Can We Finally Ditch Exchange?

bhsx asks: "With all the innovations going into open source software these days, why do I still need to run Exchange to meet my clients' needs? Even when demonstrating technology like LTSP mixed with any combination of OpenOffice, Star Office, even Codeweaver's Crossover Office running the latest Microsoft suite, the clincher is always over Exchange functionality. I'm aware of Bynari's InsightServer(Coincidentally, I noticed on that page, that their code is for sale) and have started using that as a possible closer, and the cost is much less prohibitive than eXchange+w2k server+CALs; but why isn't there an open source solution to this problem yet?"

"With new releases on the way, like Mandrake 9.0 and the new Lycoris can we who try to use Free Software in business environments hope for any change? Do the commercial Linux distros have any plans to implement a free replacement for Exchange, including a Win32 client-side bridge? If not, why not? Do you feel it is too cost prohibitive to imitate Bynari in this case, or is it a decision more along the lines of 'we'd rather you used Evolution and Mandrake/Lycoris/Whatever, rather than OutLook and Win32'? If it's the latter I'd be severely disappointed, and I don't think I'm alone. Any discussion on this topic would be appreciated; but what I'd really love is a community push to get this done. Perhaps a running Web-A-Thon to raise the money to simply purchase the technology from Bynari? I personally think it would be a great move towards grabbing market share from some of the other distributions, some of which have the technology but choose to keep it closed, as well as from the Great Dragon. What do you think?"

Comments

no

[jsin]

Untill there is a standard calendar protocol, and that protocol is supported by exchange, you won't be able to get rid of it.

Re:no

[Batmensch]

I disagree. We only need a strong open source calendar server/client to at least be able to present an alternative to the Exchange calendar client.

Re:no

[Negatyfus]

Why should it have to be supported by Exchange? Can't it all be converted to a free software solution? I bet all the needed functionality is available in open-source software and the remaining few bytes of code could easily be added in the short term. We're mostly talking local company space here, aren't we? Could a company not shift to an alternative entirely? What am I missing here?

Re:no

[jsin]

If that were true, it would have already happened. There are several good calendar/messaging systems avaliable in the open source market however exchange remains as the corporate standard.

The reason for this is simple. Exchange uses the Outlook client; the Outlook client comes with Office; Office is the de-facto standard software for almost any corporation that uses computers.

At first I thought if there was an open source system that was compatible with Outlook that would do the trick, however HP offered a system that did just that, and even it didn't make a dent in Exchange's market.

Re:no

[Batmensch]

Absolutely! If application integration was the whole story, Outlook and Word would be the same application.
My company used to use CS&T's calendar server/client, and many of us happily used Outlook side by side with it. And it was a hell of a lot better than the Outlook calendar. Of course, then we got bought by a bigger company that used Exchange for calendaring exclusively, but I miss the old system a lot.

Re:no

[bobKali]

I don't think it's necessary for exchange to support it, with Evolution supporting exchange's calendar protocol. If there were an open protocol, and if Evolution also supported it, then it's just a matter of introducing Evolution to the end user first, and then replace the exchange server with one that supports the open protocol. Embrace, extend, replace...

Re:No

[Negatyfus]

Hopefully? You had better explain yourself on this one!

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

vCalendar and iCalender are supported by OE and NN's email program. RFC 2445,2446 and 2447 cover lal the required aspects of a standardize calander system.

Re:no

[Batmensch]

I don't know of any enterprise-compatible client/server calendaring systems in the open source world. I'd be very interested to hear about them.

Re:no

[Negatyfus]

Beat 'em with their own weapons. :) Brilliant!

Re:no

[jsin]

First of all, if you have ever migrated a corporate messaging system (email, calendar, shared documents, etc), you wouldn't make light of such a task.

Second, I should be more specific; it needs to work with Outlook. The reason for this is that given a choice, users will work with software that is already installed vs. installing something new; and this includes the users in the IT department. If you don't beleive me, look at browser usage statistics; why install Netscape when you already have IE installed? Why install AIM when you have MSN right there on your new XP box?

Make it work with outlook and you immediately have a client base. Make a tool to ease the migration and you're golden.

Re:no

[SoftwareJanitor]

At first I thought if there was an open source system that was compatible with Outlook that would do the trick, however HP offered a system that did just that, and even it didn't make a dent in Exchange's market.

Two things...

First, HP's product (now owned aparently by Samsung) wasn't really open source, although it did run on some open source platforms. It was certainly not free software.

Second, HP never really made much of an effort to try to sell their product. It sure looked like they were afraid of reprisals from Microsoft if it was too successful.

So I don't think we really know for sure what would happen if there were a free/open source calendar/messaging/groupware server that was compatible with Outlook clients... I personally think it would become quite popular, especially with small to mid sized businesses that would like to save some money in today's trying financial climate.

Re:no

[Negatyfus]

Enforce it on your users. You as an SysAdmin have the power to push an IT solution. Introduce, train, support. Plan your migration. It should be possible. In the end, there will be a better, cheaper and easier to maintain system in place. Who disagrees?

Re:no

[Batmensch]

I would not make light of such a process; it is a major pain; I've done it.

However, I disagree that it needs to work with Outlook. As I mentioned in another post, we were happily using CS&T side by side with Outlook, it was fine.

However, just as Outlook supports IMAP, POP, SMTP and LDAP (because it must), a calendaring standard that is in general use in other programs would inevitably be supported by Outlook as well. But it seems to me that such a thing would be worth doing in any case.

Re:no

[Lemmy Caution]

How big is the company or organization you work for? A sysadmin has the power to administer a system. He's not the CIO, the CTO, even a manager.

It may be possible to replace Outlook as a client with something like Lotus Notes or the like, but it had better be at least as good as a client (Notes is not.) Outlook is an excellent client. So is Evolution, but Evolution is still about 20% shy of serviceability - it needs to be 20% ahead to justify a migration (and the feature of virtual folders could be half that battle right there) - but it doesn't run in Win32 environments yet and there's no indication it will. Mozilla calendar still lacks a lot of finish, including basic sync conduits for Palm/Pocket PC and, of course, enterprise calendaring.

Re:no

[ADRA]

Outlook and worrd are basically the same program. Their backend functionality are tied very closely together, at least in Office XP That is why:

1. You can send email natively from word
2. The default message composer in Outlook is actually an instance of Word

Personally, I think optional integration is what the best solution would be. You reuse tons of cross funtaional code and you have the option to turn off a function of the program if it doesn't suit your needs. If you have email, and you want to turn on calandering, load a module, then you have a calander. Some day...

Re:no

[mbogosian]

Untill there is a standard calendar protocol, and that protocol is supported by exchange, you won't be able to get rid of it.

What ever happened to iCalendar, sometimes known as vCalendar?

Aren't there any LDAP-based solutions or proposals?

Re:no

[hdparm]

I do disagree, partly.

Technically, it is almost possible, with shared documents being the major issue, due to often heavy usage of VB code in spreadsheets and word documents, as well as access databases.

As an IT admin / Support manager however, I do not have a power of making decision. I can influence it but people who sign expenditure are still scared by years of FUD spreading marketing tactics. Progress on this end is happening but slowly.

Patience is a mother of wisdom. We'll get there.

Re:no

[ADRA]

Sysadmins have no power if the boss says "We are an Outlook shop and nothing else". My boss actually said that to me. He could care less about the black magic behind the scenes, but he wanted a unified client interface.

I am sure this applies to many sysadmins, and in reality, the only people with the power to swith over users software are sysadmins of one ;-)

This is a decision for IT heads or even presidents of companies to make depending on the size. If it makes economic sense to swith over they will, but not because it "isn't microsoft". If we actually want to create a viable alternative, we need to entice corporate decision makers with dollar signs, not with rhetoric.

Re:no

[ckaminski]

Once upon a time I wrote a MAPI Message Store Provider for Outlook. Never finished it, but was getting damn close. At one point I could present messages from our proprietary T&E management app via CORBA to Outlook, and read my task lists in Outlook.

So it's not impossible. Perhaps a simple SOAP/XML-RPC protocol for an open source server to make it easy to build web-apps on top of, coupled with a MAPI Store Provider, and the problem is solved.

Hell, I'll volunteer the VOLUMES of knowledge and time I spent on this (3 years ago, so my NDA's no longer apply ;-) ) to build the MSP...

chris.mapimsp@ckaminski.com for those who might like to take on such a project. Or how about this, anyone got a good calendaring system that I can just interface with?

Or a calendaring system coupled with an IMAP mail server would make it relatively easy to build mail functionality into the system without having to go to the integration levels that MS did with Exchange.

-Chris

Re:no

[Knightmare]

Just out of curiosity... is there anything wrong with it not being open source. I can understand the need/want to get off as cheap as possible. But, I think people need to realize there are expenses related to running a business. I personally would not be opposed to paying for a mail solution that had as many features as Exchange but worked on multiple platforms. That is a piece of the puzzle that is important enough in most companies that having a support contract, or at least a company to get ahold of would be a requirement for most. Let it be based on open standards IMAP/LDAP/ and UCAP?? (universal calendar access protocol :) And close source the server. That way everybody and their mom can write a client or have tie-ins to different applications. And somebody can make enough money on the server to have a staff to support and extend the product. Just please don't go nuts like microsoft did on the pricing.

Re:no

[leviramsey]

Open Source is a good thing for the simple reason that the app doesn't chain you to the OS. For instance, Sun Java will not run on the next versions of Mandrake and Red Hat, because of ABI changes brought on by gcc-3.2. If Sun's Java was actually opensourced (rather than their half-assed attempt), it would be a simple matter to rebuild it for new distros.

Re:no

[H310iSe]

agreed - I'm working for a small (>10 emp.) business and have been looking for months for an exchange replacement. I've decided to go with Yahoo Calendar (!) which is much, much better than I had thought it could be. Saves the client owning a server too. Of course, you don't get the email-to-calendar niceties that exchange/outlook gives but that's not a huge loss. And it syncs w/ outlook but that's all - you either use the outlook calendar and don't get live on-line data until you sync or you use yahoo's web-based calendar and don't get outlook.

Re:no

[Scaba]

That way everybody and their mom can write a client or have tie-ins to different applications.

As soon as my mom gets the hang of using the mouse and learns the difference between single-cliking and double-clicking, then she'll probably start working on a client app to meet her business's needs. ;)

Re:no

[SoftwareJanitor]

is there anything wrong with it not being open source.

That depends on your needs, motivations or opinions I guess.

I can understand the need/want to get off as cheap as possible. But, I think people need to realize there are expenses related to running a business. I personally would not be opposed to paying for a mail solution that had as many features as Exchange but worked on multiple platforms.

I'm not so idealistic either that I absolutely won't pay for software. I won't pay Microsoft for software, because I don't think they deserve my money, but I have and will pay money to those who I think are deserving of it.

That is a piece of the puzzle that is important enough in most companies that having a support contract, or at least a company to get ahold of would be a requirement for most.

I personally don't believe in support contracts. In general I think it is better and cheaper to pay only when you actually have a problem. I dislike dealing with companies that try to force you into paying for contracts by refusing to provide adequate service to those who don't have contracts or by charging ridiculous prices to people who prefer as-needed services.

Let it be based on open standards IMAP/LDAP/ and UCAP?? (universal calendar access protocol :) And close source the server.

The IETF standard for calendars is iCalendar, and is covered by RFC 2445.

I'd personally prefer to see a calendaring/scheduling system that wasn't so closely married to email and address book functionality... or at least that let me mix-and-match what I wanted to use for those. Allowing interface to alternate IMAP and LDAP clients and servers would certainly be a step in the right direction to me.

That way everybody and their mom can write a client or have tie-ins to different applications. And somebody can make enough money on the server to have a staff to support and extend the product. Just please don't go nuts like microsoft did on the pricing.

I wouldn't mind seeing something like that happen, but I'd really rather see something free and open source so that it could get included into Linux distros, for example. It would make it a lot easier to become popular if people could just choose to set it up like they do Apache, Samba, etc.

But if it is closed source for the server, please, please, please, no fscking client license fees, O.K.? If I have to pay, I'd much rather pay only a per-server license fee, or even a 'power unit' based server license fee (although I don't like those much either) than have to fsck around with damned client licenses. That isn't just based on price -- that is based on convenience.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

my band is bach on cd

Re:no

[Martin Blank]

Aside from the managerial politics mentioned by the others, as well as the technical issue of moving between e-mail servers, there's also the Dick Factor. Specifically, the users will see the IT department as a bunch of dicks for forcing them to change from something they like. If they know specifically who ordered the change, and don't get an extraordinarily good reason for it (virtually impossible), they will see that SysAdmin as the biggest dick of the group, and some of those people have political power, which can result in a SysAdmin being a dick to the unemployment people.

Re:no

[Jonathan the Nerd]

Blackmail can really come in handy here. Find a photo of the boss, find a photo of a horse, work some magic with PhotoShop or GIMP, and you'll never again have to worry about unemployment. :-)

Re:no

[Verizon Guy]

Why is it when the open source people make changes that break application software, it's automatically the fault of the closed-source software writers? Jesus Christ, just don't make changes that break software!

This is why it takes MS a month to release security patches. The patch itself could be out in a few hours (they have a 24-hour security team), but they spend the rest of that time testing it on every configuration possible to make sure it doesn't break other software.

Just more pro-Open Source FUD.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

Paying on a time & materials basis is more expensive for a reason - Doing T&M support is vastly more risky for the vendor in terms of being able to stay in business from week to week. With a support contract the vendor has an easily measured rate of income that they can use as a basis of a budget. With T&M income is bursty, there may be long dry-spells which carry the risk of the vendor going under. It means at a minimum you need to carry a bigger cash reserve to tide you through those dry spells, it also makes it much harder to do strategic planning for the future growth of the business.

This is one of the same reasons why (smart) contractors charge ~2x per hour than what they would otherwise earn doing the same job as a regular employee that (suppossedly) has stronger guarantees of employment.

Risk costs money, that's a fundamental tenent of capitalism.

Re:no

[leviramsey]

There are a variety of advantages to gcc-3.2 (namely many improvements in C++, and a stabilized ABI). If breaking commercial software was a consideration, gcc would never be upgraded.

There is a third way: some commercial developers build/package the software on multiple distributions (Opera does this, for instance).

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

> This is why it takes MS a month to release
> security patches. The patch itself could be
> out in a few hours (they have a 24-hour
> security team), but they spend the rest of
> that time testing it on every configuration
> possible to make sure it doesn't break other
> software.

Bull!! Should we count how many times Microsoft's service packs broke applications or even worse broke another serivce pack or re-exposed a previously patched problem ?

If a fix for a problem in one application requires such a long time to test, then perhaps it is wise to re-examine its design. One should always understand that tightly integrating functionalities of anyone application into the core of anyone operating system will always have some kind of undesired side-effect as exhibited time and again by the many security problems that keep hounding MS.

Anyways, what do I care. I am not a Windows user.

Re:no

[fatboy]

Why is it when the open source people make changes that break application software, it's automatically the fault of the closed-source software writers? Jesus Christ, just don't make changes that break software!

And wind up with the stability of Windows? Nope. Fix the software. Make the hard and difficult choice of making the software better, not compatible.

Re:no

[Verizon Guy]

You've obviously never worked in a mission-critical corporate environment.

Re:no

[Sivar]

The GCC programmers didn't break ABI compatibility to anger you or to encourage Sun to make Java a real standard or open-source it; they did so because there were some bugs in the GCC C++ ABI that made it incompatible with *the standard*, so the choices were:

Fix it now and piss a few people off, fix it later and piss a ton of people off, or never fix it and be a nonstandard compiler.
GCC: A nonstandard compiler. Um, no.
Compilers, particularly C++ compilers (GCC broke ONLY the C++ ABI) are ENORMOUSLY complex pieces of software and that the things even work are miracles in and of themselves. This one had bug. It happens. Try to tell me that Microsoft's compiler doesn't have bugs, or that ANY other compiler does not.

You see, if you would have done a little homework rather than labelling that which you know little about as FUD, you would have known this. (Not that I am not guilty of the same thing every so often :)

Re:no

[Sivar]

I already posted on this topic, but this person deserves upwards moderation.

Re:no

[nasty_penguin]

It would be more correct to say that it is no longer binary compatible. Thankfully all software that I use is open source, and can be readily compiled (by myself or a distributor such as Mandrake). It is the proprietary software makers problem that he didn't release the source code.

Re:no

[antirename]

In a small company (limited number of users), the sysadmin IS the CIO. Otherwise, you'd have to hire someone to have meetings with the sysadmin and exchange buzzwords. This is not very productive, especially for a company with less than 50 users. Admins like it much more when meetings are with the owner, after work, over a beer, and on the owners tab. Of course, that also means that the single IT guy has a lot more responsibilty, but so it goes. There are a lot more small companies than large ones, and they don't have a need or a good reason to add a management layer to IT if one or two guys can get the job done.

Re:no

[swv3752]

Shouldn't need to be necessary. You have email logs. You have web logs. You have IT policy on your side. Can them first. too many people at my place of employment have been canned for not following IT policy.

Re:no

[sg_oneill]

The whole thing looks pretty simple to me, maybe a mail handler of sort (tweezle exim or something into it), something that drops mail into a db, structure that db tree like with acl's and all. An auth method, and an XML-RPC (or soap) interface. Add calendars, todo's and toys to suit.
Write an Outlook interface and go nuts.
And while I'm at it phpgroupware has an xml-rpc AND a soap interface (if I remember rightly the xml-rpc had some sort of haxor auth/session type hack in it) so one just needs to write some code to interface it to outlook and BlAMO! Instant exchange clone.

Re:no

[1155]

"As soon as my mom gets the hang of using the mouse and learns the difference between single-cliking and double-clicking, then she'll probably start working on a client app to meet her business's needs. ;)"

Before or after the right click, left click quandry?

