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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?"
It is very satisfying to see Evolution getting the amount of attention it needs. Ximian has been critized on here for half-assing major projects. If this is their response, we're in for some high quality desktop environment! Way to prioritize, fellas.
Stop the brainwash
A company called Microsoft makes a product just like this. I think they call it Office or something. Actually, it might have come out a little earlier than this Ximian thing.
Check it on on their site.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
I've always been a little wary of Ximian... they seemed mostly talk and not enough action. Sure they had _some_ stuff, but it was never really up my alley.
;) and are willing to listen.
I have to say though, this time I think I might just start to like them. They seem, from reading the link, like they really care about what we have to say (even if it's not so nice some times
I guess this is YABOOS (Yet Another Benefit Of Open Source): The corporations that help out are by default less evil.
Can it import messages and addresses from Mozilla mail?
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?
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
Not too many deals that anybody was involved in was a real success.
Been using evolution for email for about two months now, and it's been very good. I would recommend it to anyone as the best email client available for Linux.
As far as what we'll do about it...use it. I've two complaints: 1.) You can't set what font to use in html email messages, and 2.) No calendar server. If you could achieve MS Outlook scheduling/calendaring functionality or better, you would have the potential 'Killer' application for Linux that would allow offices to migrate away from MS...
Sure, you should. Don't you know anything about the history of the Personal Computer? Don't you remember VisiCalc?
The 1978 release of VisiCalc, an electronic spreadsheet and the first personal productivity application, changed software development from a hobbyist's pursuit to a burgeoning industry. Personal Software, the publisher of VisiCalc, bought Tiny Troll from Mr. Kapor as a companion product to VisiCalc and hired him to be a product manager in Silicon Valley. Wanting more autonomy, he left Personal after only six months to found his own company.
Although users loved the concept of the VisiCalc spreadsheet, they were bumping their heads against its limitations. Realizing this, Mr. Kapor cofounded Lotus Development in 1982 with Jonathan Sachs, a programmer from Data General, and came up with Lotus 1-2-3, a second-generation spreadsheet that better addressed the needs of business users.
To get the new company off the ground, Mr. Kapor convinced the former Morgan Stanley analyst andthen-novice venture capitalist Ben Rosen (who had cofounded Sevin Rosen Funds theprevious year) to put $1 million into the startup. Mr. Kapor admits that he in fact knew very little then about running a business; nevertheless, as an executive at Lotus until 1987, he developed what are now considered standard business practices for software companies. Lotus executed the first big advertising campaign for 1-2-3 in the business press and was the first to train computer dealers on a large scale. In 1983, the year it was released, 1-2-3 generated staggering revenues of $53 million and propelled Lotus through its initial public offering. In 1984 the company tripled its revenues, to $156 million. But when Lotus became a big business, Mr. Kapor jumped ship. "Because of Lotus's hypergrowth, the company was soon dominated by the details of day-to-day management," he says. "But I wanted to think long term and bring big ideas to market."
After Lotus, Mr. Kapor rediscovered his interest in the future of technology. He became enamored of the precommercial Internet and the social possibilities of virtual communities. But he was equally horrified by some of the government's early attempts to sanitize Internet content. In 1990, to protect the organic and unregulated potential of the Net, Mr. Kapor and the social activist John Perry Barlow cofounded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), thefirst grassroots coalition to call attention to both the social andpolitical dimensions of networked communications. (For more on Mr. Barlow,see "What Does John Perry Barlow Do?,"March 1998.)
In 1994, once the EFF was going strong, Mr. Kapor decided to turn his full attention to financing and advising technology startups. Although as an entrepreneur he had been suspicious of venture capitalists, he became a limited partner in VC funds and also made direct investments in startups, working closely with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and AccelPartners. Mr. Kapor believes he is finally using his strengths --identifying ideas with staying power and getting them off the ground -- andnot getting bogged down in the politics of large organizations. Hecurrently sits on the boards of RealNetworks, which develops real-timestreaming audio and video software; Allaire, which makes Web applicationdevelopment software; and several younger startups he declines to name.
Looking back at his 20-year involvement in the technology industry, Mr. Kapor says that "the days of the Apple II and Tiny Troll feel like Jurassic Park, especially if you count in Internet years." Speaking like a former teacher of meditation, he adds, "I try to send the message that business does not have to be ruthless and self-interested -- that even in the frenzied pace of the technology market, a fundamentally long-term approach still matters."
Because that is what the standard requires. Imap doesnt lock the mailbox, so you can have two IMAP clients accessing the mailbox simultaneously. As such, you could easily use say, Outlook, and its wonderful rules for filtering, while viewing in something simple like pine.
Since it is doing so, it needs to verify the mails against one another.
