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HP's OpenMail: I'm Not Dead Yet
Jon Hill writes "It looks as if HP's OpenMail system is not dead yet and development of the project has been assumed by Samsung's software division. This is great news considering OpenMail was the only serious Unix-based competitor to Microsoft Exchange. Now if only it was strongly marketed and made well known, enterprise administrators such as myself could embrace it." For those of not familiar, essentially OpenMail is the *only* e-mail platform out there, besides Exchange that will support a whole slew of Microsoft Outlook features - something necessary in the enterprise, despite that people should know better.
give users the ability to run arbitrary shell commands
With exchange the calendar is shared between users, so you can do things like schedule meetings without having to phone round first.
The Evolution calendar stuff has all the features needed except that your calendar isn't accessible to other users.
Hopefully someone will write a free iCal server and an evolution backend to it.
-- Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.
The problem is 'Outlook' has many many smart features such as shared calendars, netfolders, meeting scheduling, kitchen sink etc.
Unfortunately, without an exchange server, they are flakey to say the least.
(RANT: Exchange corporate has 2 modes of operation. Internet and 'corporate'. The former supports IMAP mail, and allows you to send Plain Text/HTML/RTF by default. It also allows you to over ride the text setting with 'Plain Text' on a per user basis. - not any other format. The latter does not support IMAP. Will allow the same 'default' formats but only allows an override of 'always send RTF' to this user.
Annoying but we can cope. Unfortunately, the undocumented 'feature' is that Shared folders/calendars etc. DO NOT WORK without RTF.
What kind of monkey designs a program with two exclusive sets of features?
No. Don't answer that. I already know.
It's basically an ease of use thing, I've tried out various IMAP/LDAP client/server combinations but non of them are as easy as for the user as Exchange/Outlook are. There are also things like calendering and forums built in and delivery and read receipts that are easy to use. I also need to have an e-mail system that can talk to X400 systems easily - granted not a universal requirement - and Exchange copes with X400 and SMTP/ESMTP well (plus others like MS Mail, ccMail etc.)
While I prefer Unix/Linux for most server tasks as they are great OS's, I prefer Exchange as an e-mail platform.
It is also #1 in the user interface hall of shame, is horrendous on server and space requirement and from everyone I talked to who runs one, it goes down more than a prostitute with an inner ear problem.
We use OpenMail. I read about the discontinuing development last February with much sadness.
When I heard about the deal with Samsung a few weeks ago (we got a letter), I was pleased. I had already read what Bruce Perens had said about open sourcing it...it just wasn't going to happen. He would've like it to (as would I) but there was too much code licensed from third parties, etc. that would have to be re-written before it could be open-sourced, and the whole point was: they weren't developing it anymore.
At any rate, when I came on board at my present employer, the front end client (Outlook) was deeply embedded into the environment here. I am still working on weening people off of it. But the great thing about OpenMail is that I can let them keep Outlook if they want. Believe it or not, when dealt with properly, Outlook is not so bad. The end-users love it. They really don't know and don't care what happens behind the scenes.
OpenMail gives me the flexibility to use any IMAP/LDAP client I want, or the web interface if I so choose, or Outlook. It lets the Outlook users have a system directory, shared folders, and shared calendars...all nice features...without buying into Exchange. It also lets me control what the Outlook users can do. Every time they connect to the server, I can send them a MOTD, reset their security settings to my way, and force all incoming/outgoing mail to be plain text if I so please. I can limit the size of their mailboxes, and I can set up gateways to just about every other type of messaging system I want. I can scan for viruses in attachments at the server and force Outlook to block all attachments of an executable type...whether the server detects a virus or not.
As for the administrative tools, the command line tools are the bomb, but take some getting used to...and the GUI admin client basically sucks.
Overall, I love OpenMail and was glad to pay for the licenses. We have about 100 users hitting the server via Outlook, Netscape Mail, the Web interface, and we even have a whole department with old DOS PCs, accessing their mail via a packet driver and PC-PINE!!! (They refuse to upgrade because it works for them and as the adage goes...if it ain't broke, don't fix it.)