Re:no

[Verizon Guy]

It is the proprietary software makers problem that he didn't release the source code.

This is what I'm talking about. It sounds like they "have" to release their code for it to work -- once again, not their problem. Windows 3.1 apps still run on my WinXP machine w/o a problem. I've never had my hands on the code. Perhaps there is a better solution than releasing the code... hmmm??

Re:no

[alan_d_post]

Sysadmins have no power if the boss says "We are an Outlook shop and nothing else". My boss actually said that to me. He could care less about the black magic behind the scenes, but he wanted a unified client interface.

Doesn't it strike you as strange that your boss (who doesn't know or care about how the system works) is dictating how it should be costructed? That the people who know how to do things have no power within corporate organizations? Many people come to accept these things as inevitable, but I don't know very many people (aside from said bosses) who think this arrangement is good idea.

Perhaps if production organizations were actually controlled by the people doing the work, we wouldn't encounter the situation you describe.

Personal hypocrisy disclaimer: I do have a job at a company that is run in the nonsensical way you describe . . . but hopefully I won't be doing this for the rest of my life.

Re:no

[momobaxter]

I've always liked the idea offering an outlook plugin much like binari does. Even though it doesn't work as well as expected, it allows companies to use their existing software (which they paid for) and still use the benefits of a better backend server. I could care less what clients are used as long as the server is scalable, reliable and secure. An exchange replacement would have to either have a plugin for outlook or be a reverse engineered copy of exchange in order to make it in businesses. A company that has paid for their copies of windows will not immediately dump then and install linux because a better server is available but is not compatible with their client software. Outlook is a business standard like it or not. Exchange is a great idea, when it works, it works well...when it doesn't...well, it sucks. Replace the server and the clients will use it...if it's compatible.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be forgetting here that in a corporate environment (which you seem to be describing), IT is a service department. IT isn't there to promote open-source. They are there to ensure that the rest of the company (end-users) gets their job done efficiently. And end-users usually percieve changes in software packages to be a detriment to their productivity. (which is always true in the short-term) That's why they're dicks when we mess with them.

Repeat after me:
"We are a service industry."
"We are a service industry."
"We are a service industry."

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you have *never* heard of the many occasions when 'service packs' from M$ have broken competing products (the most glaring being the NT SP that broke lotus notes on NT 4 server)? I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and just assume they never tested it with Lotus Notes, but that kind of blows the whole 'they test it everywhere with everything' argument, doesn't it? Or perhaps you believe they did it on purpose? Hmmmmm. . .now THAT is a good argument for Open Source, isn't it?

Re: no

[Yeti7226]

Let's say, just for the sake of discussion that anthing that is POP3/LDAP and .. Outlook compatible is pretty close. The-mailserver-formely-known-as-openmail from HP is now sold by Samsung as samsungcontact. No, it's not Opensource (yet anyway) but it is a perfect drop-in replacement dor Exchange, a lot cheaper to buy and own. It runs on linux, solaris, HP-UX, AIX and more. For some reason not many people seem to know about this product. Openmail was used by lager organisations like banks and such until it was taken off the market by HP (rumor has it under pressure from Redmond, but that would be unfair ofcourse ;-).

(note: I have no affiliation with Samsung whatsoever)

Re:no

[1010011010]

Someone should mention that Microsoft's C++ name mangling is not standard, either.

Re:no

[Simon Garlick]

Can someone explain to me wtf a "mission-critical corporate environment" is? Or was this just an attempt to start a game of Bullshit Bingo(tm)?

I'm working on one

[jpmorgan]

I'm working on a system to replace Exchange (well, Lotus Domino, actually - BTW, Notes must die!). It will not be protocol compatible with either, and it isn't near a release yet.

So never fear! There are some people working on the problem. ;-)

Re:I'm working on one

[unicron]

Translation: "Me and a bunch of people got drunk, thought we could code, submitted the idea and produced a fancy web page. It's now two years later and the project has no files to download and is STILL on Stage 1, Planning."

Re:I'm working on one

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, thats unfornuate. As long as their are NT administrators, there will be exchange

Re:I'm working on one

[Anonymous Coward]

YEAH! Death to Notes!

8>

Re:I'm working on one

[GojiraDeMonstah]

(well, Lotus Domino, actually - BTW, Notes must die!).

I've been able to own a house and travel the world thanks to Notes. But I suppose we often hate and fear technology we don't understand ;-)~

Re:I'm working on one

[jpmorgan]

Eww, sourceforge! Actually, there's not even a webpage- waste of time until there's something I'm willing to put up. ;)

But there are about seventy-five pages of analysis of Domino and Notes in real-world settings, some design documents and a few prototypes of critical components (probably about 200-300h of work so far). I like doing things the right way, which takes time.

Things like Domino and Exchange can be pretty effective if used well, but frankley they're not very smart. My personal research interest is managing the complexity of business and research processes, and I've found that Domino and Exchange don't really help the problems much: they don't help manage the complexities, they simply space-shift them. There's a lot of really interesting and hard problems when you start trying to solve the failings of these two systems. :)

Re:I'm working on one

[wo1verin3]

I like notes :(... still using R5 here

Security through obscurity forever! :) -- Yes i know there are vulnerabilities, I don't need them posted. :)

Re:I'm working on one

[agallagh42]

I'm also using R5, and I agree with the first guy... it must die a slow painful death.

Re:I'm working on one

[York the Mysterious]

Please don't take my Lotus Notes away. Then I'll HAVE TO use Exchange. Shit Lotus is the only thing keeping Exchange from ruling (spoiling) the world.

-Tim

No

[jpegNY]

No we cant, because there isn't an opensource solution as good as exchange...yet (hopefully)

What about Xiamian?

[lostkeyes]

Doesn't Xiamian have something close to this? I thought that they did. . .

Re:What about Xiamian?

[dancornell]

Their Evolution product does some of this. It does individual calendaring and email management, and it has a connector for Exchange, but I don't believe that there is a server version of the software. You can set up appointments and whatnot peer-to-peer, but there is no centralized repository like there is in Exchange. So you can't check other people's schedules or reserver rooms or other groupware-type stuff that Exchange lets you do (I don't think)

Re:What about Xiamian?

[jjkivilu]

You can set up appointments and whatnot peer-to-peer, but there is no centralized repository like there is in Exchange.

Hmmm... This just came to my mind: Why not just improve this peer-to-peer functionality of Evolution? Couldn't there be a kind of collective memory among the group (the users of this group-ware) without a specific central point?

There could be for example a Evolution Peer plug-in that could be attached to any program that can offer some services to other peers.

Of course there would be all kinds of difficult issues when some peers would be off-line etc. but I imagine there could be a feasible solution...

Any thoughts...?

Going the wrong way?

[aeakett]

I know this isn't exatly what you talking about, but it would seem important to this discussion to mention Ximian Connector. The folks at Ximian claim that it will allow their Outlook killer (Evolution), to connect to and use all of the functionality of, an Exchange 2000 server. Has anybody had any erxperience with it?

Re:Going the wrong way?

[forevermore]

I've heard from friends that Connector works great. However, I believe that the poster is looking for a server solution, not a client.

Re:Going the wrong way?

[slick_rick]

The problem with evolutions is that is doesn't run on windows, so it is fairly usless to mixed shops. Also, it only supports exchange AFAIK when it comes to calendar/scheduling. In theory it supports LDAP for the address book, but the gloss factor in the manual on that point is very high. (see for yourself: here)

I know that the small software company I work for would love to have Evolution on every desktop (windows and linux) using LDAP for a shared address book and calendar, but it just can't happen today. Oh well, here is hoping that the Kompany can get Aethera right sometime this decade...

Re:Going the wrong way?

[Tack]

Evolution is a great Outlook replacement for Unix desktops, but it's not good enough. To really compete with Outlook/Exchange we need:

1. An OSS backend that replaces Exchange for calendaring at least. We can use IMAP and LDAP and such for the other functionality because at least there exist standard protocols, but there is no competetive backend for calendaring applications. It would be really nice to have an OSS all-in-one that does IMAP/LDAP/calendaring, but first things first.
2. An OSS front-end like Evolution, but one that works on Windows as well as Unixes.

At our organization (a small university), we are desperately looking for a comprehensive calendaring solution -- one that supports teams, conflict resolutions, notifications, palm synching, and can be used either at home or at the office. I am the OSS advocate in our IT department, but I just can't find a suitable OSS solution. In fact, the only solution I can think of that even remotely fits the bill is Outlook and Exchange.

The unfortunate part is that we're using Netscape 4.x here, mainly because of its mail client. (We're using IMAP and LDAP on our backend and NS 4.x Messenger is still pretty good, even though the browser sucks.) Netscape 7.x / Mozilla 1.x is nearly there, but not quite. If there was a calendar solution that worked with Mozilla/NS7 that had those features and had a OSS server, it would be like a dream come true. As it stands, I may have to roll out a small deployment of Outlook and Exchange just to solve this problem (which has come down from the president BTW, so it can't just be ignored until a suitable OSS solution comes along). Now suddenly we're mix-mashing between NS 4.x over IMAP with Outlook and Exchange. You can see what is going to happen with that nice IMAP/LDAP solution in a year.

I think what we really need is a standard protocol, de facto or otherwise, for network calendaring. There is iCal, but from what little I know about it, it's just not comprehensive enough. (Does it deal with network transport?)

Jason.

Re:Going the wrong way?

[Monkey-Man2000]

It does allow access to all of your folders on the server, as well as contacts over there. I've used the Ximian connector at work and it does a pretty good job. I think it's worth the money if you have to work with others that use Outlook. Previously, I had been using the Outlook Web interface. It runs pretty well through IE, but sucks through Mozilla,Galeon, etc.

Re:Going the wrong way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, oh why, does the calendaring solution have to be part of the _email_ system? Why can't the email system be one participant in the _calendaring_ (and other groupware functions) system?

IOW, why does everyone assume you need the equivalent (stupid, IMHO) mousetrap? Build a better freaking mousetrap while you're at it!

Re:Going the wrong way?

[kacs]

I think you have really hit the nail on the head Jason. We need something that can take over exchanges calendering functionality. Maybe some non profit consortium needs to get a grant to write this code full time. If you ask me, this and a fully functional replacement for MSOffice are the real MS killers in the business world. A general question: Wouldn't it be easier to port Evolution to win32 than to try this Trick from Scratch? John

Re:Going the wrong way?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about GroupWise from Novell? It's not open source, but it's as functional as outlook/exchange. That's what we're using.

Re:Going the wrong way?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Um... Yes, iCal will deal with "network transport"... but probably not in the way that you'd hope.

It'll allow you to publish and subscribe to other people's calendars over the network to a WebDAV server. It will let you "invite" other users via email, whom can then rsvp. I've never worked in an office with serious groupware software, so I have no idea what Exchange can do, but I assume it's more powerful than that.

Of course, I hate to sound cliched, but since it's standards based, I'm going to go out on a limb and *guess* that it would be very easy to make customizations that would run on the WebDAV server. Perl scripts that would run when people made changes, or something. Iduno how that shazz works.

Also, as people keep posting here, notice the recent advent of Mozilla Calendar. I've got *no* idea what sort of feature set it has.

Re:Going the wrong way?

[CorwinOfAmber]

I've used Ximian Connector at work. It does work really well, but there are a few issues with it (and Evolution):

• First and foremost (for me, anyway): It's not available for Debian Woody. I've tried using alien to install the RPMs, but that doesn't work.
• You can access the Global Address List, if you have one, but you can't use it for auto-completion when composing email messages.
• You can use an LDAP directory for auto-completion, but only by hacking evolution's xml config file.

Also, Ximian Connector really doesn't add that much functionality. You can read your email on the Exchange server using IMAP. You can also send and receive meeting requests. If your co-worker uses Outlook to schedule a meeting, and includes you, you will get the request, and you can even accept or reject it, and your co-worker's calendar will get updated appropriately. This doesn't take free/busy time into account, however; you won't be able to see co-workers' schedules, and they won't be able to see yours. You do need Connector for that.

Re:Going the wrong way?

[orangepeel]

Take a look at Corporate Time. A quick search on Google shows all links on the first page of results lead to universities that are using it (with the exception of the company that produces the software of course).

There are clients available for PC, Mac, and UNIX systems (Solaris I think). Plus it provides a web interface for any oddball environments, or those who are travelling. Palm support is available too I believe.

Re:Going the wrong way?

[Anonymous Coward]

> 2. An OSS front-end like Evolution, but one that works on Windows as well as Unixes.

You might just get it as part of the port of Evolution to GTK2
but dont expect the port of GTK2 to happen anytime soon

Re:Going the wrong way?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using Evolution and am disappointed that LDAP isn't implemented on it right. It works fine on OS X Mac Mail and Pine. The response from their tech guys "um, well, the developer says that it's opening the pipe, but not closing it right. So that's why you can only look up an address once."
Gee, that will keep people coming back for more. I mean, if you're not using Connector and running Linux against an Exchange 2k server, shouldn't your LDAP implementation be solid?!?!
Frankly, not everyone is on Exchange 2k, and for those saps, like me, that have to deal with < Exchange 2k, LDAP that WORKED would help out a bunch..

Re:Going the wrong way?

[brettw]

So how do you send and receive meeting requests?

I have 2 PCs, and one (the one that runs Windows) exists for the sole purpose of Outlook calendar.

I don't use my exchange email much (it's even hidden in the directory), but would like to forward meeting requests (as a copy) to it so I can just accept and have it pop into my calendar.

So... naturally I put in some procmail lines to forward those messages. It works... except something magic is gone, and it doesn't show up in Outlook as a meeting request/invitation.

Anyone know how to do this? Or is it impossible?

Re:Going the wrong way?

[Robber Baron]

What about GroupWise from Novell? It's not open source, but it's as functional as outlook/exchange. That's what we're using.

Uhhh...I checked this one out before deploying Exchange for my latest client. Unfortunately, its licenses are just as expensive as Exchange/Outlook.

Re:Going the wrong way?

[rawlinsconstruction]

Your also missing one of the other not-mentioned strong points of the Microsoft Exchange/Outlook combination. The system supports Offline access. The US is by no means 'connected' when it comes to people in the field. Not only do they support offline access, but they also support things like Custom forms (Look at the Active&Bidding field) and Custom Views that take advantage of the data provided in the "Custom Forms". A rather ahead-of-it's-time technology considering there is nothing else that can do this - and do it in an offline manner. So, not only do you get the shared calendaring, you also get easy to create custom forms (which are basically HTML forms w/o the HTML), public folders which can have custom attributes and properties for them (very easy to create, just like a dbms table), custom views on the public folders to group by and/or filter by builtin or custom fields or folder properties, AND all of it works offline. (And it has a system for dealing with conflicts when there are conflicts between offline changes and changes made to data by online users). Suffice to say, there is way more to exchange than calendaring, and MAPI. Oh yeah, almost forgot...you can also create a Public Folder for posting 'Contact' forms and use it as a huge public contact management system, which can be used for sending outgoing mail (and it will recognize the name based on the contacts in the public folder). You can also set filters on document properties for the offline settings in outlook. That means that if I've got 6000 documents in a public folder, all of which have a field called "Job Number"...I can tell Outlook to only syncronize for certain Job Numbers. Thus, the user doesn't have to syncronize all 6000 documents for offline access. It's quit a solution for $240/user (5 user) or $192/user (25 user). See this buy.com search. Exchange is not expensive for what it does. And of course, what MSFT usually doesn't tell you is that an Exchange Client Access License also covers Microsoft Outlook...eg, for every Exchange CAL you've got, you've also got an Outlook 2000 or 2002 license.

I admit though, if Exchange/Outlook didn't have the offline abilities it has, I wouldn't use it. I'd develop a suitable browser-based application using jsp, php, mysql, oracle and linux boxes (which i've done before). BUT, I can't interact with dynamic data through a browser while offline, so for now, I'm stuck with the only thing that can do it. Of course, I'm working on a solution that let's me do this through IMAP, but so is everybody else and I've also got a company to run, so the chances of it getting finished are slim and none. I wouldn't mind paying for an open source solution that does all the above. Maybe I should hire some programmers to code such a thing (I've thought of it many times)...but that's a whole other slashdot post in itself ("Building the Exchange Killer")...which hasn't been posted yet.

Re:Going the wrong way?

[Krondor]

If you are unable to find an OSS alternative, and you only have a windows or macintosh environment might i recommend Novell Groupwise 6.0. It's not free, it's not OSS, but it does do everything exchange can do but better, and you won't be giving money to Bill's charity account. (Even though it does support NPR through the Bill and Melinda Gates Fund).

Re:Going the wrong way?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why note MeetingMaker for the calendaring function? It supports Palm, though not as cleanly as I would like. I wish we were on the latest version, which supports Macs, Outlook clients, Web, etc.
http://www.meetingmaker.com
Meeting Maker has established a loyal customer base that spans 1,000,000 users within brand name organizations including Pixar, Cisco, AOL/Time Warner, QUALCOMM, Lockheed Martin, Verizon, Harvard University, Yale University, Los Alamos National Labs and NASA.

Re:Going the wrong way?

[Chemicalscum]

I think for the moment an OSS solution would not yet be viable. Probably the best way to go would be to go for Lotus Notes. You can run the Domino Servers on Linux. There are no native Linux clients but you can run the Notes client under Wine. You still have a problem for people on RISC Worksatations they will still need an extra box

At work (an international corporation with about 5000 desktops) we use notes and have had none of the virus problems associated with outlook on exchange. The interface is unusual and slow but it has very powerfull calendering and groupware tools - most of our Managers live in Notes.

Your University President can't complain about being out on the edge if you go for IBM instead of MS and you you spend the money with a corporation that supports opensource rather than one that fights it.

Re:Going the wrong way?

[CorwinOfAmber]

Do you use Evolution? Can you connect to the Exchange server via IMAP? If so, you should receive be able to get meeting requests; just accept them and they will go in your local calendar.