Sadly, the IMAP standard does not outline a use of things like md5sums and order lists.
In other words, its easy, and it fits the standard.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
Cripes. A lotta talk when all you need to figure out who the culprit is is download Ethereal and run it with a filter of 'port 25'.
Try Sylpheed
The best IMAP implementation I have seen thus far.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
one of the great things about lotus NOTES was the SERVER
you had revision control and ACLs + logging for documents/databases which could be exported as basic HTML
keys and directory's(phone books) stored in a nice central place
Plus SYNCing of documents/databases/email/directory's
That was really nice
yes there are products that do this now but you have to kludge them all toghthter and admin is still a bit of a nightmare (OpenLDAP, procmail and zope)
what they should do is use and XML backend (publishing becomes easy) and LDAP (phone books + auth through a PAM module) combined with a IMAP server which understands OpenPGP that can sync to other servers set up around the world
lots of documents are placed on the corp intranet but they are spread all over the place geographically speaking what would be cool is of it could figure out you are in say France and pull over a copy of that dept intranet who is in US and then next time someone asks for it when they are in France they get a response straight away
anyway hope their client (eventually) will work with lotus notes
regards
john jones
My understanding is that Ximian is merely a 'distro' of GNOME. So, why would I use Ximian instead of GNOME? The way I see it, I can use all the same applications on GNOME. In fact, I hear from others I can use many applications on GNOME that I cannot use of Ximian because of Ximian libraries. For instance, a newly released Mozilla version or Galeon may not work on Ximian. If this is not true, please let me know. I just don't see the point of Ximian.
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
For anyone looking for an Outlook/Eudora replacement, this is it.
Personally, I use the Mozilla mail client because it's got mail and news together with the same interface, and I really don't need a Calendar, Contact list, etc.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
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...
I think KDE is fantastic, but I simply prefer GNOME. I've been watching GNOME make incredible strides in the time that it's been around, and I think as a GNOME user I have alot to look forward to.
I have also been using the Ximian desktop at home, and I think they've put out a great product. (I actually forked over $29.95 to Ximian because I valued their product so much I thought it worthwhile to purchase it.) Red Carpet has worked flawlessly for me so far. While I still like to build certain things (Apache, Perl, etc.) myself, it saves me a good deal of time not having to worry about keeping my packages up to date. Evolution still has some bugs, but it's getting more solid literally every day. I was happy to fork over some money to Ximian and I'll continue to do so as they improve their product.
I know that there are going to be Debian users telling me I can get Red Carpet for free via apt-get, and they are right. I know there are folks who consider KDE the superior desktop, and they've got alot of good points.
However, I prefer Red Hat, Ximian, and GNOME, and Ximian has put out the right product for my preferences, and I am happy to pay for it confident that they will use the money not only to enhance their product, but to create things that will give back to the community as well.
So I say keep up the good work, Ximian, from a very satisfied user.
-- My choice of computing platform is a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom.
For me, the main reason for using ximian gnome is that they make it really simple to install gnome with an automated installer, and they include an updater, red-carpet, which makes updating the desktop easier.
The quickest way to become an atheist is to study the Bible thoroughly.
Pretty much word for word from this article.
Unfortunately, I can't, because Mandrake 8.1 isn't supported yet. Any idea when it might be? Seems like I recall Mandrake 8.0 support taking a while after the final release of the OS.
Evolution doesn't do that for me. With a mailbox with 1200 messages, it took about 10 minutes over a DSL link to get the headers. The next time I ran Evolution, it only took a couple of seconds to open that folder. I can't say the same for kmail, which does download the headers every time. Evolution also lets me see all of the folders on the server if I check the "override server's namespace" option and set the namespace to be empty.
This is all against a Cyrus 2.0.16 imap server.
I think that he was trying to say that most _users_ use KDE, which is probably true(increasingly true).
but then again, everyone stop bringing up KDE, this story is bout evolution =P
I'm almost ready to jump over Evolution to handle my email.
Currently, I use exmh, which I've found to be a great GUI interface to my email. It uses tcl and tk for the GUI and MH for folders, but has all kinds of extensions to support PGP, address books, in-line HTML display, etc.
Is anyone, familiar with both exmh and Evolution, able to point out their relative merits and detractions?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
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
errr... but trolltech are not a desktop company?
What do you mean by "KDE integration, for business clients"? What would that look like? Evolution will run fine under KDE, but Ximian doesn't just sell a groupware suite. They also are pushing Ximian GNOME to their business clients. That's sort of the point of their company, in addition to serving individual GNOME users.
