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Ximian Connector 1.0 Available
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Ximian Connector is out! Regardless if you don't like open source and Microsoft playing together this will let me ditch my Win2k box at work! Here is the press release. Of note, MS Exchange 2000 has a nice HTTP interface to it as well, works wonderfully in Galeon." kittenslietome adds a link to the license under which it's released as well: Connector is not Free software, but rather software Ximian hopes will pay for further Free software development.
There's a big catch: it only works with Exchange 2000 servers, not 5.5, and it requires that the OWA (Outlook via Web) is installed on the Exchange server. Wish my employer wasn't still on 5.5, then it'd be a lot more exciting.
What's your damage, Heather?
MS Exchange 2000 has a nice HTTP interface to it as well
AC or no AC, we demand to know the true identity of a Slashdot poster who would DARE make such a positive M$ comment. And on the front page? Timothy must have been duped... Sacrilege!!!
---Your friends, the Slashdotologists---
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
While Ximian Connector is not Free Software, Evolution *is* Free Software.
Connector is just a plugin to be able to access Exchange servers, and you are in no way required to buy it.
Lots of people don't know that for some reason...
I think this is a good tactic, because:
1) They have some sort of business model now (nobody can complain about that they don't have a business model).
2) Companies that depend on Exchange servers can now use Evolution.
3) It encourages open standards, because you don't have to pay for Connector if you convert your servers to use some open standard that's supported by Evolution by default.
Firstly, if you're using this, then you're by definition also using some other non-Free software. Just because this is from a developer that works primarily with Free software doesn't make it any worse. In fact, quite the opposite.
This (small) piece of proprietry s/w could open the door for thousands of gigs of totally Free software being installed - eventually obviating the need for itsself, perhaps?
Finally, if it pays for more Free software (lets face it, everything has a cost, if not a price) then i'm all for it...
Tom Newton
This looks like a neat pieve of software, but it's outragous that it's needed at all. In this instance, Microsoft has created a new software development business - the business of conforming to 'Microsoft Standards'. It's discraceful that we've let this go on. Companies should not be able to find it profitable to create interfaces into Microsoft's proprietary protocols. Instead, Microsoft should find it unprofitable to ignore standards and go out on their own. While I have no objection to Ximian as a whole, they are facilitating this behavior, by providing interoperability products. Really, though, at it's core this is our fault. Clearly sufficient pressure has not been aplied to Microsoft to force them co conform to the standards that the rest of the software world now uses.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
my papa always said, ..."if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." :)
Ximian Connector is a unique client software extension that allows Linux and UNIX users of the Ximian Evolution groupware suite to manage personal information and collaborate with Windows-based co-workers using Microsoft Exchange 2000
for linux of course. that works with evolutuion. now that would be a product i would buy for sure. not only once.
..) but they don't cut it in daily use ...
I'm still looking for a good shared calendar solution for linux,i did try some of thoese webapps (phpgroupware etc
Ximian has gotten this backwards. What is needed is a fully functional replacement for Exchange Server, not clients. We need to rid the data center of MS.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
It is not free, but very reasonably priced.
You can also find a brief summary of it here.
I can now replace my proprietary software with, uh, proprietary software.
The price is a bit much at 69 bucks *PER* seat. At that price, its almost more economical to just use terminal services.... that way atleast a user still has access to a windows box at all times. We would gladly pay for it at 30 bucks a seat, but 69 is a bit steep.
-LW
Unfortunately, even with Ximian Connector, I still can't totally get rid of my Win2k box. Why, you may ask??
NT Authentication
I can use Linux for development, I can use Evolution now to integrate with Outlook, but I still need IE to be able to use my corporate intranet (some of my development work is for intranet applications, so I need to be able to test them). Unfortunately, my company runs IIS on the intranet servers, and only allows NT Challenge/Response for authentication. So, short of trying to get IE running under VMWare/Wine (Which I have not been able to successfully do yet), I'm stuck in Windows.
Does anyone know if there are any other web browsers that can do NT Authentication?? I'm guessing no, since it's a closed Microsoft protocol.
Exchange 2K is different. It's built around SMTP, POP, LDAP, and iCalendar. It's using standard protocols. Where are the UNIX clients to support them?
It's easy to complain about Outlook and Exchange except there has been no real competition until now from Ximian, and that is only in the client piece. Exchange is a good system, just because it's from MS doesn't make it bad even if this is Slashdot.
Zealots - grouse all you want about that criticism, but it's true.
The suits aren't going to lose Outlook on their desktops, but if I could avoid having to manage an NT server to GIVE them that functionality that they need, that'd make my life a helluva lot more happy than knowing that some Linux box can connect to an NT Excange server...
As it stands, we're already considering (eew) Lotus Bloats, because it can offer basically the same functionality, but do it from a Linux box as the server, which is important to us.