To schedule meetings, just open your local calendar, select new appointment, then click Actions->Schedule Meeting. Pick your recipients and a time, then save & close. It will send an iCalendar meeting request to the recipients, which looks just like a meeting request generated by Outlook.

One note though; if you're not using the Exchange Connector, you won't get RSVP notifications (I don't, anyway).

Re:Going the wrong way?

[Anonymous Coward]

That amazing offline email technology you talk about has already been developed. It's called POP, its only about 20 years old.

Re:Going the wrong way?

[brettw]

Do you use Evolution? Can you connect to the Exchange server via IMAP? If so, you should receive be able to get meeting requests; just accept them and they will go in your local calendar.

That's a cool feature of Evolution... of course I've never used it before. I'd try it out except so far no syncing with my ipaq is possible on Linux :(, so I must use my outlook client.

It will send an iCalendar meeting request to the recipients, which looks just like a meeting request generated by Outlook.

So having Evolution recognize an Outlook meeting request is one thing (regexp). But having an Outlook client recognize your Evolution generated meeting request is another.

Have you verified that it indeed works? I have tried to mimic exactly the format necessary but haven't been able to get the actual Outlook client to recognize it.

Re:Going the wrong way?

[CorwinOfAmber]

Have you verified that it indeed works? I have tried to mimic exactly the format necessary but haven't been able to get the actual Outlook client to recognize it.

Yes, I tested this with a fried who was using Outlook/Windows2K. First I scheduled a meeting and included him as a recipient. He got the meeting request, and said that it looked just like any other meeting request he'd got before. He accepted the meeting, which marked it on his calendar, but I did not get the RSVP. I then asked him to schedule a meeting with me, and he did. I got the meeting request (which does not look like a normal email message, btw, it's similar to the meeting requests in Outlook), and clicked accept. It updated my local calendar, and sent him the RSVP.

For me, this is Good Enough. I don't schedule meetings that often, so it's not that big a deal. If you really want the shared calendar/scheduling, though, Connector is definitely worth the price.

Re:Going the wrong way?

[brettw]

So I just tried it again, and it has been working! I just wasn't creating my meeting requests with the "click to accept" option. They were getting scheduled in my calendar (my little test meetings) but I didn't notice because I was expecting to have to click and accept.

Thanks for the help!

2 reasons

[papasui]

1.) Companies are having difficulty implementing the calendar system that Exchange uses properly. 2.) Microsoft professional support, big business likes the idea of having someone to blame when things don't work. They sign contacts that make people have it fixed within a specific time period or they recieve massive compensation.

Re:2 reasons

[Gaccm]

as for number 2, companies just need to buy a copy of redhat server, or whatever. As long as they buy a version of linux, they can get instant support. This excuse in general doesn't work anymore now that we have so many linux companies ready to sign deals.

Re:2 reasons

[daniel_isaacs]

1.) Companies are having difficulty implementing the calendar system that Exchange uses properly. 2.) Microsoft professional support, big business likes the idea of having someone to blame when things don't work. They sign contacts that make people have it fixed within a specific time period or they recieve

Wrong. I work for a medium sized company. And I can't find anything that provides my clients the functionality that Outlook/Exchange provides. I've looked, but it just isn't there yet.

It has nothing to do with support. If you think anyone buying MS products actually expects them to be "suppported" outside of their in-house IT staff, you're imagining things.

Give me a product, open source or not, that provides my clients (on whose interests I act) with the functionality of Exchange, and I'll get the Purchase Order ready by close of business today.

Re:2 reasons

[PhreakinPenguin]

But in all honesty, and coming from someone who uses both MS and RedHat support, MS is far and above Redhat in support issues. That may change in the future, but for right now I give MS the nod.

Re:2 reasons

[goober]

Give me a product, open source or not, that provides my clients (on whose interests I act) with the functionality of Exchange, and I'll get the Purchase Order ready by close of business today.

How about Centrinty FirstClass? Cross platform unified messaging and groupware. I can access my email, voicemail, calendar, contacts from any computer anywhere in the world at a fraction of the cost of Exchange. Don't laugh, it works!

Re:2 reasons

[transient]

You could not be more right, on both counts. We've been searching for over a year for a new groupware system. We simply can't get away from Outlook/Exchange. This is a huge gap in open source.

Support is irrelevant. I honestly can't remember the last time we invoked a support contract, on Linux, Windows, or HP-UX. What's the point in hiring an IT staff if all they're going to do is call someone else?

--

Re:2 reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

papasui writes:

Companies are having difficulty implementing the
calendar system that Exchange uses properly.

Microsoft support? Heck you might as well call Opie and Anthony.

Re:2 reasons

[Ruzty]

Are you prepared to purchase and support Lotus Notes? IBM uses it internally and I got to try it while on contract there. I actually prefered the Notes client to Outlook and it had an X11 client for Solaris I used to run over SSH X11 forwarding onto my Linux desktop.

I can't think of anything Exchange/Outlook does that a Notes client/server pair doesn't do.

-Rusty

Re:2 reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Re:2 reasons

[Arandir]

I can't think of anything Exchange/Outlook does that a Notes client/server pair doesn't do.

I know one thing: It supports Exchange. Sounds stupid, but it's not. If you have the opportunity to replace your entire messaging/calendaring infrastructure, then by all means do not use Exchange. But if you can't then forget it.

The IT department of my work set up Exchange. I am not a decision maker here, so I can't change this. And I run FreeBSD. I can get and send email, but I can't use the normal mailing lists, company address books, or Calendar. The latter is the nasty one. If I was a manager, I would have no choice but to use Windows/Outlook. As a regular coder, I have a bit of leeway, but I know sometime in the future someone of importance is going to schedule me for a mandatory meeting, and forget to check that box that sends me an email. And then I'll be looking for work.

Re:2 reasons

[laserjet]

Wow the screenshots of that look pretty sweet. I particularly like the voicemail stuff. That would be really handy.

Re:2 reasons

[taphu]

http://www.ximian.com/products/connector/

Evolution w/ connector allows me to get full use out of my company's Exchange server, including mailing lists, address books and especially Calendar.

enjoy

Re:2 reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, wrong, wrong. M$ "tech support" will not have fingers pointed at it. They are _usually_ fairly helpful with standard issues if you are too lazy to dig for the answer yourself but 9 times out of 10 (TM) they will keep looking for exceptions to exclude you from support. I.E.: "Oh, you have THOSE video drivers? I'm sorry but that is not a supported configuration. When your system is configured properly you can open another issue with us to address your IIS issue." To be completely honest, we had a situation once where they refused to support NT 4.0 with IIS and SQL Server and ONE patch had not been applied. The patch was applied, IIS stopped working and we called them back only to find that there was nothing they could do as the machine _appeared_ to be configured correctly (if we weren't lying) so we should try a new server and call them back.

Morons. Thank god they have ruthless marketing, sales and legal teams because we all know the technology and support is certainly lacking.

Re:2 reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

i had no idea red hat support was THAT bad. MS support, even the $1 million service contract level, is total zen support. You ask questions, they respond with silence or tangental koans. You ask more questions, more silence. Eventually you ask enough questions that you figure out the problem yourself. Enlightened to zen technical support you become.

Re:2 reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

They sign contacts
that make people have it fixed within a specific time period or they recieve massive compensation.

I would like to see some evidence that MS has
ever paid 'massive compensation' for not fixing
problems. It is a myth somehow believed by management that commercial software and software
suypport provides compensation for losses due to
broken software. Please provide proof to back up
your statement and I'll shut up.

Re:2 reasons

[Da w00t]

s/c//. First Class is HORRIBLE. I tried to use as little of it as possible when I was employed at PBS. The IMAP4 implementation is broken, so much that I couldn't use IMAP to access any of the folders (my inbox, and other conferences) through outlook at all. I had to pop the mail off.

Re:2 reasons

[uberdave]

Oh that's only because Microsoft gets so much more practice than RedHat.

Re:2 reasons

[Rastor0]

Give me a product, open source or not, that provides my clients (on whose interests I act) with the functionality of Exchange, and I'll get the Purchase Order ready by close of business today.

I don't have any experience with it, but at LinuxWorld last week Oracle demonstrated their Oracle Collaboration Suite. It works with Outlook and they also demonstrated doing email and group calendering on the KDE desktop.

Re:2 reasons

[xA40D]

When us SysAdmin's in the office heard the firm was intending to rollout exchange there was a quiet revolt. Constant moaning and griping, with claims that Unix on the desktop as ESSENTIAL. The eventual solution was to give us all laptops. Which made us all happy.

We're even happier now it looks like the Exchange thing isn't going ahead.

Re:2 reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.stalker.com

The CommuniGate Pro Package from Stalker just released a Calendaring Solution that intergrates with thier Email Server and uses outlook as the client. As far as we can tell, the users don't notice a difference. This is a pretty good addition to an already very nice little package. Especially for the 250K+ account range.

Re:2 reasons

[Arandir]

I'll have to skip this. Reasons are as follows:

a) Proprietary.
b) Money will have to come out of my own pocket.
c) Is not supported on my system.
d) I am not going to switch operating systems.
e) All Of The Above means that I cannot try it out first to see if it works.

I don't hate Microsoft, I just hate the lock in. Why should I exchange [sic] one set of shackles for another? I'm not looking for a proprietary solution, I'm looking for an Open Source solution.

p.s. Does anyone other than myself find it cynically ironic that Nat and Miguel are now selling proprietary software?

Re:2 reasons

[gsfprez]

AND the server is FREE for a limited number of users..

like me. I'm starting up a small company with a handful of folks - and First Class is doing just fine for us. We have caledaring, email, voicemail, reads emails to you thru the phone, can reply to those over the phone with voice emails (.wav files sent as attachements), conferences for group postings, a SMTP service, webmail...

for business users, its got predefined groups of users (management, financial people, marketing pukes, etc.) Security between groups is easy to understand and easy to implement. Even a MSCE can do it!

the list goes on and on.

the school i went to - Biola.edu - they are now running with well over 8000 accounts - with around a few hundred connected at once - if you care, ask me next week when all the students come back, and there will be thousands on at once. We'll know then if the dual Xenon will melt, or survive.

Its been used there since 1993, and its been just great.

I'm looking forward to getting some of that capital i was promised so i can run it on a real server.

its cross platform (Windows, Mac os 9, Mac OS X) and, like i said, and the web interface lets you do anything that the executable client software lets you do - including calendaring and multi-user chat sessions.

its not perfect, so here's some drawbacks... its missing a few key features..
- no "sent mail" folder (and no, you Can't make one),
- filters/rules.. all your email goes into the inbox... spam and all. bletch.
- amazingly enough, there's no good alert sound to let you know when you've got a new message - no pop-up, no flashing Dock/startmenuthing blinking..
- you can't back up the databases while its running - soooo... you'll probably do what i do, and that's mirror the drives, and pray to God there's no database corruption, but that its just a drive fault.

other than that, its a great and cheap alternative to Exchange - especially since you can try it out today for free. The server runs on Windows and Mac OS 9 (and classic, btw: my server is on a 10.1 server, but its running in classic). There should be a Mac OS X First Class Server out sometime in the near future too. No word yet if it will run on Darwin, but don't be a cheap-ass.. just buy 10.2.

Centrinity is a bunch of levelheaded business people who started out as mac guys, but expanded to windows too. They are also canadians.. what more could you want?

Re:2 reasons

[Verizon Guy]

So let's see, you're creating the problem yourself by locking yourself into an incompatible OS, but are trying to blame others. This is like me complaining that Mac programs don't run natively on Windows.

Three solutions:
1) Write a client yourself
2) Use Windows
3) You're Fucked

Well there is a 4th.... does your company have a Windows Terminal Server? You could run outlook on that.

Re:2 reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a nigger and can't help it.

Re:2 reasons

[smeat]

I know they bought the calendering stuff from a company called Steltor. Actually they just bought the company.

We were going to purchase Steltor Corporate Time at one point. We did not get the money to do it though.

The product was really nice, real-time calenders, MySQL backend. Mac, Windows, Outlook, and Linux clients. It did not do email, but there is no rule that says email and calendering have to be in the same program.

If you can afford it I am sure that the Oracle Suite is really nice.

smeat!

Re:2 reasons

[Oliver Defacszio]

Seeing as how they outsell RedHat 10000 to 1, I would think so.

Oh, but that's probably not what you meant with your embarassingly weak little jab there. Sorry.

Re:2 reasons

[Frank of Earth]

Hrm... will the Redhat sales rep come out and help you setup the box? Take you out to dinner... schmooze ya? Big business like big support.

Chances are that if you have Exchange, you have everything else that comes along with MS. Volume discounts, premier support.. it's just not going to happen.

Not that I don't like RH. In fact, my home server runs it fine and never crashes [only when my perl scripts go awry]. In my previous job, I had to setup a knowledge database for the support guys to share bug fixes and installation instructions. I setup a redhat box with Perl and MySql and had it running in less than week.

When I tried to get the server in the datacenter, all hell broke loose. I had to convert the application to ASP, MS-SQL running on NT. The IT archeticture department admitted that RH is cheap and east to run, but the overall support of the application and lack of RH experts in the company were the deciding factors. Training is concentrated around ASP and NT. The question was "What if you leave tomorrow, who is going to support this server?". A valid question cause I did leave a few months later.

Re:2 reasons

[Arandir]

So let's see, you're creating the problem yourself by locking yourself into an incompatible OS, but are trying to blame others.

I see nothing wrong with walking into a closet and locking the door behind me, as long as I get to choose the closet. I've chosen FreeBSD on my workstation (with management's permission) because I am doing Unix development for a Unix product in a Unix shop. Using Windows with Exceed, Reflections or Cygwin is so horribly painful for this purpose that I choose not to do it. The only drawback I have found so far is the lack of a Calendar compliant client.

Recall the Ask Slashdot's primary question: why isn't there an open source solution to this problem yet? Ximian Connector is not an open source solution. It is not open. It is not free. It's not even semi-free. It is proprietary payware.

But don't get me wrong. My gripe is a minor gripe, not a major one. And it is directed at our corporate IT and not Ximian.

Re:2 reasons

[cheekyboy]

what? and they had 3years to port it to unix/osx, and have a http interface and its not done? totally slack

Re:2 reasons

[Pfhreakaz0id]

holy shit. those four things are individually, all deal killers for me..

Re:2 reasons

[jkramar]

- amazingly enough, there's no good alert sound to let you know when you've got a new message - no pop-up, no flashing Dock/startmenuthing blinking..

Well, optional client components (such as the IP notifier, which does indeed pop up whenever you get new mail, can be downloaded here.

However, what's more annoying is that their web interface isn't all that great (for example, can't select multiple messages for deletion/moving/undeleting/whatever), and they have no client program for Linux and X, only for Mac OS X (and that one is a beta RC1). A Linux version is supposedly under development and scheduled for release in Q4. I'm wishing...

Interestingly enough, they have an IMAP server which almost none of my mail clients were able to log in to (with the proper username/password, of course), but fetchmail can do it, and, by following the RFC, so can I. I haven't bothered to figure out what's wrong yet. Their servers clearly support POP3, but the problem with that is that it does not enable one to use their conferencing.

Re:2 reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

However, what's more annoying is that their web interface isn't all that great (for example, can't select multiple messages for deletion/moving/undeleting/whatever)

Actually, your server probably just hasn't been updated. The one I use was updated about 3 months ago, and it now supports checkbox-based multiple message selections for moving and deleting messages.

My pet peeves with this new web interface are that you must now delete messages from the list view (can't do it while viewing messages), quoting on replies is hit-or-miss, I can't upload files to my desktop for storage, and when I try to move messages from my inbox to a subfolder, they seem to get moved to my desktop.. Who knows.

On a Linux version of the client, well, they've literally been promising that for years now. There's a leaked beta floating around, but it's real rough and doesn't work properly under 2.4 kernels.

All told, I'd prefer a simple localized usenet server with custom conferences plus a POP3 server. Guaranteed to handle any load, cross-platform, and there are plenty of different clients available. I do like that nearly the entire system can be utilized through a telnet interface, though.

Re:2 reasons

[Kaboom13]

5 things, he said its Canadian too. Do you want America entrusting its data to our socialist neighbors?

(gotta get on all the Canadian's foe list all at once, after all...)

Re:2 reasons

[alan_d_post]

The only drawback I have found so far is the lack of a Calendar compliant client.

Why is this a drawback? It makes it harder for people to rope you into meetings. :)

Seriously, I'm in the same boat, running NetBSD/fetchmail/procmail/mutt/vim/sendmail locally, talking to an MS mail server. It works just fine, and I don't miss the calendaring!

Of course, I'd prefer if the mail servers didn't require huge hardware and human babysitters, but as has been brought up many times, those of us who know what we're doing have no power in these organizations.

Re:2 reasons

[Arandir]

Why is this a drawback? It makes it harder for people to rope you into meetings. :)

It also makes it harder for me to rope people into meetings. Frankly, I didn't miss Calendar at all until just a few months ago. Then I get tasked with heading up two projects, and now I need it.

Re:2 reasons

[proberts]

> Give me a product, open source or not, that provides my clients (on whose interests I act) with the functionality of
> Exchange, and I'll get the Purchase Order ready by close of business today. 
 
Have you evaluated the old HP OpenMail product now sold by Samsung (http://www.samsungcontact.com)?
 
Paul

Re:2 reasons

[Zunni]

- no "sent mail" folder (and no, you Can't make one),

This will be possible with the next version of the product, they are planning on including mail rules so you can specify all incoming mail to a folder..

Yeah!!!!

- filters/rules.. all your email goes into the inbox... spam and all. bletch.

Again this is planned for the next release...

- amazingly enough, there's no good alert sound to let you know when you've got a new message - no pop-up, no flashing Dock/startmenuthing blinking..

