +1 useful.

Re:I have a bug for you, Mr. Taco

[max cohen]

Maybe he was joking about all the pathetic bug reports that are offered during bug bash fests...I dunno.

Ximian supports Suse 7.x

[Skeezix]

Ximian just recently added support for Suse 7.x. I'm not sure what you mean about supporting more than Red Hat. Currently Ximian supports something like 18 different platforms. Mandrake 8 is also now supported. You can get it here.

Re:Ximian supports Suse 7.x

[stcanard]

The redhat part was just to get people's attention and start a good flame war :-)

The problem with _just_ having added support for Suse 7.x is that it's about 6 months too late -- I was forced to migrate away from it long ago, and now Ximian really needs some sort of killer app to get me to consider going back.

Note that this isn't because I see gnome or KDE as being better than the other, but because I've now got a large investment in configuring KDE and installing KDE apps, and since I've been burnt once already by Ximian I'm leery of trying it again. Again, this seems to be a prevalent attitude through the Suse community.

Great Idea

[thetechweenie]

Wow, has any other company ever done this before? This is a great idea, and I use the software anyway. It's funny that a GNU based software developer would basically pay you to find bugs, but you have to pay M$ to get betas of their software...

Re:Great Idea

[luge]

Mozilla and Eazel have both done similar things; we're certainly inspired by their efforts.

Evolution bug hunt

[Doctor Fishboy]

Great! Who's getting the Head and Shoulders truck then?

DMCA....

[blugecko]

Yeah, they submit the bugs and then get sued for violating the DMCA, they win a palm and a 10 year federal prison sentence, yeah!

I found a small one...

[vex24]

This isn't a dig on Linux, but it would be nice if this worked in Win32 environments as well... as an organization gradually weaning ourselves off of Microsoft products, we could really use a cross-platform mail/calender client to replace Outlook on Windows. Ah well, maybe we'll be able to jump whole hog to Linux fairly soon anyway....

Re:I found a small one...

[hayfever]

Actually, according to the FAQ on Ximian's site (don't have an exact URL, but it's on the help menu in the latest nightly build), you CAN use Outlook with the Windows PC's and be compatible with Evolution. All you have to do is use the standard protocols (LDAP, etc) instead of the MSFT proprietary ones. Just a little food for thought as your business is growing away from Windows (now if only ALL businesses would...)

Re:I found a small one...

[flacco]

This isn't a dig on Linux, but it would be nice if this worked in Win32 environments as well... as an organization gradually weaning ourselves off of Microsoft products, we could really use a cross-platform mail/calender client to replace Outlook on Windows.

A thousand times yes. I'd beat up an old lady to get a working shared calendar in Mozilla. Which is cross-platform - a critical advantage over Evolution, IMHO (even though I use Evolution instead of Mozilla when in Linux, which is usually).

Notes from the bugmaster

[luge]

Hey! So... I guess I'm going to have a busy day tomorrow :) If you really want to get a good start and be helpful, I'd recommend that you read the Bug Day TODO list before coming by the bug day. We need lots of help- but we also need people who are going to be willing to get their hands dirty in the bugzilla, not just sit in the channel and ask when their pet bug will be fixed.
So... hope to see you all tomorrow, and hope that you'll be willing to help out in a constructive manner!
Luis Villa
Ximian Bugmaster
P.S. I'll be reading responses, so if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Thanks!

most bugs reported so far?

[nconway]

I've been testing Evo for a while (with an eye on getting that Palm VII), and I'm wondering where I am WRT to the other bug reporters. I've reported 20 unique bugs -- what have other people got?

Re:most bugs reported so far?

[luge]

A rudimentary contributor report. This is not exactly the report that will be used for the prizes (this one doesn't adjust by date, dups, or a couple other factors) but it does give a ballpark idea of where people stand. Remember we'll also be giving out some stuff to people who find and mark dups, not just adding new bugs to the DB.

Very Cool

[Uruk]

Not only do I *not* mind helping a company out when they are contributing free software back to the community, but when they actively solicit help like this and give people rewards, it's only going to help them out. Also, I think having your customers hunt for bugs reinforces the idea that you're not claiming you're perfect (and thus not trying to pull the wool over their eyes about defects in the software) and also as part of the free software community it makes people feel like they have a stake in the software. Which would you rather use - a package where you felt you had some sort of stake, or MegaCorp's package where feature requests are forwarded to /dev/null and the support team consists of an auto-reply email system?