Like most people, I assume, I work in a Windows dominated workplace, and while software products like this are great news, I am at a bit of a loss on how to promote them in my company.
Is there a site or a HOWTO that gives hints on how to start getting the upper management in a company thinking about alternatives like this?
Alas gallinaceas de urbe bovis volo
Of note, MS Exchange 2000 has a nice HTTP interface to it as well, works wonderfully in Galeon.
;-)
Jeebus - the poor guy had to post the story as an Anonymous Coward just so he could say something nice about Exchange. You guys should be ashamed.
Damn it when will CTO's realize that IT is a SERVICE, and a very costly one. IT is not the damn ruler of the computer!! It is IT's job to keep people productive, not dictate their whim's to every client. I realize that standardization is meant to minimize counterproductive downtime, but it sounds like your companies policy is way over-restrictive. Here we have a set of "approved" applications and a number of approved machines. If you install something that is not approved and I have reasonable doubt that it is causing the problem, and I am unable to fix things in a reasonable amount of time then you get your data backed up and your machine returned to pristine form. If you don't want the distraction of re-imaging then don't install software that fubar's your machine. This way the client (yes users are IT's clients) has controll and flexibility, but it comes with a bit of responsibility.(wow we treat our client's like adults, isn't that a novel idea)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Exchange2k WITH OWA enabled is the requirement? So I bet this isn't REALLY talking to the exchange server.. It must be doing SMTP/IMAP4/LDAP and using a Web-browser for calendar. Why the HELL would I want to pay $70 for that?
Can anyone confirm that? What was $70+Evolution+galeon have that Evolution+Galeon doesn't have? One window? That's a lot of money to pay for one window...
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
If you were just *using* Squid, there would obviously have been no need to GPL any other code.
Presumably, the fact that you were forced to get rid of it, means that you were in some way using the code from squid and building a derivative product from it. Your company should have realised that when they took the squid code and started developing it. If they didn't, then they clearly did not understand the GPL. If they'd wanted to avoid this, they could have simply written their own proxy from scratch, and released it under whatever licence they wanted.
I have had the misfortune to specify and install about 10,000 personal computing devices in three different corporations of different sizes since 1986. Of the 1000 or so requests for non-standard configurations that passed my way, about 3 were justifed based on business analysis. The same analysis that the requestors would demand be done on any project presented to them for budget approval.
When you get a company car, if you are high enough in the organization you get to specify the color and seat coverings. You don't get to pull the engine out and replace it with a new one at your whim. Somehow people manage to get from place to place in those "crippled" vehicles.
sPh
Can, dear all!! Thanks to a guy by the name of Dmitry Rozmanov [SMTP:dima@xenon.spb.ru] He has created a ridiculous nice utility: http://www.geocities.com/rozmanov/ntlm/ Works really great! Wished, someone else had done the same for X400; so that we could read our addresses from Exchange without $69 plus OWA! Uwe
Anyone up for some free karma? Explain what mechanism this uses. Is it a meta-front-end for the OWA front-end, or does it actually use MSRPC?
If the latter, what RPC implementation does it use? MSRPC is based on DCE/RPC, for which there is a free implementation on Sourceforge - I'm curious as to whether they're using that or something else.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
Yeah well but...pulling the engine would be analogus to pulling the cpu and changing the rom-bios, yes? Running emacs would be more like putting a music CD "from an unapproved band" into car's sound system. If it makes no changes to the registry it should be ok.
...if all you want to do is access MS Exchange email from alternative (see -> non-MS) platforms.
Sorry to burst everyones bubble, but MS has been providing access to Exchange via their free OWA (Outlook Web Access) addon for several years now.
Any decent web browser with Java support can connect. This Corporate connector simply takes the parsed html from OWA (notice it requires an OWA instance to be running to work) and feeds it into Evolution.
Don't get me wrong, if you like the way Evolution lays out your mail, and handles contacts then this might just be for you...but if all you're looking for is access to e-mail, then OWA, especially the Exchange 2000 edition does a pretty good job natively.
I would have been more impressed if Ximian folks would have reversed engineered the MAPI protocol and made the connector using native MAPI...
How much does anyone want to bet that MS breaks this with a disService Pack?
Any of these?
d RFCs 2445, 2446, 2447, and 2739, as well as draft-ietf-calsch-cap, draft-ietf,calsch-imp-guide, draft-stracke-calsch-ical-reviewer, and draft-stracke-calsch-crisp. But just seeing these names is a long ways from knowing what is going on.
I've looked in on the Internet Calendar IETF, and it appeared that while some drafts were being done, nothing was ready to start coding a client. That was a while back, and I guess I need to check, again. In the meantime, does anyone else have a better concept of the status?