Uhhh, that's not true, how about a RED FLAG on all unread messages? How about a Sound effect to let you know when mail has arrived? (customizable to any sound you want)As well as a add-on notifier which shows you in the task tray or through a pop-up when you receive new messages.

- you can't back up the databases while its running - soooo... you'll probably do what i do, and that's mirror the drives, and pray to God there's no database corruption, but that its just a drive fault.

Well, FirstClass provides a FC mirror where you can mirror to another drive, pause the mirror and then backup. All contained within the product directly, no need for external software mirrors.

The Objective People

[Anonymous Coward]

Is to create more jobs. Not eliminate them.

Can there ever be a political economy structure in which everyone is rich ?

Can a free model where everything is a commodity benefit all of those who invest their time in creating value ?

Re:The Objective People

[cobryce]

"Can a free model where everything is a commodity benefit all of those who invest their time in creating value ?"

It seems to work in Star Trek land but I really wish the world as a whole could enact a change so massive. I just don't think it possible, unfortunately, for people would:
a)Abuse it without restraint because:
b)Go crazy because our current system has been in place for thousands of years and has since been engraved in our minds.

Re:The Objective People

[Anonymous Coward]

if we lived in such a society the term "welfare" would take on a whole new meaning. people would have no reason to innovate, come up with new ideas, work hard to create because everyone else that didnt feel like working would just take advantage of the few that did work. the few that did work would get burnt out quickly when they saw what was happening and suddenly society would collapse. total timeline: 3 months

Re:The Objective People

[ckaminski]

There would be people who would abuse the system.
But a majority of the people would get bored. Quickly.

Jury-duty like requirements for things like infrastructure repair, roads, sewer, power, food, etc would work to give people in mentally stressful jobs somewhere to let themselves recuperate, give everyone a bit of exercise, etc.

In 3 months if my lazy ass roommate is still not picking up his share, a whole boatload of us are gonna open up a can of whoop-ass on him...

Collective civilizations won't work as long as there are people who need to reinforce a power hierarchy. As long as Alpha-male syndrome exists, it'll never happen.

-Chris

Re:The Objective People

[alan_d_post]

Collective civilizations won't work as long as there are people who need to reinforce a power hierarchy. As long as Alpha-male syndrome exists, it'll never happen.

Unless, of course, everyone else refuses to do what they say. Power is a social construction.

No more Exchange

[Negatyfus]

Really, a complete package without the need of Exchange would make my SysAdmin job a lot more interesting. Also, less money going to the Microsoft beast and better (and faster) support! (I really mean that) Plus, *I* am in control, not some monopolistic animal that makes me jump each hoop it presents.

Re:No more Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

your comment offers absolutely no insight into the subject other than that you dont like microsoft which i think is because they produce quality usable software that the free software community cannot duplicate. and just to respond to a comment that i know is coming reguarding security issues that come out "daily". the reason there are so many known security issues with microsoft products is because they are the largest software vendor. period. add that to the fact that so many people (the entire slashdot community for example) hate them and you basically get thousands of people working round the clock working out the bugs in microsoft's software by looking for security issues. i have absolutely no doubt that if microsoft and open-sources products's positions were switched we would hear just as much about just as many open-source security issues. microsoft is only under the microscope because they are big and so many hate them.

Re:No more Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

I completely agree with you......

Re:No more Exchange

[JimmytheGeek]

This is bullshit. Microsoft product teams have an explicit "good enough to sell" approach. They don't have much connection with "the Right Thing." The quality bar is set so that a release candidate offers at least a plausible case that the features will outweigh the bugs/problems. If it meets that criteria, which can be summarized as, "the features work well enough that the bugs we KNOW about and haven't yet fixed will not sufficiently antagonize the customer that we'll lose market share" - the release ships. Now, since bugs and problems take time to surface, and the quality bar is based on the then-current assessment, this calculation is ALWAYS off and you get the legendary shoddiness of MS products (another half dozen crippling holes in the browser you can't get off of your servers!)

I speak from firsthand knowledge as a former product tester at the Borg. (contract - no implant for me!)

All you have to do is compare the # of Apache servers vs. IIS and then do a relative exploit count. It's not even close.

no

[Anonymous Coward]

no, not yet.
sorry

This is informative?

[nurb432]

Umm get with the program moderator. its a repeat of the STORY, not some poor defenseless site we pummeled into oblivion..

Better Question

[Anonymous Coward]

What does Exchange have that doesn't exist in open source alternatives and your clients absolutely need?

I feel your pain.

[Anonymous Coward]

At the place I work at, we have both an exchange server and a POP3/IMAP server. We catch so much flak from our users over the exchange server than the POP3 server, Then again 90% of our users use OutLook even though we have a site license for Eudora,and offer Netscape and an IMAP web client. They get lost even though we have an excellent web-directory and one of the best calendar projects around. Everyone has a public folder that they can put stuff into to share with the rest of the network byt they still insist on using Exchange. Personally I can't find any feature that justifies all of the garbage we have to put up with to get it running. Outlook sucks!(there goes my karma) Outlook crashes more often then IE, Outlook is targeted my more virii then ever. If these people would change their mail client, they wouldn't have this problem. The exchange server is jacked up as well. We have to call and have it re-set every three days and I'd bet that the network "gurus"(/sarcasm) don't know how to admin it either!!!... argh!

Re:I feel your pain.

[justanetgod]

You can't admin an exchange server... Even the developers who worked on it stodd back as it was first run and held their breath. The first comment reportedly was "God help us all it lives!"

Re:I feel your pain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd, I've implemented over 100 exchange servers for various customers over the past 7 years, both large and small networks. Very few have had issues like you describe and none of them experience crashes. Are you sure that configuration/setup or hardware isn't an issue? I find in most of these environments that MS "corporate" software installed cleanly with defaults usually runs stable for the most part. It's when "tweaking" and other registry "enhancements" are applied that things start to break. Obviously there are some security issues, but as long as patches are kept current things seem to be fine.
I think Exchange is an excellent product, and not too expensive for small/medium sized businesses. I'd love to see an alternative/open source product that is seriously competitive, but it will not be easy. Exchange is awfully close to one of those things that MS did right.

Re:I feel your pain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod this down!!!

Re:I feel your pain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Because he said something good about Exchange and/or Microsoft?

Mod it down if he's wrong, not because he's telling the truth.

Exchange Protocol

[DarkAurora]

I've worked alot with Exchange. Exchange uses WebDAV to access its mail, calendar, journal, etc. functions to communicate with its web frontend. You can even browse the WebDAV directories with open source WebDAV clients. It really should be very easy to communicate with an Exchange server with an Open Source solution.

Alot of us are waiting

[PhreakinPenguin]

Alot of companies/admins are waiting for an Exchange replacement. I for one have considered dropping exchange for a flat out mail server that runs in a *nix environment but it always comes back to the scheduling of exchange. With all of the people out there writing code, it still amazes me that nothing has surfaced. Why not take time off f the useless mp3 player/id3 reader/all of the other crap and contribute to a worthwhile project?

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Hektor_Troy]

Because an Exchange replacement takes skills beyond that of a "mp3 player/id3 reader" and the likes ...

I've met quite a few people, who works on OSS, and quite a few developers and programmers, and I think that in total, I have met three people, who would be able to do it. And I doubt I'm even in their league.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[brunox]

...but it always comes back to the scheduling of exchange...

Is there anybody out there actually using MS Exchange scheduling tool? I haven't heard or seen any so far.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL! hello? i'm here at a medium university and we use it for EVERYTHING.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Ewan]

Pretty much everyone who is a project manager type person at my work will use outlook scheduling or something similar to manager their calendar, check when other people are available, and arrange meetings.

It really does work very well.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[shyster]

Is there anybody out there actually using MS Exchange scheduling tool? I haven't heard or seen any so far.

As a SMB consultant, I can tell you that every business I go to that has Exchange uses the individual and group calendaring functions. Larger businesses use it for reserving conference rooms and such. And 80% of the businesses that don't have Exchange want it, but can't afford the price for it. And I have very little alternatives to offer them.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

> Is there anybody out there actually using MS Exchange scheduling tool? I haven't heard or seen any so far.

Clearly, you must exist somewhere that is similar to, and yet completely different from, planet earth in the 21st century.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahem. The 'profile' link on your website is broken.

Maybe you could fix some time in your preferred scheduler tool to fix it.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[pmz]

Why not take time off f the useless mp3 player/id3 reader/all of the other crap and contribute to a worthwhile project?

Useless or worthwhile to whom?

Trust me, one day someone--most likely a corporation burned by Exchange--will fund the development of an Exchange replacement. These things tend to need a critical mass of outrage against the status quo before real changes begin. If Exchange is an anchor to enough organizations or just a single big enough organization, something will happen about it.

It is important to be patient about Open Source. Open Source software undergoes evolution on natural terms, not arbitrary business terms, which means it will always tend toward fufilling real needs but on a more realistic timeline.

However, I still encourage you to advocate ideas about Exchange, because public awareness is the most important weapon against companies like Microsoft and their less-than-stellar products. Just don't be disappointed in the amount of time it takes for real change to occur.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

As an SMB consultant, I always keep my clients aware of their options. For instance, they can jump on the platform over King Koopa's head, or they can wait until he jumps and run under, but no matter what, ALWAYS watch for the hammers.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[legojenn]

I work in a law office. I need to track the whereabouts, and add/delete appointments of up to ten people at once, and Outlook is the tool that is used here. I can't think of anything better, I'm just a geeky admin assistant though. Also, they are addicted to their palms & blackberries (or is it blackberrys as blackberry is a TM), any solution would need PDA support but evolution has that.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Master Bait]

I'm having a difficult time trying to figure out what makes a calendering app so much voovoo? Can't everything be done with mysql and a php web app? What's so difficult? What's so friggin great about a calender app, anyway? I'm not much of a developer, but maybe it is the total boredom aspect of calender apps, that make them so unattractive. "Gotta meet the Gurneys and a dozen grey attorneys!"

Also, why is it necesary to copy MS's combination of email, group messaging, and calendaring in a single app?

We already have nntp, many email servers, and probably there are calendering apps on Freshmeat.net. ... I just went there and found 5 projects after searching for 'calender'.

Boring and trivial(?)

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[N1KO]

Well, as someone that uses his computer at home/school instead of some supermegaultra large corporation i can honestly say a good id3 reader would be much more useful to me than an email server type thing that isn't an email server somehow.

To me a good mp3 player is more worthwhile than an email server which does things other than send email.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[msimm]

Why not take time off f the useless mp3 player/id3 reader/all of the other crap and contribute to a worthwhile project?

As far as I understand things OSS developers seem to do this for the love of it. I don't get people who complain about other peoples choice of project. If its so important why don't you do something? Start a foundation to fund the project or if you can start it yourself.

I would like to thank every single OSS developer out there and apologize for all the comments like this you must get.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm having a difficult time trying to figure out what makes a calendering app so much voovoo?

I take it you mean "voodoo." Well, it just so happens I have a degree in MIS and I can tell you it's not "voodoo."

Can't everything be done with mysql and a php web app? What's so difficult?

I'm sorry, but since MySQL doesn't even support nested subqueries you're out of luck. A scheduling application requires a complex hierarchical structure, something a flat relational database can't handle.

Also, why is it necesary to copy MS's combination of email, group messaging, and calendaring in a single app?

So is it calender or calendar? Well, if you were using MySQL you'd definitely have to combine it in a single app because of the flat nature of relational databases. The whole *point* of a relational database is to optimize the data structures for a single application through denormalization. Contrast that with hierarchical databases, e.g. filesystems, that can be shared by many applications. While a filesystem would have severe problems with fragmentation, you could employ the associative model or something similar.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Bishop]

Also, why is it necesary to copy MS's combination of email, group messaging, and calendaring in a single app?

You probably want atleast the email and calendaring closely coupled if not the same app. If I arrange a meeting an email is sent to all those invited. Those reading the email are given the option of accepting or rejecting the meeting. If accepted the meeting is automagically added to the readers calendar. I have used a couple of different calendaring systems. Those systems that work and are actually used have email and calendaring somehow integrated. Complete systems like this only make sense in an office type environment. Until you have worked in such an environment it is hard to understand why exchange is so popular.

<aside>
There is often talk of the next killer-app. Email is the basic killer-app of the Internet. Usenet and instant messageing are extentions of email. Calendaring *was* the next killer-app but no one noticed. I don't even think MS understands what makes exchange so popular. If MS is smart the next app they will included in Exchange is a proper multi-author versioning system similar to their current version system (SourceSafe??). That too will be killer. None of this is even close to new. A system like this already exists on IBM big iron. I understand that Lotus Notes does this as well. These are all bussiness killer apps. If you want to really replace Exchange you need all of this. Add an LDAP contact sheet, and input forms and you will have some killer software. The pieces are all there, it just needs a group of dedicated coders to put it all together.
</aside>

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Master Bait]

Those reading the email are given the option of accepting or rejecting the meeting. If accepted the meeting is automagically added to the readers calendar.

Aha. So that's why html enabled email can be useful. The email would have a 'click here' item to add the meeting to the user's calender something like http://mycompany.com/meetings/1235audienceAdd.php? id=JoeWorker kinda like those email spams that collect info when one clicks. Also, an email reader app would need to support sending a certificate when the email was read. I wonder if there exists an email server in Linux/UNIX that is database-based? An anonymous-coward poster also mentioned that mysql wouldn't be up to the task for use in an Exchange replacement, but there is Postgress and even SAP's database.

So, I guess the process wouldn't be trivial. But I do think it could be put together from what's already out there, to some extent.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Verizon Guy]

Is there anybody out there actually using MS Exchange scheduling tool? I haven't heard or seen any so far.

Me. Every day.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a better question is why integrate all of these on the server-side? If someone still has to agree to the meeting, then why not set up a client to recognize when a meeting is agreed to and schedule it accordingly on the calendar. Logically, these are all separate tasks which happen to be useful in conjunction with one another.

The challenge is in making a client which will use , and all in one location on the desktop. Users don't care what server/servers get the job done, that's part of the beauty of a client-server approach.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

Our corporation is currently using exchange and has been for the last 5 yrs. Its companys like the one I work for that will keep it in business (80,000+ clients) as we have tied our business lives around it so much, we could never change away from it. The major reasons are the inherant security from the Active Directory system that is needed for our mail security and the support structure we do get from MS (we have 80,000+ employees ... MS listens to us fortunatly). Not only that but it seems that every damn web app we use ties into exchange in one way or another (usually the global address list).

I just don't see an open source app that would be suitable enough to replace exchange and handle the needs that our company has for it. Plus, when we have a major fallout ... who would we call at 3am to get an immidate responce to a support question with an open source application =\

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

An anonymous-coward poster also mentioned that mysql wouldn't be up to the task...

Uh, actually I (who claimed to be an MIS guy) thought you were trolling with the whole "PHP and MySQL" bit, so I was trolling in response. If you can't disprove every point I made in that post, you ought to visit dbdebunk.com and edjumacate yourself.

Seriously, the reason I couldn't imagine anyone seriously suggesting PHP is that HTML provides such a astoundingly poor UI.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why not take time off f the useless mp3 player/id3 reader/all of the other crap and contribute to a worthwhile project?

Well, since I'd no longer be doing what I want to do, but what you want me to do,

..how much are you willing to pay for the work?..

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[cygnusx]

If MS is smart the next app they will included in Exchange is a proper multi-author versioning system similar to their current version system (SourceSafe??).

Exchange is slowly moving to using SQL Server as a data store. SQL Server is moving towards providing a filesystem view into its data, with versioning. Sounds like they are aware that it'd be appreciated.

Incidentally, for multi-author document management, have a look at Domino.Doc from Lotus; apparently it does this pretty well already.

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[phatman808]

Very well said. I've never been able to express the Developent Process of OSS. "Open Source software undergoes evolution on natural terms, not arbitrary business terms, which means it will always tend toward fufilling real needs but on a more realistic timeline." And I thought all slashdot was good for was news & flames :)

Re:Alot of us are waiting

[raju1kabir]

You probably want at least the email and calendaring closely coupled if not the same app. If I arrange a meeting an email is sent to all those invited.

Hey, almost every spreadsheet I make eventually gets mailed to someone, but that doesn't mean I need my email app and spreadsheet app to be the same program...

Start a Fund for Insight Server!

[ewoods]

I think that this would be a better target for community purchase and gpl'ing than Blender! Can someone contact them and plan to start a fund to take donations for it???

Re:Start a Fund for Insight Server!

[sg_oneill]

Brilliant idea. Note the loud *HINT* *HINT* REDHAT!.... MANDRAKE?
Seriously if redhat want to do something truly clever, buy that damned bynari server software, hook it up with that redhat supertweaked pgsql and napalm the corporate "back office" exchange/ms sql market.

It's the administration costs

[TurboDog99]

First, most non-tech corporate types have heard of Exchange. Next, they like to have someone to sue. Even those projects with companies behind them don't have much to go after. Even though Microsoft has a EULA that supposedly frees them from any liability if the software screws up, it makes the corporate types feel better. Also, they can hire any MCSE off the streets to run the Exchange server. There aren't many standard certs that they can rely on when they need to hire your replacement after you've bundled together all this unfamiliar software on their servers. When you consider the hiring difficulties, lack of certifications, and lack of accountability of the authors of the software, the open source projects may, in fact, cost a good bit more than the $10,000 worth of Microsoft software. The entry costs of this software look enormous to individuals, but to corporations, it often doesn't appear to be much money. Corporations care much less about software politics than most of us do. The open source solution has the benefit of getting out of proprietary formats, but I don't think that's very high up on the list of priorities of the people making the decisions.

Re:It's the administration costs

[JWW]

You mean they can hire MCSE's to rebuild their server after every e-mail virus attack.

You know Notes/Domino runs on many different not Windows OSes, including Linux.

Note to IBM: make a native Linux client for Notes, so we can stop having to use the Domino webmail interface.