Can somebody tell me what these features are, compared to what you'd get with sendmail/qmail / some-random-pop/imap-client ?
Well, for example, if I want to schedule a meeting, I can invite all the people I want via Outlook/Exchange, and it will check their calendars to see if they're free, and if they are, send them a message that when it is opened will automatically fill in their calendars for them, if they say they do want to come. That's just a simple example. The reason all these macro virii can be written at all is that Outlook/Exchange isn't really an email solution per se: it's intended to be a platform for building groupware / workflow / directory applications on, so it's all very scriptable. Shared folders, contacts, task lists and diaries are wonderfully useful in an office where people move around a lot and can be hard to get hold of in person. And all this ties into project management software (MS Project) for really serious tracking.
Email's the easy bit, and you can't compete with sendmail+popper+imapd if that's all you need, because they're free and easy to use. Exchange, like Lotus Notes, is sold on value-add. Just think of Notes as document management with messaging functionality, and Exchange as messaging with document management functionality.
I researched for days looking for a Linux/BSD based Open-source solution for this functionality, and I didn't find anything even remotely close. I tried to get OpenMail, but HP has shut down the download area so you can't get it anymore. Products like Evolution are slick and have a good email interface, but are single-user only calendaring systems, with no (automated) group coordination at all. Frankly, I find this type of functionality critical in a company of even 8 employees: I just don't see how companies can get along without some kind of group calendaring solution.
This is definately a major gap in the overall functionality of Open Source software in general, which is one reason why Exchange/HP OpenMail/Lotus Notes will continue to thrive.
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Isn't it true that you can run a Notes/Domino backend but keep Outlook as the client?
Also, isn't Notes Rnext or whatever coming soon?
I work for a Very Large Organization that uses Openmail in parts of itself, and Exchange in others. When HP announced they were knifing Openmail, this gave some people the excuse to start planning the switchover.
So, now it's not being knifed. I made sure to get this information to my boss, who is going to pass it on to other people today, to read, review, and spit bile over, because now the reason for their pet project going through is negated. And it means we're not going over to Exchange, which is, pretty much, a good thing overall, even if having two different email systems between the parts of the corporation that merged together is a Really Not Very Good Thing.
I love the sound of an entire Fortune 10 corporation's IT management and planning group having a collective stroke, especially when I gave the information that causes the stroke. It really makes my mornings worth it some days.
Brazil has decided you're cute.
I'm still holding ot for a ximian evolution server.
As far as I'm concerned, this will have the same problem that Exchange Server has: its coolest feature (calendaring) is supported in the Linux client only.
Our enterprise is about evenly split between Windows users and Mac OS X users-- we recently went through a huge rush of employees buying new iBooks. Any email/messaging/whatever platform that requires a specific client must provide that client for both of those operating systems for it to be useful to our company.
I'm this --> <-- close to giving up and doing the whole thing on the intranet with PHP and Postgresql.
Does it? Has IBM started supporting a Linux Notes client in the last 9 months? Domino is supported (though 9 months ago, most, but not all features we there). Notes is the client, Domino is the server.
As an aside: I did an evaluation a year ago of Domino 5, Exchange 2000, HP Openmail, Sendmail, iPlanet, and Communigate Pro. Basically, Communigate was a great Sendmail replacement because it had a good interface, came with IMAP, POP, SSL support, etc. But, if users wanted group calendaring and all that jazz, you needed Domino, Exchange, or Openmail. I liked Openmail best, but some HP reps told me in January 2000 at LinuxWorld in NYC that Openmail 6 was the last release.
Sigh. I really wish HP would OpenSource Openmail (hey, it's already got a great open source name). HP can strip out all the proprietary code (fine with me), and leave the OpenSource community to add the functionality back in. Maybe development would continue, maybe not. In any case, there would at leats be a *chance* it would continue.
Hey, maybe someone can pick up openopenmail.org
Its not _perfect_. but it DOES support group calendering and shared contacts.
The people at my org that wanted exchange are happy with it as a substitute..
www.cybozu.com
Take a look at Caldera's Volution Messaging Server
It isn't entirely open-source, but it's major components are.