As a side effect, it's probably a smart marketing move since as I'd imagine, the Ximian FTP sites are hopping right now with slashdotters trying to download a copy of Evolution to win something.

So let's review:
- Free (as in beer) stuff (always cool)
- Free (as in speech) software (even cooler)

What a deal!

Slackware ???

[quade_79]

What about Slackware 8©0, or any slackware for that matter© As a slackware user, I'm getting very tired of people hiding the source tarballs in some obscure ftp directory, and putting rpm's and deb packages right up front, or worse yet, net even making the source tarballs available© I know, I know, I could use CVS to get the source, but I like the idea of using some version that has been "blessed" by someone as stable, or semi-stable© Half the time the CVS sources don't even compile© I'm not asking for slackware ©tgz packages, just a little curtacy©

as far as I'm concerned that is the biggest bug of them all©©©

Re:Slackware ???

[JanneM]

There are slackware .tgz:s available - they're just not on red-carpet (as red-carpet has no idea of what to do with them).

/Janne

Too bad it's been broken in apt for ages

[miahrogers]

I realize ximian "doesn't really have time" to guarantee compatability with Debian-unstable, but I know a lot of people who use unstable. If you use unstable, in general you're the kind of person who would report a bug when a program crashes.

For MONTHS there has been a dumb bug with libgnomeprint11 (their version) that makes it never install on any of my machines. Thanks guys, I hope you get those bugs checked soon, but not by me, even though I was willing.

That and they're trying to force everyone to use redcarpet when I really perfer apt, especially since redcarpet is buggy.

This isn't a flame, it's more like me crying because nothing ever makes any sense. I think Miguel & co are great folks, and I hope they do well.

Re:Too bad it's been broken in apt for ages

[Jeffrey Baker]

I just checked with apt-cache and evolution depends on libgnomeprint15.

Re:Too bad it's been broken in apt for ages

[servo8]

Ximian has supported the use of apt-get for quite a while now. Instructions on where to point to in sources.list, etc can be found at http://www.ximian.com/download/instructions.html?d istribution=debian"

Re:Too bad it's been broken in apt for ages

[miahrogers]

you're right. I feel like an idiot.

libgnomeprint11 is still broken, but it isn't attached to evolution anymore (maybe at one point something that evolution depends on depended on it).

Anyways, sorry for the harsh words, and on with the bugchecking.

What is Ximian

[edox.]

Ximian is the established leader in providing open source desktop technology, applications, support and services for the Linux and UNIX marketplaces. Ximian products, in use by over 800,000 people worldwide, are providing the ease of use, productivity and interoperability needed to propel the adoption of the Linux desktop in corporate computing environments. With Ximian GNOME, which extends the work of the open source GNOME project, Ximian has provided a complete graphical desktop environment and productivity application suite for Linux and UNIX systems. Ximian's Red Carpet and Ximian Evolution software deliver software and personal information management solutions for both end users and corporate customers.

Comprised of many of the original architects of the GNOME system, Ximian is a founding member of the GNOME Foundation and sits on the advisory board. The company has secured funding from leading venture firms Charles River Ventures and Battery Ventures.

Re:What is Ximian

[silicon_synapse]

Thank you for illustrating your unique tallent of cutting and pasting. You could have at least fixed your links.

Re:What is Ximian

[silicon_synapse]

Hehe, the irony is terrible. I have no idea how my link (parent message) got mangled like that though.

Note to self: Familiarize yourself with the preview button

Re:OT Why the delay?

[kilgore_47]

The front page caching is pretty screwed up here too (NS 4.7x on Solaris) - the P2P article has been displayed as 3 of 8 comments for an hour or so now, which definitely doesn't match the actual story. Did somebody's perl cron job choke? :)

The slashdot front page has been odd all day. This story has been up for quite some time, and after a reload the front page still just says "Read More" and doesn't list it as having attached comments. I have my config setup to send me a message when I get replies to my posts, and that hasn't been happening either. I've seen a couple replies today and the front page still says "0 new messages".

funny, the /. descussion about evolution bugs turns to a discussion about /. bugs...

"Gnome/Linux"??

[1010011010]

Stallman alert!
woop! woop!

Re:"Gnome/Linux"??

[the Atomic Rabbit]

no, that would be GNU/Gnome/Linux

When you expand Gnome/Linux, you get (GNU Network Object Modelling Environment)/Linux. Putting another GNU in front is redundant.

Why must it look so MS?