Re:It's the administration costs

[taliver]

they like to have someone to sue

Yeah... go ahead and sue microsoft because you lost a couple of days of productivityworth of software. Every lawyer in the north west would be after you, your family, your dog, and your sheep. You would think that microsoft is going to allow a precedent of "Oh, our software crashed and it cost you some money, therefore we need to pay you."? Not a chance in the world.

At the same time, I don't think Corporate types back microsoft because they can sue them. Think of it this way, you might cheer for the little guy when you're an observer, but you want the big guy fighting for you when your'e being protected. It really is a matter of trust -- RedHat could go away tomorrow, MS (sadly) isn't likely to.

Re:It's the administration costs

[Chuck Milam]

"Note to IBM: make a native Linux client for Notes, so we can stop having to use the Domino webmail interface." What's the real reason there hasn't been a Notes client for Linux yet? Anyone have some insight here?

Re:It's the administration costs

[SubtleNuance]

Next, they like to have someone to sue

Are you kidding - who is going to sue microsoft if Exchange borks? or doesnt perform? or doesnt do what they promised?

They'll be lucky if M$ fixes their issue in the next version --- and they'll be charged for the privilage.

All this hooey about "Companies like someone to sue" falls apart when talking about MS. No one is going to sue MS. Now, OTOH, if someone bought support for the OS and an Open Groupware/Scheduler app from an GNU/Linux company, say redhat/suse/connectiva/mandrake who would their legal department be able to strong arm? M$ or the afore mentioned Good Guys?

Further, the argument about "Who are they going to sue" falls apart when presented with the source. Who would sue vs. paying one of the above to implement their feature?

Open Source, and the super value proposition (synergy* between companies paying developers to work on a codebase and keep the application Open) has yet to be realized, when it is, you'll see alot of big companies break down and say "why do i want to pay to rent (license) something when I can pay to the commons and have EXACTLY the features I want.

*excuse the corpspeak.

Re:It's the administration costs

[Negatyfus]

Sorry, but the MSCE types can screw up just the same. What's to stop the techies with a c00l CV to get hired after a positive job interview? I mean, what does MSCE mean, really? What it comes down to is hard hacker experience, what's really setting apart the l33tz from the wannabe's...

Re:It's the administration costs

[ErikTheRed]

My understanding is that the Notes client runs just fine under WINE. I've not tested this myself yet, though...

Re:It's the administration costs

[dudeman2]

It's the millions of dollars required to provide commercial level support for a Notes client on Linux.

Porting the code is easy. Hell, they don't even have to port, just ship with a recent build of WINE. But support is the killer.

Re:It's the administration costs

[shyster]

First, most non-tech corporate types have heard of Exchange. Next, they like to have someone to sue. Even those projects with companies behind them don't have much to go after. Even though Microsoft has a EULA that supposedly frees them from any liability if the software screws up, it makes the corporate types feel better. Also, they can hire any MCSE off the streets to run the Exchange server. There aren't many standard certs that they can rely on when they need to hire your replacement after you've bundled together all this unfamiliar software on their servers. When you consider the hiring difficulties, lack of certifications, and lack of accountability of the authors of the software, the open source projects may, in fact, cost a good bit more than the $10,000 worth of Microsoft software. The entry costs of this software look enormous to individuals, but to corporations, it often doesn't appear to be much money. Corporations care much less about software politics than most of us do. The open source solution has the benefit of getting out of proprietary formats, but I don't think that's very high up on the list of priorities of the people making the decisions.

Let MS have the Enterprise accounts. It's pretty tough to get Fortune 1000 companies to change platforms...but we don't need to. Roll out something that can be used in the thousands of small and medium size businesses who also use Exchange, if they can afford the licensing of it. If it gets out there, and then gets a little press coverage, larger companies will come looking to it.

Small businesses aren't looking for someone to sue or worried that much about support. They want something that sits in a corner and works...something Linux has always excelled at. When they have problems, they'll call someone to fix it...the same thing they do now with Exchange.

Re:It's the administration costs

[abiogenesis]

Actually they have ported the code to Linux, just don't publish it. As far as I know, during setup on Linux a minimal client required to setup the server runs.

Re:It's the administration costs

[laserjet]

That's exactly what will happen, as it has with Linux in general. Little shops can do with a little unstability and less features for a while as a program matures. They almost have to because they can't afford a legit copy of Exchange.

A year or two later, when most of the bugs have been worked out, Corporate IT get a whiff of it and sees dollar signs that can be saved. A few of these big Coporate companies employ it, then more and more want to save money, too.

This is how open source will rule in the long run, because you just can't stop it. If you don't belive me, check back in 10 years and see what your company is running.

This is not to say that Microsoft won't be around; if they are smart they will adapt to the changing situation where software is not the big business it once was.

Re:It's the administration costs

[drooling-dog]

But the point of Open Source is that it doesn't matter if RedHat or any other company goes away tomorrow. That's why MS is so out of their heads over the GPL. The life cycle of the software outlives any corporate entity, and they can't bury it by buying anyone out.

Personally, I don't give a rat's ass whether Linux slays MS on the desktop. In fact, I'd almost prefer that it didn't, because then Linux would be subject to the same dumbing-down, corporate control, and user-as-property mentality that has befallen Windows.

The fact is that many people are not going to accept Linux (and open source in general) until it is EXACTLY like what they're used to in every respect, from functionality to protocols to the GUI itself. Let them continue to pay the MS tax if they insist on it. As for me, I used to dual-boot between Linux and WinNT, but my use of Windows dropped steadily until I finally just wiped it from my disk a few months ago. Not once have I missed it, and I doubt that I ever will.

Re:It's the administration costs

[JWW]

How is Wine at running Notes concurrently on the same machine for 20-30 users.

This thought gives me nightmares. A native client is really what is needed.

Re:It's the administration costs

[mpe]

Next, they like to have someone to sue.

This is just a joke. You cannot sue anyone, the EULA covers that. The only people who can have trump that are people like the USAF who can arrange for a bomb to come off an aircraft, then remind Microsoft that not only have bombs been known to fall off aircraft they have sometimes been known to be armed. (Even an unarmed nuke will make a big mess though.)

Re:It's the administration costs

[Stinking Pig]

Not according to the small-time consultants I've talked to here in the SF Bay Area -- tiny companies are generally sticking with their trusty NetWare or not-so-trusty WinNt/2K servers because:

1) It's expensive to change things, even if the change is going to be a clear improvement.

2) Linux-knowledgeable people may be around, but they're not as thick on the street as MCSEs.

3) It's perceived that those Linux people are expensive gurus, unlike the maybe not-so-swift MCSE who'll work his butt off for $40K/yr (around here, that's rent+groceries and not much else). Granted he's spending time instead of money, but not all companies view uptime as more valuable than cash (in some cases, rightly so).

Re:It's the administration costs

[Da w00t]

Read that EULA again. You can't sue Microsoft. As soon as you click 'Accept' you're waving your rights just like when you strike up a match to start smoking a cigar.

Re:It's the administration costs

[cow ninja]

I use Notes with Wine just fine, and I use a lot of custom databases.

Re:It's the administration costs

[intrep1d]

On an exchange-must-die note:
I inherited a law firm's Exchange/Win2k Domain (w/ Win9x Clients) one-year from this month. I hate it for reasons you already know.
I am looking at something similar to LTSP mixed with VNC. But of my stumbling blocks Exchange is the biggest.
(Followed closley by a sound case management and accounting package).

On a future-of-opensource note:
Money is a big issue to my employer (A Law Firm).
Law firms need technology but are the last to get it (b/c they don't like to spend money).
If we can get Open Source into the law office, time will do the rest of the work.
You see every attorney is a politician at heart. Also, things attorney's like they talk about and push/share them with the other attorney's they know around the world. Lastly look in the yellow pages of your phonebook, attorneys/lawyers take up a large part of it.

Re:It's the administration costs

[Anonymous Coward]

I get your example, but Red Hat isn't likely to go away tomorrow - not with Sun, IBM and HP essentially standardizing on their distribution. NOw, Mandrake, Caldera... you never know... but I love Mandrake :)

Re:It's the administration costs

[Verizon Guy]

You know Notes/Domino runs on many different not Windows OSes, including Linux.

You know, Notes/Domino reminds me of Outlook/Exchange.... coming out my ass!

The company I worked at this past summer was just finishing their umm... I'm gonna say 50,000 client migration of Notes to Exchange. Not an easy task, but it was for the better, trust me.

Re:It's the administration costs

[ergo98]

Next, they like to have someone to sue.

BS. That's standard open-source "why we aren't accepted" fodder. How about "Exchange has proven itself in the industry, so without a credible competitor it's the natural choice"? I see the other classic "Oh, they just like Outlook because it's included with Office" argument throughout the threads as well: Classic, delusional, self-consoling nonsense. Exchange is a superb groupware solution, with no credible peers, and Outlook is the best, bar none, PIM software on the Windows platform. I would love if there was something better and some good competition, but the laughable nonsense seen here on Slashdot doesn't encourage it.

Corporations care much less about software politics than most of us do. The open source solution has the benefit of getting out of proprietary formats, but I don't think that's very high up on the list of priorities of the people making the decisions.

The second sentence is redundant: Corporations do care if "proprietary formats" have specific advantages or disadvantages, but they don't care when it's just politics (which often it is, particularly with the open source community). If you can say "Well product X offers Z ISO standard functionality, which means that we can use the highly rated Y client for 1/4th the price of Q", then you've offered an advantage. If, on the other hand, you stomp your feet and have a tantrum about how Microsoft added extensions to the extension fields of Kerberos, well then you're just politicking. Every one of these nuances has end results, and if you can't quantify them for the suits, then don't expect to get respect. Sadly, the introverted geeks club (of which I am happily a member) are incredibly incapable of appreciating or estimating the costs of the various factors, but instead approach technical issues with a moral righteousness that turns most people off.

You've touched on the truth, though: The cost of Exchange, even the super Exchange server with thousands of CALs, is trivial chump change to most corporations, and the cost of a couple of sysadmins to administer the mail server far eclipses it in a single year. Tiny shops that are willing to deal with more hiccups and put more elbow grease into it may care about cutting some corners, but no real corporation is going to.

Re:It's the administration costs

[Jeremi]

First, most non-tech corporate types have heard of Exchange. Next, they like to have someone to sue.

Can someone point me to just one article that describes a company suing Microsoft for faulty software? Not actually recovering money from Microsoft, mind you, just bothering to make an attempt. If I could find even one example of that, the above comment would make more sense to me.

Re:It's the administration costs

[bmajik]

You're right. MS isn't generally sued over a bug. If the bug affects most people, it will be released typically in the next SP for that product, although people with support contracts get all kinds of fixes that never make it into the public's hands. If the problem is a bit wider and is hurting a mission critical app, but the next SP isn't yet ready to go out, theres something _else_ that only those customers get but is designed/tested a bit more thoughtfully than just a 1-customer fix. Call it an n-customer fix, where n is the number of customers that care about the issue and have contracts.

The servicing work is different on a per product team basis with MS. Both the product service life cycles, the types of issues that are considered for fixes. Additionally, each team has its own schedules and metrics regarding what needs to be fixed when.

Generally, "bugs" are NOT fixed in the next paid release. Paid releases tend to focus around new feature work and existing feature improvements.
Its likely that something that is a fixable bug in this release wont even have the same code in the next release (it will have its own set of different bugs :)

The sorts of bugs that make it to the SE teams are things like 'using this particular widget in this particular situation causes a crash, here is my solid repro case'. Things like "adding new users sucks" or "the scheduler sucks, please make it better" are NOT generally "bug fixes".

Beleive it or not, when a bug comes into a team, typically its from a high profile customer with a contract. They get a private fix in bounded time, based upon a pre-agreed contract and the problem severity.

If the fix is low risk and the problem is likely to be run into by others, then that fix gets rolled into the next SP cycle.

So the people paying for support contracts are funding improvements that everyone else gets for free. Doesn't sound too different from the redhat service model, eh ?

(the difference being, that with redhat you can fix the problem yourself. but if you're that damn smart and have that much disposable time, why did you buy a support contract anyway ?)

This is one thing that i think people may fail to realize. Many of the bugs that Microsoft SE teams get do NOT affect a wide number of customers. It is a subtle bug that affects a few customers doing a few things.

The "community" is not in a position to fix such bugs, because they tend to never get discovered by the community at large, or even by the developer who owns the component. Infact, they wont even affect the majority of the community. It is essentially up to the person who has run into the bug to isolate it, research it, and then present the case to the person who owns the development of that software. In the case of MS, its MS. In the case of some open source component, it is quite often, the author. The author can fall off the face of the earth at any moment. the author can refuse to make the fix. the author can not understand the problem. the author could be on vacation. Unless the customer wants to be in the business of fixing software that they rely on instead of being in the business of their business (selling shoes, for instance), open source really isn't benefitting them.

This is why the community-fixes-my-bugs scenario really isn't all that realistic. Many bugs that really end up breaking people are too subtle to find in everyday perusal. If they affected _everyone_, they wouldn't be bugs in the first place.

Re:It's the administration costs

[raju1kabir]

First, most non-tech corporate types have heard of Exchange. Next, they like to have someone to sue.

When the heck has anyone sued (or credibly threatened to sue) Microsoft because their software didn't work?

Re:It's the administration costs

[TurboDog99]

Next, they like to have someone to sue.

I can't believe that out of all the replies to this, only a few people have had something to say but, "This is a stupid comment. Nobody sues Microsoft. Blah, blah, blah." I was actually referring to the perception of accountability rather than actually being able to win a suit. You can sue anybody for anything, even if it is futile. I agree that I should have worded it better, but it amazes me how many people had to post just about the same reply after seeing it posted about 5 times before.

We've had discussions here before about whether every word of a EULA is enforceable, and I believe that one day if blatant negligence can be proven in court, some software company may, in fact, be held liable. Personally, I hope it doesn't end up happening that way, because that would mean that open source authors could potentially be held liable for their software as well.

Anyway, I wasn't even saying that I particularly agree with those reasons, but those are the main ones that I've heard, and some of them are valid.

The other thing that I've seen a lot of is people bashing others just because they happen to use a Microsoft tool once in awhile. I like to use Linux for anything that I can, but in some circumstances, a proprietary solution can get the job done better or easier. Linus's use of Bit Keeper is a prime example. Being productive was more important to him than making a political statement, and he chose the best tool for the job. He's taken a lot of heat for that choice, but I agree with it.

Re:It's the administration costs

[Salsaman]

This is the notes *client*. Why would you have 20 - 30 users sharing the same desktop machine simultaneously ?

Re:It's the administration costs

[JWW]

Because the users are all running X-terminals connected to the linux box.

Clincher?

[Kwikymart]

This is not trying to be a troll, but it seems there is always one more "clincher" in the movement away from MS products. IE / Office / Outlook / Photoshop you name it, but now it is Exchange. OSS always makes a replacement, but it is only 98% there in terms of functionality in most cases. As soon as we get Exchange out of the way, there will still be something else left to take its place to prevent adoption.

Re:Clincher?

[PhreakinPenguin]

Not sure I agree with that. What else is there in a corporate network that would need replaced? The core server is there, as is the web server and misc other things most companies need. I think the big 3 that every company uses is server software, mail/collaboration software, and web server ability.

Re:Clincher?

[budalite]

yes, and that would be Visio.

Re:Clincher?

[ctid]

I think that's because so many people who administer Windows systems really don't want to change. They always say, "I'd love to change, except for X, which only Windows has". It's bollocks of course. They just can't face the idea that they will have to update their skills and learn to be professionals, instead of just repeating their magic incantation "Re-install Windows" everytime they don't understand what is going on.

Hmmmm.. Looks like I got a bit carried away there, but you get my meaning.

Re:Clincher?

[SerpentMage]

I have been thinking about that as well. I think the problem is less about LINUX building the killer app and more about LINUX mindshare.

This really reminds me of the eighties and how IBM was the dominant company. People bought IBM PC's, because well it was IBM. It took about ten years before that switch was to Microsoft. What happened is not that Microsoft won, but a generation moved over to Microsoft. I was part of that generation.

Open Source and LINUX will have the same thing happen. Give it another ten years or so and things will change. Ok everybody has said that. But the truth is that MS is making the exact same mistakes that IBM did. IBM wanted the entire cake and no MS wants the same. When was the last time that other software was installed on a MS user client or server? And MS is doing the exact same strategy that IBM did in the eighties. Invest in everything and hope something works out.

If you look at the stock price of MS and compare it to the stock price of IBM in the eighties you will probably see quite a few similarities.

What I see happening is that some people will convert, but many will stay and a new generation of developers, admins, etc will all start using LINUX. It is already happening...

Re:Clincher?

[ivan256]

That's BS. Domino has been available for linux for years now. It's not that linux doesn't have this functionality, it's that this guy doesn't want to pay for it. What "clinchers" are left keeping people from using linux as a server that "every company uses"? In 90% of companies you could drop a properly configured linux server in place of a Windows server and nobody would notice (except for the administrator).

Re:Clincher?

[The Man]

OSS always makes a replacement, but it is only 98% there in terms of functionality in most cases.

Actually it is 180% of the functionality and 500% of the quality but might be missing one or two stupid features that the authors decided not to implement because it's stupid/useless/insecure/whatever, that the CEO fell in love with. There are plenty of non-Exchange calendaring solutions. There are plenty of mail solutions that exceed Exchange in every way - features, performance, and reliability. But they're not Exchange, and fuckwit CEOs aren't smart enough to grasp the idea of using non-Microsoft software.

Don't waste your time trying to write software that replaces [X] in the general case. The people you are trying to reach with it won't be receptive. They don't want the functionality or performance or other characteristics [X]; what they really want is the fact that it *IS* [X]. By definition nothing you write will be [X] and therefore only a few percent of the target market will be interested. Do not attempt to sell anything to fools based on its merit. Instead, take up golf and consider offering kickbacks.

