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Mitch Kapor Joins Ximian Board of Directors
miguel writes: "Today we announced that Mitch Kapor has joined our Board of Directors. He is one of the co-founders of the EFF and Lotus (You can learn more about Mitch here.) In other news, I want to point out guys to our Latest Evolution beta which comes with SSL support (IMAP and SMTP), Pilot syncing and LDAP in the default build. The team at Ximian has been busy fixing every bug you guys have reported (feature requests will have to wait until 1.0 ships, we are in feature freeze now) and we are closing bugs faster that you can report them. What are you guys going to do about this huh? HUH?"
"Ximian, Inc., the leading open source desktop company"
Hmmmm, I wonder if TrollTech would take issue with that claim. I don't think throwing another computer industry has-been (VisiCalc? Will that even run on Win98?) on the board is going to give Gnome any edge over KDE.
Slashdot: Open Source, Closed Minds.
Nice work. Evolution is turning out to be a sweet piece of software. Any idea when we can start building our own iCal servers? I haven't seen much open source iCal server activity out there.
I can't wait to boot the exchange box out the door.
http://metamuscle.com - Better Bodies Through Hypertext
Probably a dumb question, but does Evolution run under KDE or only under Gnome? I guess you could extend that question a bit... what determines whether or not certain apps are dependent on a specific window manager?
Why does every IMAP implementation for linux try to retrieve EVERY message when checking for mail, instead of messages with ID numbers above where it last left off?
I have a huge mailbox, and Evolution, Aethera, Kmail, TradeClient, Bynari Insight, and every other IMAP client all do the same damn thing. It takes 20 minutes to check for mail everytime I do it. And Kmail was the only client I've used that was able to find all of my folders. Argh!
I personally think that Ximian has been doing a great job with Evolution. I first used it early in the beta stages. It was a promising piece of crap. Now it is just about the finest piece of graphical mail and organizing applications out there for *nix. Granted, I don't really use it, but it is nice to know that something with that many features is now available. If we want to convert over desktop users we need apps like this - friendly, easy to use...etc...etc. Either that or we could all be whiny elitists running Debian and KDE.
Of course I'm a whiny elitist running Slackware and Blackbox (but Galeon over all other browsers) so bite me.
-dr. layyze f. tooth PhD
Seems like most corporations are using KDE these days. Is Ximian working on KDE integration, for business clients? Seems like they would otherwise miss out on the vast majority of Linux installs in the workplace.
Being currently responsible for migrating a large enterprise to Linux, I was plesently surprised by Evolution. It kicks butt off all my boss's arguments :) I am currently running it in a test environment, and yes, I was too lazy to rebuild the rpm and I actually installed all those 150 megs of complementary libraries and software :) I know it could be easily skipped, but I sooo lazy and I have almost complete Ximian desktop now :)
:)
Anyway, keep the good work you guys@Ximian!
I am wating for 1.0 release to get rid of Yet Another Microsoft Application (YAMA)
Leonid Mamtchenkov
Well, the bug squasing part is definitely good.
No maybe about that .
I guess Mitch Kapor can't hurt. He certainly is a bright and experienced software businessman.
Still, I hope he's learned a thing or two in the last ten years.
When Windows 3.0 came out, Lotus 1-2-3 was the biggest spreadsheet. Period. Win 3.0 would have gone nowhere if it couldn't run (and multitask) major DOS programs like 1-2-3.
Mitch Kapor didn't pay any attention to Windows. He was more concerned with 1-2-3 for OS/2 and -- believe it or not -- something called 1-2-3/M, a 1-2-3 spreadsheet for IBM mainframes.
I wonder if Microsoft would have its present monopoly if Lotus and WordPerfect had ventured into Windows Land in the pre-3.0 days, when Gates was still trying to get ports to run on his platform.
People didn't start using Word for Windows and Excel because they were so wonderful.
Back before Office software got pre-loaded, and back before Microsoft was the 800 pound software gorilla, people started using them because the other guys didn't have Windows software. Microsoft made competitive upgrades cheap, and hand-held new-to-Microsoft users.
Of course, once they got 'em in their clutches...
More or less correct.
So, why would I use Ximian instead of GNOME?
Um, this is like asking why you would use Red Hat instead of Linux. Ximian is a distro of GNOME. When you use Ximian you are using GNOME.
To answer the question of why you would use Ximian, let's consider how you can get GNOME:
You can get GNOME from your Linux distribution, and then get updates only when your Linux distro provides an update.
You can get GNOME stuff as sources, and build on your own machine.
You can get the Ximian GNOME packages, and get updates from Ximian.
If there is a fourth option, I cannot think of it right now.
So, if your Linux distro provides you with updates as often as you wish, just stick with that. If you like building from source, go ahead and do that. If you want updates more often than your distro gives them to you, and you want someone else to build the packages for you, go with Ximian.
As for me, I use the "unstable" branch of Debian; and I get updates within a few days of any new release. Debian had Gnumeric 0.71 within two days of when it was released. So I have no interest in getting Ximian packages. But I think many people find it convenient to get updates from Ximian.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Mitch Kapor didn't pay any attention to Windows. He was more concerned with 1-2-3 for OS/2 and -- believe it or not -- something called 1-2-3/M, a 1-2-3 spreadsheet for IBM mainframes.
Although the facts are accurate, you have to remember that, at the time, Microsoft was telling everyone to develop for OS/2 - Windows was supposed to be a mere "bridging" application
Then, Microsoft changed their internal strategies, but told none of their targeted competitors (Lotus and others) that all their development was going to Windows instead. When Windows 3.0 came out, Lotus, Borland, Ashton-Tate, et al found that they had been fooled into developing for a platform that Microsoft was never going to make mainstream - and the differences were enough that they were always going to be a step behind.
So, I'm sure that he learned that important lesson; the real question is why the rest of the Windows developer base didn't learn it!
FWIW
The On Platform was developed with much money and some very big names. It was basically reusable software components - they lasted a few years in a couple of products, the company continued to blow through money and was sold off and now has nothing in common with the original. The breakthrough tech has long since dissapeared.
Since then he's had mixed success mostly trading in on his old-man-of-the-industry status. It's great that he's joining Ximian but this guy has had his share of misses along with a spectacular hit a generation ago.
Disclusure: I was hired the day On was bought from Kapor but never worked for him and his former staff seemed genuinely fond of him
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.