[kabir]

I have no idea of the actual functional quality of Evolution, or any other Ximian product, but that doesn't matter because I'm annoyed about something else... Why is it that they feel the need to make it look just like Microsoft software? Personally, I _hate_ the way Outlook looks, it's blocky, inelegant, and screams Microsoft. So why does Ximian adopt it? Trying to convert all the Outlook users? I suppose that might work, but it has the annoying side effect of a) still being ugly as sin, and b) reinforcing the (broken) idea that Microsoft has the right idea. I'm all for new MUAs, etc. but it would be nice if their look was at least a little bit more inventive (and elegant!).

That said, I'm still happy with mutt. It does exactly what I need it to, including allowing image and html viewing, and I can read my mail over an ssh connection from anywhere. Until someone can give me that functionality (even with a lightweight interface for sshing and a heavier one for when I'm in my chair) I doubt I'll be terribly interested in stuff like evolution. Especially since it's so bloody ugly...

Re:Why must it look so MS?

[Karn]

Unlike you, some people acknoledge the fact that Microsoft does in fact have occasional good ideas.

That said, I'm still happy with mutt.

Right.. Why make a free alternative to the most popular MUA available? We need yet another text-based email client!


It does exactly what I need it to, including allowing image and html viewing, and I can read my mail over an ssh connection from anywhere.

So, does mutt have a built in bitmap to ascii converter, so you don't even have to see bitmapped graphics?

Kidding aside, most people don't enjoy looking in an 80x25 console to read their email. Sorry.

Re:Why must it look so MS?

[mimbleton]

Outlook is one of the better looking programs out there.
BTW. You world of mutts and similar programs is gone, while you might enjoy using it there is NOTHING you can do stop GUI based programs just like you cannot stop progress.

Re:Why must it look so MS?

[kabir]

Unlike you, some people acknoledge the fact that Microsoft does in fact have occasional good ideas.

I absolutely think that Microsoft has good ideas, and more than occasionally at that. I don't, however, agree that their UI design senisibility (to date) has been one of them - and neither do they! Check out the Windows XP screenshots... clearly they thought it was time for a change too.

I'm not so much anti-Microsoft as I am anti-ugly, and I stand by my original assement of Outlook (and thus Evolution) as ugly.

Right.. Why make a free alternative to the most popular MUA available? We need yet another text-based email client!

No... we don't need another text based email client - we've had mutt and pine for years, and they're still quite serviceable. As for a free alternative to "the most popular MUA available", well, that's a fine idea, which I wholly support, but I don't suspect Outlook is popular because of it's elegant design, so I stand by my suggestion that there is a better UI design out there which should be pursued.

GUI mail clients can be great, but it must be aknowledged that part of the function of a GUI in the modern world is prettiness, and on that count Outlook, et. al. fail terribly - in my opinion. If you disagree, and feel that their design is elegant, then just say so outright, rather than arguing with me about points I'm simply not making.

Re:Why must it look so MS?

[PurpleBob]

If someone could make a GUI version of Mutt, I'd use it. As long as it was still as fast, configurable, and featureful. GUIs can, after all, fit more information on the screen.

However, no GUI client even comes close to the usability of Mutt.

Until then, I will not consider GUI to be equivalent with progress.

Re: Why must it look so MS?

[alessio]

> Trying to convert all the Outlook users?

Exactly.

> reinforcing the (broken) idea that Microsoft has the right idea

Well, it seems to me that this is Miguel de Icaza's opinion on a great number of topics...

finally ...

[Frag-A-Muffin]

I might be able to upgrade from pine! :)

Shouldn't they fix the bugs in gnome first ?

[Salsaman]

I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but anyway, I have been trying to get gnome working on my Linux box for weeks. After compiling package after package, I am now stuck. I need to compile libOrbit, but whenever I try I get:

gcc -g -O2 -o .libs/name-client name-client.o ../../../src/orb/.libs/libORBit.so -L/usr/lib -lglib -lm ../../../src/IIOP/.libs/libIIOP.so ../../../src/ORBitutil/.libs/libORBitutil.so .libs/libORBitCosNaming.so -L/usr/lib -lglib -lm -Wl,--rpath -Wl,/usr/local/lib
../../../src/IIOP/.libs/libIIOP.so: undefined reference to `res_init'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[4]: *** [name-client] Error 1

I've logged the problem with the gnome team, but have got no reply. Well great. I can't use gnome on my system.

Re:Shouldn't they fix the bugs in gnome first ?

[NonSequor]

Ximian is not Gnome. Gnome is not Ximian. Ximian contributes a good deal to Gnome but they are not responsible for every package. Ximian has its own priorities which include getting Evolution working right.