If you are going to write software, write software that meets a need FOR YOU. You know, do it the way that got us here. Trying to rewrite Exchange in all it's bloated, slow, insecure glory just so that someone at Stupidity, Inc. will use it is pointless unless you work for Stupidity Inc. After all, if you wanted Exchange, you'd use it. Since you don't, why would you want to write it?

So either write something new that will be its own [X], or write or contribute to something that competes with [X] on its own terms, by offering different functionality, better performance, or other features that are more useful to you. There's no point in reinventing the wheel to take away someone else's market share.

Re:Clincher?

[chrisdowney]

Actually, I think Exchange will be the last one to go. Corporate types *live* in Exchange, it's the #1 app for most large companies. Replacing Office is much easier than replacing Exchange.

The only way you'll get execs to even consider throwing out Exchange is if you produce something with better Blackberry integration.

Re:Clincher?

[macemoneta]

Visio already runs under WINE, along with the rest of MS office. I don't use it (native Linux apps meet my needs), but I did install it for just such a question :-)

Re:Clincher?

[Helter]

That's alot like saying "Everybody drives with a manual transmission because they don't want to learn to drive stick". Somepeople have preferences you know.

Personally I like administering a Windows environment. I'm sure part of it is bias because I'm a stronger MS tech than *nix tech, but having administered both I'll choose Windows 8 times out of 10. It's just my preference

Given that, I wish MS would make it easier for OSS to get around. I don't neccesarily want to run a qmail server, but I'd love it if I could find an Exchange alternative that didn't cost $1,300 for the most basic configuration.

Re:Clincher?

[Anonymous Coward]

in the movement away from MS products. IE / Office / Outlook / Photoshop you name it...

Since when was Photoshop a Microsoft product?

Re:Clincher?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, and that would be Visio.

Let's make this the killer-app thread and throw on what we and our offices use and need that the free software community doesn't have an equivalent to:

• Microsoft Access (gui + form builder, not just Jet)
• ESRI ArcGIS (Grass doesn't count)
• Novell Groupwise
• WinZip

If I'm wrong about any of these, I'd love to be corrected.

And on the rumour front, I've heard that Sharepoint Server is the Next Big Thing that all offices are going to use in the next couple years. If true, it'd be nice to have the Open Source community head it off before that happens.

Re:Clincher?

[FyRE666]

I disagree. The clincher will be in OS' favour and is called "money". Exchange aint free, office ain't free, and neither is any other MS product. The real reason so many home users use Word, Excel and so on is because it's usually simple to find a friend who has a copy and just slap it on your machine. If people stopped doing this, as they will have to once MS finally has full control and knowledge about all Windows desktop OS', then the OS solution will look a lot more attractive.

I recently put together a machine from old spare parts I had laying around for some friends. This was for free, as a favour. They asked me to "just put a copy of Windows XP on there for them, since you've got it already". I loved being able to tell them they would have to register it, and if it was found to be an unlicensed copy when MS audited their machine, it would be disabled, and they would face prosecution. The machine was free, but I could get a copy of XP for about 100 quid...

I installed Linux - since they only wanted to surf the web and email, KDE does it all, and the machine should never get an email virus. They have all the office type software they'll need and no root access to screw it up (the machine only has a 2.5GB HD, so it's not like anything much else could be installed anyway!)

Re:Clincher?

[pmz]

If you look at the stock price of MS and compare it to the stock price of IBM in the eighties you will probably see quite a few similarities.

There are many similaries in such cases where history repeats itself. However, IBM came out fairly well, in the long run, partly due to their ability to diversify. Microsoft, on the other hand, is just a software company with one successful platform. I think Microsoft will experience a much harder fall during the generation transfer you speak of.

Re:Clincher?

[Anonymous Coward]

For graphics artists, both professional and amateur, it locks them into Windows and MacOS products.

Re:Clincher?

[sys$manager]

You know that there are some truly spectacular Windows sysadmins, right? They never reinstall, they just fix the problems. The thing that tarnishes Windows to the elitist "Linux people" is that there is a glut of idiotic Windows sysadmins as well. The other thing the "Linux people" don't realize is that there is an equal percentage of idiotic Linux admins out there too.

Re:Clincher?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes and no... I've been working on getting us (read: our offices) flipped over... but the bottom line is this:

I'm willing to deal with a loss of functionality in some areas for a benefit elsewhere... my boss isn't...

the problem rarely happens at the IT level it's ussually (I'm generalizing but this is personal experience talking) higher up... whoever actually makes the decisions is not willing to lose feature X in any way shape or form... regardless of how close feature Y comes to it...

Quite honestly we use Outlook at our offices and use netfolders to sychronize everything... I can not move us backwards in this respect... there is no waivering on this... I can only add functionality to something never take it away... so until I can find something that will allow calendars based in Linux to sychronize themselves we won't be swtiching over... not to mention we currently use MYOB for accounting... and until I can find a way to use this on Linux that won't be changing either (our accountant refuses to do our books unless we use this program)...

and I'm not really prepared to deal with a network consisting of two different OS's scattered around because 1) that means either 2x as many computers need to be in place or dual boots need to be in place one adds cost the other adds time (both of which are unacceptable)... and quite frankly I don't have the time to maintain an eye on 2x the security issues/patches/support techniques...

now there are some areas where I don't want to lose functionality either... but the bottom line at the end of the day: paying $1,000 for something that does everything you need is better than paying nothing than for something that does a fraction of what you need...

Re:Clincher?

[pmz]

This is not trying to be a troll, but it seems there is always one more "clincher" in the movement away from MS products. IE / Office / Outlook / Photoshop you name it, but now it is Exchange.

This goes both ways, and it is a matter of what people are used to. Whenever I use Windows I think:

Where's Bourne shell???
Where's vi, sed, and egrep???
Where's UFS and NFS???
What happened to root's ability to do anything worthwhile???
How do I get GUI applications to display over the network???
How do I read a PostScript file???

I know that many of these things can be done on Windows eventually, but there is always one more thing I can't do on Windows that I'm used to doing in UNIX.

Re:Clincher?

[ipxodi]

Just a quick point -- a lot of times it's not that a windows admin doesn't want to learn about the problem, it's that the damned server IS DOWN and windows can be reinstalled and the server can be up and running in 2 hours, as opposed to dicking around with it for a day trying to figure out what went wrong.
Of course, if you have the available extra equipment you just slap in a spare and keep the screwed up one for evaluating the problem at your leisure, but not everyone has that luxury.

Re:Clincher?

[mdouglas]

>They just can't face the idea that they will have to update their skills and learn to be professionals, instead of just repeating their magic incantation "Re-install Windows" everytime they don't understand what is going on.

maybe i've just worked in shitty companies, but one thing i've noticed is that it doesn't really matter if the it staff is competant, and it doesn't really matter if anything ever actually works. because every network i've been around has been treated as a stage prop for endless politics & posturing by the management. if everything just worked properly, where would they get their endless stream of dramatic crisis from which they can prove their worth? how would they justify their bloated salary & staff without racks full of boxes that require constant diaper changing?

Re:Clincher?

[mpe]

OSS always makes a replacement, but it is only 98% there in terms of functionality in most cases.

Since in many cases people may only use a minority of the "features" this probably isn't an issue. Indeed there may well be more that 2% used by nobody (or only ever used by malware).

Re:Clincher?

[sien]

The reason it is a clincher is because it is the clincher for office work. Most office workers need an Office suite, a web browser, an email client, shared files and groupware. Office machines are probably 80% of the commercial market or more.

All the pieces are there except for the groupware. Bring that into the equation and there is no reason to pay MS $400 or so for every seat in the office.

It'd be really interesting to find out what these big Linux installs like Telstra in Australia and so on are proposing to solve this problem.

Re:Clincher?

[jonadab]

As soon as we get Exchange out of the way, there will still be something else left to take its place to prevent adoption.

For any given user, family, or organisation, the list will be different. Exchange may be the last item for some, and for others Exchange may be entirely irrelevant. Personally, until this discussion, I thought Exchange was just a mail server. I had no idea it did scheduling, because I never went looking for scheduling software. We don't use Exchange here. For us, the only real barrier is the lack of a major OEM that pre-installs Linux for the desktop. If the catalog vendor we buy from (MicroWarehouse) had Linux desktops, I'd be recommending them for our client systems. But I can't recommend "let me fdisk the sucker as soon as we get it and install this other OS". I did that for the one on my desk, and I can do that for servers, but I can't do that for the desktops in the rest of the organisation, probably.

See, for each outfit, the barriers will be different.

Re:Clincher?

[DJerman]

In this case we'd start the installs tomorrow, if we could find a free product that works as well as CS&T calendar (forget exchange) and scales to 6000 users on an integrated system that can Work With one of the others. The problem is there's just CS&T (now owned by Oracle IIRC) and Exchange in that market. (And Notes/Domino, IBM will tell you, but there's issues there too) You can get any one of them you want, but you can't change without blowing up your previous system, so once you're in you're stuck with the support costs and prices for licenses.

A server-based interactive calendar system is way more complicated than it sounds, so I understand why it's not there. But this is not a linux-on-the-desktop issue. This is a They-Can-Charge-What-They-Want issue, where we'd like to see some real competition between interchangable products. A decent free product would put pressure on these others to either make their product better (a lot better) or lower prices. But the best part is the pressure to get to where you can merge the streams and have different solutions in different parts of your business.

Re:Clincher?

[jmorris42]

> Just a quick point -- a lot of times it's not
> that a windows admin doesn't want to learn
> about the problem, it's that the damned server
> IS DOWN and windows can be reinstalled and the
> server can be up and running in 2 hours, as
> opposed to dicking around with it for a day
> trying to figure out what went wrong.

Sorry, that's a stupid attitude. If a server is a MUST STAY UP machine you would have tapes to restore. Reinstalling is for the clueless because nobody will remember every tweak/patch/etc they did the first time they built the server. And of course my Linux boxes they don't go down unless the hardware does so reinstalling would be kinda useless as a repair method anyway. And I like the fact that should a critical server croak I can yank (from the tapes if needed) the software over to a different box without worrying overly much if the hardware is identical because kudzu will work it all out instead of accuse me of being a pirate.

Re:Clincher?

[Anonymous Coward]

> What "clinchers" are left keeping people from using linux as a server that "every company uses"? In 90% of companies you could drop a properly configured linux server in place of a Windows server and nobody would notice (except for the administrator).

Right up to the time you replace an Exchange box (..the subject of this article, yes?..) and your users notice they no longer have the calendaring functions they had before. They notice / they complain / etc.

Re:Clincher?

[odaiwai]

> That's alot like saying "Everybody drives with a manual transmission because they
> don't want to learn to drive stick". Somepeople have preferences you know.

Er, manual transmission *is* stick shift. You're thinking of automatic transmission.

dave

Re:Clincher?

[pboulang]

Seriously, what platform would that be? Are you referring to Windows? What about MS Office for OS X? Or are you referring to their commitment to the Xbox? Ok, that last was a stab at MS.

Re:Clincher?

[pmz]

Seriously, what platform would that be? Are you referring to Windows? What about MS Office for OS X? Or are you referring to their commitment to the Xbox? Ok, that last was a stab at MS.

The Windows operating system and Office for Windows basically make up the bulk of Microsoft's success. Their other efforts, such as games, smaller productivity apps, and Office for Mac, have already reached their markets and probably can't keep the company going in its current form if Office for Windows were to lose significant numbers of users. Their server software, such as Exchange, serves mostly to aid in Office lock-in, so if enthusiasm for Office declines, the demand for their server software will follow.

I think Linux, Mac OS X, and OpenOffice/StarOffice are hitting central nerves within Microsoft. This is good for everyone, since free markets require competition to keep going strong. For example, would Microsoft have put so much effort into making Windows 2000 stable had Linux and UNIX not been running rings around Windows NT? Would C# have been submitted to a standards organization if the Open Source movement hadn't been advocating standarization, in general, for so long? For a long time, Microsoft had created a market for many people where Windows was the only choice. Fortunately for us, Microsoft is being brought into check, and that market isn't quite as closed as it used to be.

When the markets stabilize into some new form, I think there is little chance that Microsoft will resemble what they are now. They will have much smaller profit margins and will certainly not be in a position to bully OEMs and squash smaller competitors. Then, new companies, in the spirit of Be, will be on a more level playing field with a real chance of success. I look forward to this future.

Re:Clincher?

[pboulang]

I appreciate your lengthy response. Let me admit that I have quite a few clients, all who use windows on the desktop. Now, this is due to that facts that you mentioned, namely questionable business practices, copying inventiveness, etc. However, undoubtedly it is the case that the majority of third-party business software vendors supports Windows and some other OS (for instance, Reuters Bridgestation supports Windows and Solaris), the upshot is that the intersection of these products is to have windows and MS Office on the desktop.

I think that MS does a pretty good job with their desktop environments. Remembering that the average IQ is 100, and that there are a LOT of useless users out there who couldn't even make a switch over to OS X without incredible headaches (for me and them). With this in mind, I think the best solution is to have rock solid servers in place (Exchange as mentioned many times previously breaks hard when it does break, it should have been ported to SQL server instead of JET long ago). Now, it is fun to look around and see all the solutions to these server issues: Samba, Apache, [mail MTA's aplenty], ip/ipfw/ipfilter/ipchains, etc. It would be very nice to be able to drop in server(s) to replace windows servers.

When the markets stabilize into some new form, I think there is little chance that Microsoft will resemble what they are now. They will have much smaller profit margins and will certainly not be in a position to bully OEMs and squash smaller competitors. Then, new companies, in the spirit of Be, will be on a more level playing field with a real chance of success. I look forward to this future.

Agreed. But Microsoft will never reach a point where there is going to be a major crash. The company has historically been very agile in terms of breaking into new markets. I also think that there is a lot more to MS than the perceived software box at Fry's and a support number. They make a decent living as consultants, too. (note: check the revenue model at Oracle, about 75% comes from consulting, with the rest in software/DB). Yes, MS will not resemble what they are now, but I dont' think Bill has it in him to roll over. Would everyone hate MS if they had played fairly (i.e. let a good product live or die on its own merits) or is this view predominate against large companies (back to the comparison to IBM of the 80's)

I think that more and more you will find Microsoft products coming out that continue to meet expectations (like the new CMS they bought--err are developing) and the fact remains: The cost of buying MS although larger than advertised, is such a drop in the bucket. My clients don't want another OS, they just want what they have to work, and it isn't that hard to do, really... it just takes more than putting in a CD and default installation

Lastly, until there is a *respected* well known distributor for Linux, companies like Dell will not sell it, and companies will not buy it. The Microsoft stranglehold will hold true until (this is my prophesy) there is a single standardized distribution and they have a profitable business model. Some companies don't think it is a good deal to get something for free.. they're businessmen, they are trying to figure out who is screwing them when they are busy screwing other people. The mindset is not in the place where they will accept something for nothing.

--paul

Caldera Volution?

[xtremex]

I did a comparison between Caldera Volution, SendMail.com Corporate and Exchange. Volution has 98% of the features that Exchange has..even though it's not released under the GPL, there IS a Linux equivalent

Re:Caldera Volution?

[Helter]

More info on Volution? Such as is there a Windows version? What 2% is it missing?

You have my attention.

Re:Caldera Volution?

[mrblankone]

For more info see Caldera
Caldera Volution Messaging Server - Features

• Advanced, scalable, full-featured Internet mail server
• Graphical, easy installation
• Easy to use graphical browser-based administration of mail services
• One click configuration for MicrosoftOutlook 2000 and Outlook XP clients via the easy to use Web-based interface
• Supports the following mail clients: Microsoft Outlook 2000, Outlook 98, Outlook Express, Outlook XP, Eudora(R), Netscape(R) Communicator 4.7, Netscape 6, KMail, and others
• Includes support for Microsoft Outlook busy-free calendaring
• Remote client support via POP3, IMAP4, and Web-based mail client
• Includes LDAPv3 based network directory services
• Unsolicited mail (SPAM) filtering capabilities
• Integration with popular third party virus filtering tools
• Powerful WWW Server via Apache - the world's most popular Web server
• Multi-domain mail server capabilities
• Base product includes 25 concurrent mail addresses; additional licenses available separately

Re:Caldera Volution?

[xtremex]

The 2% that is missing is the Calendar sharing feature that every one says they want but never use anyway :)

Re:Caldera Volution?

[Derek S]

It's more like 40%. And nearly everyone who uses Exchange is making heavy use of shared calendaring. Anyone who has tried to pitch an open-source alternative (myself included) has learned that "we don't support that feature, so it must not be important" isn't the most convincing argument.

Re:Caldera Volution?

[xtremex]

I would have to disagree..I have done many integrations. I have seen usage of calendaring, but shared calendaring isn't used that much. The most I've seen is shared between secretary and boss. I talked w/ Caldera on the phone, and they said shared calendaring is in the works.

Not a monolithic beast, but what about components?

[nurb432]

It doesnt exist as a 'thing', but doesnt all the components exist out there to duplicate all the parts that make up Exchange's features?

Not the best solution i agree, but doable?? ( and of course hidable to the end user.. so they THINK its business as usual )

Samsung's OpenMail

[Krieger]

Formerly HP's Openmail is another Exchange replacement, but exactly like Bynari's product it still requires some licensing.

I've been surprised that there hasn't been more effort on the Linux side of things to create a replacement. I would have thought that Redhat would have come up with something. Since as the poster notes, Exchange functionality tends to be a big killer whenever you flirt with replacing in house systems. If you can't provide the integrated and shared calendaring it usually won't fly.

Palm

[jezreel]

And I definately something to syncronize my Palm with. For me only Outlook/Exchange did the job (hopefully, YET)

Samsung Contact

[booch]

Check out Samsung Contact. It used to be HP OpenMail. HP discontinued it, and Samsung bought it, because they were using it heavily internally. I think it does everything that Exchange does. There are a few nits with Outlook that make it look a little different than an Exchange server, but even those seem to be getting worked out. They're also fully standards-based.

