Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
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
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
Evolution works with X, so it will run on KDE, CDE, GNOME, E, WindowMaker, and pretty much anything else
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.
Ximian Gnome = Gnome, you are right about that. What Ximian offers is a super slick installer (Red Carpet) and you can buy support. About certain things like Galeon having issues, this is true, but has nothing to do with Ximian. Basically, many of the up and coming applications like Evolution and Galeon are using developing libraries (like Mozilla, GAL, GConf) and so there is to be expected some incompatabilities. Each piece may have "stable" releases along the way, but as a system, unless you are running raw GNOME 1.4.1, you are running a developing system. Though, if you stick with what's in RedCarpet's channels, you should have few or no issues and you will get a chance to use all this cool software before it is all realeased together.
got drum'n'bass?
http://mp3.com/vitriolix
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
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.
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
Thanks. Would only that the author of the original post had seen fit to credit, with a simple link or even simpler "lifted from Red Herring" attribution, the original work by Deborah Claymon.
Not that the post author was trying to pass off the article as his own -- the line (For more on Mr. Barlow,see "What Does John Perry Barlow Do?,"March 1998) would surely have been deleted were that the case -- but it would be nice to show some appreciation for the person who researched this piece and for the site that provides it completely free of charge.
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.
Evolution will not load images in HTML email unless you want for it to load them. If it doesn't load the externally-referenced files, then there are no "free hits on spammer's web pages." You can set it to load all images, never load images except by request, or to load images if the sender is in your address book.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
We'll have Mandrake 8.1 support out this month.
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).