Re:Shouldn't they fix the bugs in gnome first ?

[magnetx11]

boy you sure helped ALOT with his compiling problem.

Re:Shouldn't they fix the bugs in gnome first ?

[damiam]

I have been trying to get gnome working on my Linux box for weeks. After compiling package after package, I am now stuck...Well great. I can't use gnome on my system.

Since when is compiling from source the only way to install GNOME? Install Ximian GNOME through Red Carpet or install binary packages for your distribution.

Heh, I found a bug

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing looks like Outlook...

S/MIME support?

[Vainglorious Coward]

I was very impressed that they simplified encrytion so it works just like Outlook. Press this button to sign then press this to encrypt

Does it support S/MIME? I looked at the specs on the site, but saw nothing about signing/encryption features (and I can't test it out myself until later). Support for digital certificates is the last remaining reason for me to keep Outlook ... my fingers are crossed...

Re:S/MIME support?

[luge]

Very rudimentary S/MIME support is in the code, but it won't be complete (or probably even enabled) for 1.0.

Evolution and FreeBSD

[dizzy tunez]

How come that Evolution wont work on FreeBSD? cant we just, get a long? I really miss nauilus and evolution support on FreeBSD. Those are both GNOME applications.

New Economy

[lavaforge]

What are the odd's that one of the Ximian programmers will get bribed into working out some sort of black market in bugs? I can just see the details now:

"Alright, buffer overflow? That's 5 percent. Poor optimization? That's ten percent. Logic errors? That'll cost ya'."

The monkeys want to be free...

[lukel]

If this giving away software and selling stuffed monkey's doesn't work out, why not give away the stuffed monkeys and sell the software?

Each bug report should get you a chance at a prize

[wtpooh]

I think they should add one more prize, which everyone would have a chance to win based on the number of bugs they report. I know I won't be in the top 10 reporters, and I doubt I will find the hairiest or most bizarre bug, but might spend a little more time testing it if I still had a chance to win something

2 birds with one stone

[2ms]

I like this idea. Not only will a lot more people be interested in killings bugs, but also a lot more people will be trying it out even if they were already satisfied with their previous NS Messenger or other similar.

I'm betting a lot of people will be impressed enough to want to continue to use Evolution when they otherwise wouldn't have conceived of trying a new email/planning/etc. application.

Yes. All those Outlook users.

[torpor]

Damnit, figure it out you dope:

That's a *lot* of users, and a *lot* of money, even if they only get a tiny, tiny, tiny portion of the corporate user marketshare.

If they, for example, get a name for themselves that prompts *small businesses* to try them out, that's good.

Small businesses hire cheap people (the good ones do) and the cheapest types usually, at the very least, know MS Outlook ...

So: imitating an existing interface that people may know how to use, and *doing it far cheaper* than can be done by buying properly licensed copies of the similarly featured Microsoft apps.

Seems sound to me. I hope Ximian have a really strong, confident marketing team...

Mandrake 8.0 (and 8.1) support

[CptnKirk]

I noticed that Mandrake 8.0 support is now available (I'm DLing now). Thank you Ximian team! Has anyone tried to install Ximian on the latest 8.1 beta? Since both should be released around the same time it would be nice if Ximian would support Mandrake 8.1 out of the box, instead of having to wait as long as we did for 8.0 support. Also eventhough Mandrake 8.0 is supported it doesn't seem that the mirror sites have support for it. I got an error when running the installer that Mandrake 8.0 was not a supported platform when I went to any mirror besides the Ximain one (which is pretty busy right now).

So not really a bug (ok maybe it is, since the installer detected I was running Mandrake 8.0 and gave me a list of mirrors that didn't work), but support for Mandrake 8.0 and 8.1 should be improved before the final Ximian and Evolution releases.

Re:Evolution can't even display html images

[diamondc]

Tools.. Mail Settings.. Display, check "Always Load Images off the Net"

Re:Evolution can't even display html images

[jchristopher]

On the version of Evolution I have, this was disabled by default. Kind of nice, because it prevents those email bug tracking images from working unless you explicitly enable them. And of course, the ability to load images off the net is there, if you desire it.

works now...

[mikeee]

Works for me on unstable; a lot more solid than the .10 release, which was prone to choking on certain messages for some reason.

Now, if I could just figure out my $%!#$$ font problem (help/about and gimp menus are gibberish - WTH?)...