Re:Samsung Contact

[brunox]

Oh, I asked for a pricing quote a month ago and the prices and conditions they
proposed me showed that it isn't better than exchange because of the following
items:

• It isn't any cheaper than Exchange Server. Actually, it would cost more
  than maintaining my client's setup.
  
• It isn't free or open source
  
• It implements only the server side of exchange, client still depends on MS
  Exchange client.
  
• It is kept by Samsung, which isn't a software development company, so the
  product can be discontinued if Samsung itself decides they should ditch
  Exchange.
  

Re:Samsung Contact

[killmenow]

It implements only the server side of exchange, client still depends on MS Exchange client.

Not true. It has its own client software as well as a web interface. And it supports ANY POP3 or IMAP client. Of course, it supports MAPI (the Outlook interface) as well.

Re:Samsung Contact

[belloc]

It isn't free or open source...

Ah, that's true, but a lot of people (like me) turn to it when the PHB's demand things like painless group calendaring. HP Openmail (Samsung Contact) is a product that does what the execs need for the company, yet runs on my *nix boxen, so I don't have to drop an Exchange server onto my network.

I've run HP Openmail for the last two years or so, and it's been as flawless as I can expect. Very flexible, configurable (all by CLI and .conf files, I might add, no GUI necessary). My users can run Outlook (with full Public Folders and shared calendar support), or any old IMAP client.

HP will support the product until 2006, so I have lots of time to wait for Samsung to get their act together with Contact. They're still sort of fumbling about, last time I stopped by their website. They've had a support rep contact me a few times about the switchover process, but he's not a tech guy, and just keeps telling me to be patient, which is fine with me. Detailed migration help is on the way.

So the short answer is that Openmail/Contact fills a niche that no free software does yet. People that need a mature and complex messaging backend (more than just an MTA), but don't care much for Exchange will love it.

Belloc

Re:Samsung Contact

[FFON]

you make and interesting point with this:

"...so I don't have to drop an Exchange server onto my network."

exchange server requires a domian controller, so you will most likely have to 'drop' another w2k box on your network just to have one exchange server. MS don't recommend running domain services and exchange from the same box.... ugh.. i'm saying....

use qpopper

[pretzel_logic]

I have always dreaded exchange, mainly because when a end user shows me that they cant connect, the outlook interface is misleading and confusing. I set businesses up on a linux server running qpopper to handle the mail. It acts as a POP server, it can be connected to via IMAP email clients and is very reliable. Microsoft products are not the anwser to all the solutions. Keep in mind Microsoft products are created for the lowest common denominator of computer user. Give the staff a Microsoft desktop enviroment, but let all the things running in the background be on Linux. You will be glad you did, and maybe you can show your boss how you save the company money.

Re:use qpopper

[justanetgod]

The problem is this mail solution does not address calender interfacing - open mail, insight and even suSE mail server are close but still fall short of integrating calender and email...

All OSes suck - MSFT just sucks more...

Re:use qpopper

[linuxrochester]

I to have done the same thing. Qmail, Qpopper, UW IMAP, Open LDAP, and Squirel Mail on a Linux box. For email needs, It does the exact same thing an Exchange server can do, for the same amount of people, on 1/2 the amount of hardware. The nice thing is, Outlook, OE, Netscape Mail, or whatever email client my users decide to choose will work as long as it talks POP/IMAP/SMTP. My only delima is the calendar features of Outlook. I have been searching for almost 2 years now for an open source replacement on the server side To share M$ Outlooks calendars. We were currently using the Net Folders feature(slow and unreliable, but better than nothing), built into Outlook,but Outlook XP no longer supports it. If something doesn't happen soon, the decision makers are going to force Exchange on me, because they don't want to loose there conference room scheduling calendar! What a way to justify all of that money!

Ximian Evolution

[strider( corinth )]

Ximian Evolution supports integration with Exchange on what looks like the level you're looking for. Check out their press release. A quote:

"With Ximian Connector installed, Ximian Evolution will function as a Microsoft Exchange 2000 client, enabling users to manage their email, personal calendars, group schedules, address books and tasks lists using existing company Exchange 2000 servers."

I'm not certain this is what you're looking for, but it seems to fit the bill to me. I use Evolution myself, and highly recommend it.

Re:Ximian Evolution

[DrPascal]

It sounds like he's looking for software to replace the server, not the client. He doesn't want integration with Exchange, he wants to get rid of it.

Exchange is very useful

[peripatetic_bum]

At work, we've been trying to switch over from using exchange but a lot of people have implemented some very neat features, like for instance. If I have an appointment to do a stress test on a patient, the nurses send an email so that it is loaded onto my palm pilot when i sync and a letter is automatically printed out letting the patient know when the test is scheduled.

The IT guys think they may have found an exchange server replacemetn with SUSE but for now exhcnage is very useful and would be very hard to replace.

Thanks for reading

Re:Exchange is very useful

[Anonymous Coward]

The Suese Email server looks like a big hack though...

Re:Exchange is very useful

[Anonymous Coward]

I have asked you a number of questions. Why, for the love of Pete, have you refused to respond to me?!?

Re:Exchange is very useful

[uberdave]

Maybe because you are posting as an Anonymous Coward. AC posts (-1) fall below the readability threshold (0) of the standard Slashdot settings. Sign up for a Login name and join the party.

Re:Exchange is very useful

[lahvak]

Interesting? Maybe I don't quite understand your description,
but it seems to me that something like that could be easily
achieved with pretty much any unix MTA and a well wtitten .forward file.

Work on the way to get there.. not the destination

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree.

However creating something , even Opensource that does what Notes and Domino do is quite a task. Do they do it well ? not hardly.. but its effective and a great many places are as entrenched with domino as others are with exchange..

you need to make your solution protocol compatible.. you need to make your solution make the transition as painless as possible.. and then provide all the functionality that was had before.. but in new and better ways.. its the only way to get it accepted. Many many great software packages go unused because they came along after inferior products were entrenched and didnt provide a solution for seamless painless cross over.

If you want to kill Domino (and god knows i do too).. then dont only create a replacement.. create a bridging application to get the corporation from the ugly wasteland that is Domino to your utopia... that my friend is where the true battle lies.

What is really needed...

[DamienMcKenna]

What IMHO is really needed is..

1. A good cross-platform replacement for Outlook.

2. A good calendar API.

3. Server systems that implement #2.

Aethera, from TheKompany, looks like it will fill #1.

phpGroupWare, OpenOffice and OEone look like they're aiming to do #2.

phpGroupWare should do #3 after #2 is finished.

Tadaaa! :)

Re:What is really needed...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a good v(i)Calendar API, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt, the files are pretty trivial to write out and if you deliver the file in the proper format, Outlook and OE will gobble it up. The same works for the vCards. All the program wants is a file in a specific format. Outlook and OE do not care what is feeding them the file as long as something feed it to them. In other words it is a trivial task to have an ASP or a perl or a php script on a webserver write out a *.vcs file and the Outlook client will be opened and the data added

Re:What is really needed...

[styrotech]

About time someone mentioned that series of projects.

People go on about iCAL RFCs or whatever, but there is still no open API/protocol for the free/busy calendar sharing stuff that Outlook/Exchange does.

That is what the OpenOffice Groupware/phpGroupware/Mozilla Calendar etc 'alliance' is trying to acheive. And they are short of developers (plenty of sysadmin types though).

If anybody wants a project to contribute to - please go join the OpenOffice Groupware mailing list!

Re:What is really needed...

[uberdave]

What is needed is a "drop in" replacement for the Exchange Server. If you can switch to a linux based server solution without having to touch any of the clients.

Re:What is really needed...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish them all the luck, but without either a genius to do 75% of the work on his own and then donate it, or without several developers willing to do what they're told, and especially someone to tell them what to do, I don't see the OOo Groupware project taking off.

I read about it here and sifted through the last few months mailing list archives and there isn't any direction, leadership, or code. Every so often a developer shows up and says, "I have xyz experience, what can I do?" but doesn't get a response. The regulars just want to talk and make business-level "proposal" documents.

I don't mean to be insulting, but what I'm saying is they need some serious leadership. I'd like to join, but I'm no architect, and they still don't even know *how* they're going to implement it. I'd volunteer to take charge, but I don't think anyone there is looking for somebody to boss them around.

Realistically, it'll take a corporate sponsor willing to donate resources, and willing to make the design decisions and enforce them internally before the project can really take of. Those on the list seem to expect Sun to do it, but you need to remember Star Office is not a Sun product. They just bought it, and haven't really done anything with it. 5.2 was practically done in 1998 before Sun bought Star Division.

Good question.

[FreeLinux]

There has been plenty of call for an open source groupware application like Exchange and as yet there are still none. My appologies to the folks at PHP-Groupware but, even though this is often cited as a solution, it simply isn't an adequate solution especially for a medium or large enterprise.

Frankly, I had always thought that the Sendmail folks would be the one to deliver. They have certainly nailed down the mail side and I feel that they could do a great job integrating calendaring and other groupware features, most importantly a programming interface to make it an extensible solution like Exchange or Notes. Unfortunately, as of yet, they have not indicated that they are pursuing this.

OSS is still out in the cold when it comes to an OSS Groupware application that scales.

Re:Good question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sendmail sucks shit. I mean, it really really sucks. Compare the sendmail source, and the sendmail config files, with the source and config files for Postfix and then get back to me. You must be a new Lunix luser or something. OOoooh it hurts

Re:Good question.

[PhreakinPenguin]

Excellent point with the medium to large business angle. I think that's the main part of corporate network structure that isn't really addressed. There's some sort of hack/solution available for small to medium sized businesses but nothing to address large companies. 500+ employees.

Re:Good question.

[Anonymous Coward]

And Now, for 50 Points..

"Who can Name the distro from which this Elitist belongs?"

Re:Good question.

[Anonymous Coward]

TANDY EXTENDED COLOR BASIC

Re:Good question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo?

It's Not Just the Calendar

[Spencerian]

But Microsoft's proprietary mailbox format, MAPI, which nothing but the Outlook clients appear to be able to read. Sources have it on my side that Exchange XP, I think, moves toward IMAP for its mailbox.

Someone else may have more information on this to acknowledge or debunk. I do sit by an Exchange tech who can give me an answer to this later, but not today.

I hope this happens--using the Outlook client in Mac OS 9/Classic while running OS X is a pain, and I noted a nasty bug for users who aren't in DST time zones that make the calendar worthless for half a year.

Re:It's Not Just the Calendar

[wkiri]

But Microsoft's proprietary mailbox format, MAPI, which nothing but the Outlook clients appear to be able to read. Sources have it on my side that Exchange XP, I think, moves toward IMAP for its mailbox.

To avoid the necessity of Outlook, I'm using Pine to connect to an Exchange NT server. It works like a charm. See

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Pine-Exchange/index .html

for instructions on how to set this up.

Re:It's Not Just the Calendar

[TheCabal]

But Microsoft's proprietary mailbox format, MAPI, which nothing but the Outlook clients appear to be able to read. Sources have it on my side that Exchange XP, I think, moves toward IMAP for its mailbox.

But Exchange 5.5 and 2000 support IMAP and POP3! Plus, MAPI is fully documented and available for any bright young coder to create a new email client.

Re:It's Not Just the Calendar

[shyster]

There's an interesting server app called SQLView that purports to store everything in a SQL server database, then allows Outlook to see it as an IMAP mailbox. The normal problem is that Outlook won't allow you to use an IMAP mailbox for a default message store, but they claim to have worked around that. I'm planning on testing it, just never have the time....

Re:It's Not Just the Calendar

[kweiske]

Thank you -- this is absolutely brilliant!

I used PINE and IMAP on my Exchange server, never went all the way and got LDAP working. I don't remember, do you still get WINMAIL.DAT attachments via IMAP? Time for procmail...

Re:It's Not Just the Calendar

[alan_d_post]

You might want to consider fetchmail/procmail/filesystem for mail access, as this allows for procmail filtering, and prevents Exchange hosages from destroying your old mail. My whole chain looks like:

fetchmail-procmail-filesystem-mutt-vim-sendmail

with fetchmail configured to use NTLM authentication.

The corporation at which I have a job has already had instances of mail lossage, and Exchange has been up for only a few months.

I've been a little paranoid lately, too.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I left the iron on when I left the house this morning, and it's been driving me crazy all day.

Re:I've been a little paranoid lately, too.

[Stackis]

My iron is a Black & Decker, and it has an auto shutoff feature... Maybe you should upgrade ;)

The reason to run Exchange

[Treeluvinhippy]

Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.

Re:The reason to run Exchange

[justanetgod]

But they should be fired, really. Without question any version of that OS falls so far short in terms of elegance, engineering, and good sense, its questionable that it could find its ass with both hands and a flashlight.

Re:The reason to run Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

But you CAN get fired for running Oracle (at least in California)!

Re:The reason to run Exchange

[pretzel_logic]

but they could get fired for relying on Microsoft.
br I would fire an employee that used an unsecure microsoft product when another choice was available. hey slacker, I hope you never work for me.

Re:The reason to run Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just plain not true. It's definatly not insightful.

I know people who have lost their job during the 18 hours it took to rebuild the exchange mail database. (I don't know they've fixed the "everything's in one database, and if you have 100,000 users and get corruption you loose a whole day" problem yet, but it was definatly a problem).

Re:The reason to run Exchange

[lamp77]

Nonsense. That's just MS propaganda.

As well ass many people get fired for not being able to support it. You ever seen what happends when 2 synch'd exchange servers go down due to a stupid vbs attack.

Re:The reason to run Exchange

[Casca]

Wouldn't that make a great story?

Corporate Board Meeting
_______________________
Mean Boss: What the hell is wrong with our email system? Why do we keep getting virii and trojans on our network filesystems?

Burned out IT worker: Because we were told to buy software that was known to have many exploits and a number of design flaws, against our better judgement.

Mean Boss: Whoever told you to do that should be fired, I wanna know their names!

Burned out IT worker: Sir, it was you...

Mean Bosses Meaner Boss: Well Bob, hope you've polished up that resume'.
__________________________
AP news story: Someone fired for buying Microsoft!

Re:The reason to run Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not; but I bet there are several that they wish they had after Microsoft bought them.

Re:The reason to run Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

It can't. It can't even find command.com

Re:The reason to run Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

> I would fire an employee that used an unsecure microsoft product when another choice was available

Yeah. To bad your probably still in school and living with your mom. Maybe you could fire her.

Re:The reason to run Exchange

[smartin]

Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.

I'd fire the bastard that bought exchange here. I work for a large investment bank and we had several multiday email outages over the last year. Must have cost the firm millions.

Re:The reason to run Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes they did...I fired my entire windows network admin staff for choosing exchange when 2 mo after they chose it, it was shut down by melissa.

We then moved to Novell's GroupWise and have not had a SINGLE problem since...I also replaced my 5 person windows/exchange staff with 1 GW person.

Re:The reason to run Exchange

[kweiske]

Exchange 2000 allows multiple message stores. The trick is not getting corruption in the first place. I ran Exchange 4.0 through 5.5 for a couple of years, and as long as you kept it maintained, it behaved nicely. Database defrags every two months, regular backups, and general housekeeping was required.

Re:The reason to run Exchange

[e-town]

Well, that might be true, but it's not for a lack of trying. I recently had a long debate with the rest of my management team about firing the guys in our office after they suggested we switch to Win 2k for our file servers.

After two weeks of trying they were unable to resolve the performance issues caused by the AD implementation. I was the only guy who could get any work done (running linux). We ended up switching back to Netware to get things working again. I suggested Linux, but nobody is really happy about the fact that of our twelve servers, I'm the only guy with the skills to administer seven of them, so adding two more seemed like a bad idea.

...but the point is, while nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft, I'm still trying.

Re:The reason to run Exchange

[alan_d_post]

I recently had a long debate with the rest of my management team about firing the guys in our office after they suggested we switch to Win 2k for our file servers.

Are these people unwilling or unable to learn? If they're willing and able, it seems to me that a more constructive approach would be to allow them to attend unix traning classes and encourage them to use unix desktops.

Bynari

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought InsightServer. It's merely a loose integration of cyrus imap, openldap, apache and ftp with an administrative fron-end. While I am dying for someone to come up with an alternative for Exchange this isn't it. It ended up shelving it (no offence Bynari guys, it was a good effort) and building my own system. Still not as functional as Exchange but more robust and a steamrolled it through management.

I wish I had Exchange

[Casca]

As bad as exchange is, the entire FAA has been in the process of switching over their email system to Lotus Notes from CCMail. You folks using Exchange have no idea how good you have it.

Re:I wish I had Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

Notes does blow. The only good thing about Notes is the job security it provides for consultants.

Re:I wish I had Exchange

[emucci]

notes is a much more stable platform than exchange, and it already has a linux version...

and yes, the money for the consultants is always nice :)

Re:I wish I had Exchange

[abiogenesis]

Notes unfortunately doesn't have a Linux version. Domino does. Notes is the client, Domino is the server.

Re:I wish I had Exchange

[_Swank]

on the other hand, notes does run quite well under wine.

the concept of exchange

[chris_mahan]

The whole concept of Exchange, in my opinion, is flawed. Each Exchange server recreates a mini-internet within a lan, that connects to other mini-internets within other lans, tied together by wans (or mans--as the case may be) and also tied together by the real internet [a nebulous definition goes here].

Here, we have one Exchange server for 150 people. But then there are 9 locations, from San Francisco to san Diego. They all hit the same server through the wan.

Remote users (15+) also use outlook web access (i't really Exchange web access if you think about it) to access their mail. We have to allow that traffic through the firewall.

And every single one of our people have one or more other email addresses (AOL, Earthlink, RR, whatever).

I would say: have better addressing handling.

Email was first created by geeks for geeks (at univs. and gov.) and served its purpose well. When the move was made to the company, the whole transition was just done wrong.