Celebrate the finer things in life
Mitch Kapor didn't pay any attention to Windows. He was more concerned with 1-2-3 for OS/2
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
All true -- but Guess What? 1-2-3 for OS/2 SUCKED! Excel was far better. (And there was a beta release of GUI Excel for OS/2).
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I should also point out that Lotus didn't take the Macintosh market seriously at all, unlike Microsoft. In 1985 (the same year MS Excel shipped), they introduced a Mac-based Office Suite called "Jazz", only to drop it after a year.
At that point, they stopped GUI work until it was restarted for OS/2 some years later. Meanwhile, Microsoft was banging out features for MS Office over on the Mac side. When Lotus finally figured out that a suite was a good idea, they had to fumble around and find a word processor.
Ironically, the thing that saved the company was an OS/2 GUI program called Notes.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
It seems like a basic question. Ximian obviously produced packages and makes them avaliable through Red Carpet.
But on my system the `Evolution Snapshot' channel is filled with Evolution *support* packages but not Evolution itself. I have no binaries or packages containing the word Eolution in my system evven though I've downloading everything avaliable via Red Carpet, including everything in the Evolution Snapshot channel.
So they've now acquired a high-profile guy to add to their board (which is generally a good thing), which means that Mitch probably invested some money in them (and which also means they're blazing through their $15M at a nice clip).
So my question is, now that they've got some more brains, more cash, and more product, how are they planning to actually make some money again?
nlh
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
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.
My biggest gripe with Evolution is that there didn't seem to be a way not to get HTML E-mail messages. I don't like HTML in my E-Mail for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that I don't like giving spammers free hits on their web pages (Which can also be used to track which E-mail addresses are valid.) E-Mail should remain passive and until that's an option I will continue to use mutt.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It's not like Lotus was scraping the bottom of the barrel when they picked up Samna. They were building from the ground up on Windows, so they were able to get ahead of Word in many key areas. Ami Pro 2, crude as it was, felt like a Windows word processor. It wasn't until WinWord 4 that Word didn't act like a port from DOS. Meanwhile, WordPerfect was still deeply entrenched in the DOS world, and WordStar and XyWrite were hoping their eventual Windows ports would save their respective companies. They didn't.
So Lotus certainly made the best of the situation. In the short term, they got the excellent Ami Pro word processor. In the long term, they got the framework for proper Windows versions of 123 and Freelance, and eventually, once they acquired Approach, SmartSuite. Which was, byte for byte, a better suite than MS Office. At least in the days before Microsoft stifled all the competition. <sigh
This sig intentionally left blank.
Yeah, I wasn't meaning to bash Ami by any means.
Only that Lotus didn't put it in the box until years after MS Office was shipping, and then it took more time to integrate the look-n-feel between the apps. Having the thing change names 3 times couldn't have helped either.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
If you're running sawfish, they're all still in the root window middle-click menu. If you want them in your panel menus, try the following:
Go into the control center > panel > menu and set Programs (GNOME) to appear in a menu or submenu. Then run the following, as root:
for dir in `lsThey'll then appear in the menus under Program > [category] > Red Hat Menus
. It wasn't until WinWord 4 that Word didn't act like a port from DOS.
Only one problem.... WinWord versions were 1, 2 and 6, before they went to the year numbering.
Why the jump? Because MS wanted version numbers in sync with the DOS version.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
If you want to run Evolution in a fetchmail environment, it's no problem: when you set up your account, set "server type" to "Standard Unix mbox spools". You can then use Evolution in the same way that you use elm or mutt. For "Sending Email" choose "Sendmail". You can then read and send mail offline and it will queue.
One nuisance, though: I use procmail to sort my mail into separate mailboxes. It seems the only way to get Evolution to work smoothly with this setup is to pretend that each of these mailboxes is a separate account. I'd rather have better support for this mode of operation (which lets me continue to use either Evolution or elm).
I can't speak on evolution vs kmail, but I use netscape communicator, and the IMAP performance i get has improved dramatically by migrating from uw-imap with mbox folders to courier imap with maildir folders.
This was primarily a change to accomodate move to qmail from sendmail, but the performance increase is tremendous. I routinely open mailboxes with hundreds of messages (over a variety of lines, from 128K to 100Mbit) and i've had no problems with speed. You might consider changing your mail server file format (if you run the mail server) to increase your performance. Otherwise, my general experience is that IMAP (header listing) performance should be equivalent or better to that on a NNTP server.
-earl
Yep kids, Excel started out as a Mac application. Developing MS Word & MS Excel gave Bill lots of access deep inside Apple. This came in handy when MS reinvented Apple's UI and put - what else - the Mac applications on it.
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.
If you're going to paste an entire article verbatim, you could at least have the decency to post a link to the original
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
You might want to check out www.nat.org which contains nice updates on Nat's life.