In the meantime, http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/project/calsch/
an
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Out of curiosity, has anyone found a good way to use it from Linux? I've found the interface to be tolerable in MacOS/IE, and barely usable with Netscape 4.x on Linux. Konqueror doesn't work at all for me, and the submitter notwithstanding, neither do Mozilla or Galeon, at least in the versions I have.
What are other peoples' experiences?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If you are in a large company, why are you using a non-standard development environment? Everyone should use the same development environment.
People who have complained seem to think it is strictly IT's decision as to what is supported, and to a degree it is, but don't forget management also wants to keep everyone on the same program. When you take time out from your work to install software that is non-standard for your company, then you decrease the time you spend doing your job. And if your software is incompatible with other software that people use, you increase the amount of time fixing those incompatibilities. Days have been lost fixing differences in complex documents that were saved in Word 95 and then converted to Word 2000. Just because someone wanted the latest version. Don't even get me started on the differences between WP and Word. Just installing a different printer can change document formatting, throwing long, complex documents off by pages. Management doesn't want that hassle anymore than IT does.
Since Exchange and Outlook 2000 are using WebDAV as their communications protocol, Ximian Connector is actually a WebDAV client.
I saw Greg Stein's WebDAV presentation in the Open Source CMS Conference. It seems that a lot of companies are actually switching for WebDAV as their primary communications protocol. Greg mentioned at least Adobe, Apple, Microsoft and Oracle. Good for interoperability.
Midgard Project - Open Source CMS
Umm, did you check Bynari.net solution? it runs just fine and it can replace your exchange server very nicely, AND got Linux mail clients if u need it...
Hetz (Heunique)
Is there a site or a HOWTO that gives hints on how to start getting the upper management in a company thinking about alternatives like this?
Yup.
Linux Advocacy mini-HOWTO
Bad Linux Advocacy FAQ
Don Marti's "Linuxmanship"
I recommend "Linuxmanship" the most highly.
-Waldo Jaquith
They also have an Outlook client which uses an IMAP server to handle mail. To the user is looks like Outlook plugged in to Exchange, but you can run it all on Linux and way fewer machines than Exchange. It's not cheap, but it does seem to be a really good product.
Seems like Ximian could sell a lot of copies to Mac users if they had an OS X version.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Corporate Time (www.steltor.com). Not open source, but a very nice calendaring app. They have clients for Mac, PC and Unix/Linux, a nice web interface and a plug-in for Outlook. This is the calendaring server that HP used for Open Mail and was the guts behind the Netscape calendaring server as well. Good stuff.
Well, as a Unix admin/programmer in a Windows-based workplace, I can't help but applaud Ximian for releasing the Connector. I've started the ball rolling on trying to get approval for this, or at least permission to use it myself. I can understand why you're a little mad, but we don't have the option of switching 20k+ users to a Unix based setup. This product, free or not, will make using Exchange much better - I may be able to get rid of the PC under my desk (used mostly for Outlook) altogether! :)
Mr. Sharumpe
-- The above comments are just my opinion. If you are going to flame me, save your time. I am fireproof.
If you don't like it.
I'm not a fan of MS proprietary protocols either, but they often *do* find it unprofitable, and end up resigning themselves to using a more "open" standard. When this doesn't happen, it's simply because the majority are voting with their dollars, saying "What you've already given us is just fine, thanks."
Look at NT 3.51 compared to Win2K and you can see quite a shift towards recognizing the value in such things as DNS and more flexibility in DHCP.
These changes came about because NT server started having an obvious disadvantage, lacking some of these protocols and standards.
With email, the same thing could easily happen, but right now - the only other real player in the competition against Exchange is Lotus Notes, which also features a proprietary mail connector.
MS and Lotus took the marketplace by storm because they realized a mail server could be enhanced to provide calendar/scheduling/address filing as well as simple email, and did a pretty good job of integrating it all together.
What I don't get is why organizations like this don't implement terminal server or Citrix, and issue thin clients to everyone? Then, the thin client is completely under I.T.'s centralized control. They upgrade an application once, on the server, and everyone instantly has it. Nothing "non-approved" can be loaded either.
Then, let developers, testers and power users have a regular PC that they can do what they like with. If that's too frightening for I.T., let them segment those machines off onto their own seperate ethernet network where they can't mess with the thin clients and terminal servers.
If by `Reverse Engineer' you mean `Read the source code that is provided as part of the Open Source/Free Software Evolution', then yes ;-)
Miguel
I'm in favor of Red Hat, Mandrake, Ximian, whoever answering up with for pay solutions every now and then.
There maybe a market to get people over from the MS camp. Answering an MS solution sometimes with a Linux based, although non-free solution. IT managers don't switch now because it's "free" anyways.
If its a good product then let it stand on it's own and then let it pay for other free development.
Get your Unix fortune now!