Safe sex, wooha

[Graymalkin]

This is a rad idea for a well funded open source project. It is the sort of thing that inspires people to get excited about helping out with a project. It's nice to be a volunteer and get your name in the credits but it's even nicer to get something tangible for spending some of your time and effort. Now if Ximian will just change their name back that would be even cooler.

Re:Safe sex, wooha

[Graymalkin]

You could kill any offspring you may have and then shoot yourself in the face :D

Re:Aren't they already behind?

[jpr]

Slight slippage :-). Beta 3 was pushed yesterday, but it actually got tagged in CVS last week.

did anyone make a comparison with kde's apps ?

[loopkin]

could be interesting to test it as compared to KDE tools (KMail, KPilot, KOrganizer, ...).
I was amazed by kde 2.2 for this suite. synchronize ur agenda with the pilot, and ur address book as well... and afterwards u have autocompletion for email addresses in KMail... this is great piece of software (though there remain some "bugs", like a huge slowdown when opening large mails).
anyway, if anyone has a link to a comparison between GNOME/Evolution and KDE on that point, would be nice :-))

Re:Where will palm support be announced?

[luge]

Red Carpet, and evolution@ximian.com. Not sure about other locations- I'm sure it'll be some place on the web site but I don't know any details about where.

SLASHDOT HAS MORE BUGS THAN A BUG ZOO

[robvasquez]

Let's find all the bugs in Slashdot's site first.

Is evolution GPL

[clarkie.mg]

Hi bugmaster

I see no mention on the ximian web site of the evolution license. Is it GPL ? Will it always be open source ? Thanks for the answer.

mg AT unixe DOT net

Re:Is evolution GPL

[Menthos]

Yes, Evolution is GPL. I really doubt that will ever change, since a lot of Evolution hackers are really committed to free software.

Why we care.

[kanayo]

"I'm sorry, but why do so many people here care about the business aspects of Ximian?"

How many companies make Free Software? Not too many. And even the few that do don't seem to be so prosperous. So when we see a company that contributes software AND (most importantly) Source Code to the community, why in the world would we want to see them go bankrupt? Failing to support these small companies that do great things is simply begging to see the large corporations continue to dominate all aspects of our lives. That's why we care.

I found one

[StikyPad]

My roommate is an evolutionary bug. There's just no other way to explain him.

Complexity is the factor...

[driehuis]

Sourceforge is, indeed, full of dead projects. But please note that many of those dead projects either contain no code at all, or code of the

int
rescue_the_world()
{
// TODO: figure out how to do this
}

variety. Code that does *nothing* at all.

It is at the stage where code does at least one task well that the wheat is seperated from the chaff (except that one means wheat is another mans chaff). Before I pour considerable time into something, I test the waters: I do some small enhancement and report it to the authors. If they don't acknowledge that, I consider the thing to be unmaintained. Rejection of the code is not of a great concern, it's being ignored that hurts.

I've had pretty good luck with a number of Open Source projects which involve no paid staff at all. Especially when compared with the support for some closed source offerings.

The commercial open source thing is still very new. People jump up and down about Mozilla's failure, about OpenOffice's failure, etcetera. Let's face it, those are huge projects, and the success rate for their commercial counterparts is equally abysmal. The big hindrance for community contributions is the extremely steep learning curve for the infrastructure surrounding huge projects, and combined with rapid change that curve becomes in unsurmountable mountain. Once a more or less successful 1.0 is out, that ought to change.

Unless I'm seriously mistaken, no huge commercial open source project has reached 1.0. Unless you count Linux, but that sort of underscores the point that contributions on any level have always been possible building on a stable base. You can rewrite, say, the IP stack or the VM system, but you can do that in relative isolation, despite the complexity of the task. API's are pretty well defined.

Most of the grand commercial open source projects are just too big, with too many internal couplings. Writing a spreadsheet app is one thing (and plenty of those abound without commercial support). But keeping the thing alive when someone else is dicking with text editor code that your subproject needs is another. The horrible thing is, they need to be huge, because they need to appeal to the mass market.

If I had my way, I'd had a simple mail client, a simple web browser, a simple spreadsheet, with the minimal glue between them to make it work for me, and allow me to replace a component I don't like with another.

So, I guess you're right. Not because great things don't happen without people who are paid for writing free code, but because the marketplace demands solutions that are just too complex to deal with in part time.

troll?

[nexex]

Troll? how is this a troll? What kind of drug is that moderator on? I agree with him, they need broader distro support, not just rpm based ones.