I say the Exchange servers should be totally eliminiated in favor of a non-lan/wan centric solution (watch your step, marketing words all around), namely a true internet application, shared, replicable, and reliable.

As far as calendaring is concerned, we don't use it much. Our corporate values promote face-time and intelligent conversation more than lines on a spreadsheet, so meetings are more dynamic, more fluid, and less apt tp be "scheduled". Usually it's a phone call.

Anyway, I digress.

But this may be the reason no open-sourcer wants to tackle that issue. It may subconsciously feel flawed to recreate the Exchange architecture.

Re:the concept of exchange

[TheCabal]

I say the Exchange servers should be totally eliminiated in favor of a non-lan/wan centric solution (watch your step, marketing words all around), namely a true internet application, shared, replicable, and reliable.

But all email servers are like that. Running Sendmail or Postfix? Gee, you still have one central mail server. With Exchange you can at least have a bridgehead server that sends/receives email to the outside world, and Exchange server at each physical site that get their user's mail replicated to them from the bridgehead. Cuts down dramatically on bandwidth consumption.

Re:the concept of exchange

[CerebusUS]

This sounds like you have a bad exchange setup, imho.

Here, we have one Exchange server for 150 people. But then there are 9 locations, from San Francisco to san Diego. They all hit the same server through the wan.

Then set up smaller exchange servers at the remote sites. Exchange is designed for this.

Remote users (15+) also use outlook web access (i't really Exchange web access if you think about it) to access their mail. We have to allow that traffic through the firewall.

Don't host OWA on the exchange server. Put it on a fairly capable web server on your dmz. Allow only port 80 and 443 traffic to it, then allow it to hit only your domain controllers and the exchange server.

And every single one of our people have one or more other email addresses (AOL, Earthlink, RR, whatever).

This has nothing whatsoever to do with exchange. It's a user issue.

But this may be the reason no open-sourcer wants to tackle that issue. It may subconsciously feel flawed to recreate the Exchange architecture.

Exchange's original architecture was centered around MSMail 3.0. And an ugly ugly beast that was, with very little support for internet email standards. Since then it has grown up to be a very standards compliant product. Are you really suggesting we need to ditch email as we know it? While I think it would be nice to get some features (authenticated From: addresses would be first on my long list) the chances of replacing email as we know it is slim to none. And wasn't that Slim climbing into his caddy?

Re:the concept of exchange

[chris_mahan]

Ok, you've got a point. For Email.

But the exchange server is far from just email. It becomes a single point of failure for a bunch of stuff. Plus is expensive as just a mail server.

Re:the concept of exchange

[chris_mahan]

Bad setup: Granted.

Smaller exchange servers: We're looking at that, but the reality is that we have one mail admin (no me thank god) who is also our network and router guru (and PDC admin, and server installer). He also likes to have his weekends. So one server is still a good idea. Plus, the compaq servers with tapes and RAID5 aren't cheap. (plus, someone has to feed the tapes at the locations)

No DMZ.
Ultimately we want to allow zero incoming ports.

the user issue: exactly. We have to make things easy for the users. If things are easy for them, they are more efficient, the company makes more money, and we get paid more (back to the old business model)

If it is so standard compliant, then why is it a total beast to get other systems working with it?

Am I suggesting we ditch email? Well, it would be nice. It won't happen until we have something better, but something better will happen, and then it will happen inexorably. Who uses GOPHER anymore?

Re:the concept of exchange

[TheCabal]

But the exchange server is far from just email.

That's called being "feature rich". If you're just using Exchange for email, someone probably didn't do a good job at cost/feature analysis.

It becomes a single point of failure for a bunch of stuff.

That's true for any email system. You could look into secondary MX servers.

Plus is expensive as just a mail server.

But you just said it far from just email! Seriously, if all you're doing is sending email back and forth, someone didn't do their homework. We use Exchange, and we use a lot of the features it has. I've proposed getting rid of it in favor of using Postfix, but the boss and the bosses above him like the Calendering and Scheduling features. Odd that a Windows admin would propose a Linux solution, but that's just the way I am.

Re:the concept of exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot.

Having servers at each physical location is old old news with postfix, qmail or sendmail. Mapping user@toplevel.com to user@site.toplevel.com, then having an IMAP & SMTP server for each site isn't rocket science, sparky.

When M$ finally does something useful, you can bet it's a feature they're copying from someone else.

what about courier-mta?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has calendar features, imap, maildir support
LDAP-auth support etc.

Not having dealt w/ Exchange I can't say how it competes on buzzword
bullet points but from a distance it looks like it would
tackle most of the core functionality.

should be asked weekly

[Anonymous Coward]

to those who complain that this is kind of a repost, I say, get over it.

this question should be asked once a week, every week until there is a viable replacement. currently there is an interesting Mozilla calendar project, but nothing seems to be making headway on the server.

it is _the_ stumbling block to linux on the desktop in corps, everything else is small change. so yeah, this should be hot topic #1 every week util we nail this.

Someone to SUE???

[Anonymous Coward]

How did YOUR last lawsuit against Microsoft go? What a load of bullshit.

The fucking DOJ can't even get it done, what makes any CEO think they have any kind of leverage?

"Oh, if Exchange breaks, we can sue MS. They're liable. And monkeys often fly out of my butt."

The problem with engineers scratching an itch

[musicmaker]

Is that most engineers like me don't like outlook, or any other integrated calendaring tools. We still use pine, or mutt or something.

There is no personal motivation to build such a product. The people who really have a motiviation are companies like RedHat who would benefit from the support contracts they could sell as a result of having this software in their suite.

Big Companies like support, and RedHat is selling. It doesn't help however if the product physicaly isn't out there.

Someone complained about there being no 'Standard' for a calendaring protocol. Why don't you draw up and RFC? It's not that hard (Sure beats the guy who wrote up a joke RFC for TCP/IP over XML or TCP/IP over carrier pigeon). If someone would pay my salary, I would start work on an exchange replacement tomorrow, open protocol or not. It's sad that Open Source or any UNIX software on the desktop falls at the last hurdle: Microsoft Office and affiliated products. Open Office is pretty good, but it still looks like crap on the standard RedHat distro, and like it or not, most corporates are buying RedHat.

I purchased Applixware years ago, and it was great! I did bunches of stuff in it. But it's not a Visio/Outlook replacement.

My Top Three reasons it's not happening:

No Integrated Calendaring/Email
No Fonts
No Visio

I can get by with open office for Excel replacement, and Word replacement, but I'm not a power user of those products to start with. I'd rather write a perl script to process data than a Word Macro or VB Script.

Perhaps someone (RedHat/Madrake/SuSe) should get out there and find out what people really want.

Of course this is assuming that they are targeting the windows market (which RedHat for one isn't).

Re:The problem with engineers scratching an itch

[nelsonal]

What exactly does visio do that is so special, I won a copy at a Microsoft presentation about a year ago, and haven't seen any use for it. Our PHB uses it to layout prospective buildings, guy really should have been an architect. However, I don't see how its better than other CAD software, what am I missing?

Re:The problem with engineers scratching an itch

[wilhelm]

No Fonts

X does support pretty much all the commonly-available font file formats, but it's a bitch to install new ones. I was talking about this the other week with a friend of mine; he's a Linux user, but not terribly technical, and I was trying to find an easy way to describe how to install fonts to him. I just couldn't do it without writing half a book about it. And there is no decent, simple font installer for X. Mac has one, Windows has one, but any X-based environment hasn't quite gotten to that one yet. And forget about trying to explain XLFD; that's even a little hard for somebody who does understand it.

Re:The problem with engineers scratching an itch

[afidel]

Why does everyone keep pushing the myth that there is no calandering standard. There is, it is called iCalandar, it has an associated RFC and it is the way that the calandering information gets passed between OutlookXP or Outlook2000 (sort of the Outlook2k implementation predates the RFC so it is kind of borked) and Exchange2k server. It is also supported by Netscape's(now Sun's) iPlanet server and some others. Evolution uses it for peer to peer calandering and I believe for calandering with Exchange2k servers (this is part of what connector is about).

QMail is much better.

[BoomerSooner]

And if you actually try to see what's available (qmail) you can find anything you're looking for.

I love qmail + courier + horde + imp + ...

Re:QMail is much better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything? Where's the iCal server?

Re:QMail is much better.

[TurdFurgeson]

"I love qmail + courier + horde + imp + ... "

y'all need to come up with some better names for your software. I can only guess what one of those apps does...

Every other week this subject is posted

[Anonymous Coward]

To the front page no less.

How about we all agree to notify everybody
on the front page when a product that 100%
can replace all calendering, scheduling,
contacts, search functionality, list managment,
web access, pda sync, windows integration is
on the market ok?

Until then, please do not post this topic every
freakin' week asking about it.

How to defeat Exchange

[haplo21112]

If we truely want to provide an alterative to Exchange as someone who works in an entirely exchange based environment, here is my analysis of what my PHB's would have to see.

Server Side:
1. The replacement must support Outlook as a client, people actually like Outlook as an integrated client.
2. The Replacement must work with the Sendto functions of Microsoft Office
3. The Replacement must be able to scale to 10's of thousands of users, in geographically diverse locations.
4. Must Support Multipule languages
5. Must be easily scannable for Virus protection, and must be able to deny delivery of messages that fit certain criteria
6. Easy rules based scripting of mail events stored on the server as part of the user's mail box.
7. Must support enterprise calendaring/scheduling.
8. Must inter-operate with Exchange during migration
9. Must support server and OS of choice at the company(You know what that means)
10. Must offer web mail capabilities equal too or better than OWA(this includes the ability to secure the web mail client via SecureID)
11. Must support massive data stores, on the order of 500GB-1TB(yes exchange can do this)
12. Must Integrate with our directory services, like exchange 2000 integrates with AD.
13 In short it has to do all the things that exchange can do, and more, and better.
Client Side:
1. Must have a client which supports all the functions of the server side. In short its gotta work like Outlook.
2. Must Support OS, and hardware of choice.
3. Easy Rules based scripting interface to server and client side rules(Think Outlook rules wizard)
4. Must be dead simple for users to use, users don't learn they want everything to work just like it always has, even if you give them a new application to do it. When we moved from Banyan Beyond Mail to Outlook when we went from a banyan network to an NT one it was a nightmare for all of the administrative assistants as their workflow was massively changed.

So there you have it....rebuild exchange as an OSS roject and get back to us...this is not meant as Troll, this is a real world example of how a corporation is going to look at such a thing.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[SuiteSisterMary]

Exchange is like any other piece of server software; if you implement it properly, it's going to work fine for you. If you just shovel it onto a computer, you're going to get exactly what you deserve.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know there is only one company that was able to develop an exchange replacement that meets all your requirements. It's Montreal based Steltor with their Outlook Connector. They were recently acquired by Oracle and Oracle is going after Exchange with the Steltor technology packaged into their "Collaboration Suite".

I agree that coporation will have very high expectations before they consider switching. I also think that it's really difficult to do and not really cool/fun work which would explain why there are not open source projects doing it.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[Sc00ter]

Answer to some of your questions:

Server Side:
1. The replacement must support Outlook as a client, people actually like Outlook as an integrated client.

With email they can use imap. that's what I do, most users won't know the difference. And on the linux side just use Evolution.

2. The Replacement must work with the Sendto functions of Microsoft Office

My sendto works fine with my imap setup.

5. Must be easily scannable for Virus protection, and must be able to deny delivery of messages that fit certain criteria

That's easy to do with procmail or some other linux email scanning software

6. Easy rules based scripting of mail events stored on the server as part of the user's mail box.

again, procmail would work perfect for this. I use it now for my mailling lists and spam sorting

7. Must support enterprise calendaring/scheduling.

This is the biggest problem I see. THIS is what management types like, nice shared, pretty, easy to use calendars and scheduling.. Once this is able to work, IN outlook, then there will be something..

12. Must Integrate with our directory services, like exchange 2000 integrates with AD.

LDAP works with outlook for address books, probably works with other stuff.

In short, a lot of the stuff does work, like email, sorting, directory services.. the big problems are getting it easy to use, and the scheduling stuff..

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[beme]

A couple of those items should really only matter to pretty big corporations. As long as the message/calendar store is in an open format, why does the alternative to Exchange need to be one project? I say there should be an agreed-upon standard for storing data, and then just let projects develop around that. The needs of the 'enterprise' system are going to be different than those of a 20-50 employee small business.

I always hear about point #4 under the client side. "It's gotta work just like the Microsoft tool or users won't like it." Funny thing is, it seems that there are/were piles of companies willing to make users learn a new system when they switched to Microsoft tools. What's so special about Microsoft that it's ok to make users learn something new when you switch to it, but not when you switch away from it? If something better comes along, why shouldn't the users be forced to learn it? After all, the goal is to drive the business forward, not keep people happy with their email client. People adapt. If it makes good business sense to make a switch, then make a switch. There'll be small hiccup in productivity as people learn new systems, but that's a short-term issue.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[blazerw11]

Server Side:
1. The replacement must support Outlook as a client, people actually like Outlook as an integrated client.
ClientSide:
1. Must have a client which supports all the functions of the server side. In short its gotta work like Outlook.

In other words, the client MUST BE OUTLOOK.

...continuing...
2. Must Support OS, and hardware of choice.

In other words, the client CAN NOT BE OUTLOOK.

Interesting...

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[MouseR]

Disclaimer: I'm an employee of Steltor/Oracle.

While this is by no means an open source solution, Steltor (recently acquired by Oracle) has a product that takes care of these points in your post; server side: 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13; client side: 1, 2, 4.

And then some.

"Oracle CorporateTime" supports more OSes than any other solutions out there, is entirely open standards -based (I'll name iCal among dozens of others, since it's been mentioned), and has dev tools so you can create customized solutions.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[qnonsense]

Must Support OS, and hardware of choice

• He was saying that the server must run on the hardware/OS of choice, and that Outlook must be
• one of the possible clients.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[sphealey]

While this is by no means an open source solution, Steltor (recently acquired by Oracle) has a product that takes care of these points in your post;

Oracle makes some great products, and when something must work, you cough up the $$$ and obtain them. But one of the major problems with Exchange is the cost of all the necessary licenses. I have a hard time believing an Oracle equivalent will cost less (see 9i AS), and I don't see much difference between putting the money in Bill's pocket or Larry's pocket - sorry.

sPh

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[belloc]

HP Openmail (now Samsung Contact) does ALL of this. Here's a play-by-play:

Server Side: 1. The replacement must support Outlook as a client, people actually like Outlook as an integrated client.

Integrates with Outlook 2000 via Openmail MAPI drivers. Check.

2. The Replacement must work with the Sendto functions of Microsoft Office.

This works fine. Check.

3. The Replacement must be able to scale to 10's of thousands of users, in geographically diverse locations.

Openmail has been reliably scaled this high and higher. Check.

4. Must Support Multipule languages.

Yes. Openmail is used all over the world. Check.

5. Must be easily scannable for Virus protection, and must be able to deny delivery of messages that fit certain criteria.

Integrates with Trend Micro's product for virus scanning. Check.

6. Easy rules based scripting of mail events stored on the server as part of the user's mail box.

Web-based Personal Administration Wizard (PAW). Rules stored on the server. Check.

7. Must support enterprise calendaring / scheduling.

Works great with Outlook 2000. Check.

8. Must inter-operate with Exchange during migration

HP's Exchange Connector does exactly this. Check.

9. Must support server and OS of choice at the company(You know what that means)

Runs on just about anything except Windows Servers. Linux, HP/UX, AIX, etc.

10. Must offer web mail capabilities equal too or better than OWA(this includes the ability to secure the web mail client via SecureID)

Comes with Webmail. Alternatively (I do this), set up IMP or TWIG or some other free webmail package and hit the IMAP server (included) with it. Check.

Caveat: what I have in place is for mail only. I don't need/have a web-accessible calendaring solution, though I believe you can use a Steltor product (OpenTime?) for that. Someone will post about it.

11. Must support massive data stores, on the order of 500GB-1TB(yes exchange can do this)

Yes. Volume spanning is supported. Volumes can live *anywhere*, across multiple servers in multiple locations. Check.

12. Must Integrate with our directory services, like exchange 2000 integrates with AD.

It integrates with its own internal and configurable LDAP server the way Exchange2000 integrates with AD. Check.

13 In short it has to do all the things that exchange can do, and more, and better.

Well, that's for you to decide. One thing it doesn't do, is make you feel all icky inside for supporing MS. ;) Check.

Client Side: 1. Must have a client which supports all the functions of the server side. In short its gotta work like Outlook.

It works exactly like Outlook, because it supports Outlook 2000 as a client. It also offers its own client if you prefer. Check.

2. Must Support OS, and hardware of choice.

Sort of. If you want to use Outlook, you use Windows (doesn't support Mac Outlook/Entourage). For mail, they have Unix GUI clients, Mac GUI clients, or you can just use your own POP/IMAP client. Again, that's mail only. If you want calendaring, you use Outlook 2000 on Windows. Check.

3. Easy Rules based scripting interface to server and client side rules(Think Outlook rules wizard)

See above. PAW. Check.

4. Must be dead simple for users to use, users don't learn they want everything to work just like it always has, even if you give them a new application to do it.

It's as simple as Outlook. Since you already use it, this isn't a problem. Check.

Summary: If you want the Exchange monkey off your back, look into Samsung Contact (as the product is now called). I've had nothing but fabulous success with the HP version of the product, and HP support lasts until 2006, so I'm not going to switch to Samsung for a while yet. I can't vouch for Samsung as a company, but the product itself is very nice.

Belloc.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[DigitalCH]

The answer to your question is fairly simple. Microsoft tools are the standard. So moving to them from nonstandard tools is considered "acceptable pain".

Moving away from the accepted standard is not a good enough reason for the user to deal with the pain of a switch.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

If your company defines productivity as ``running Microsoft products'', then you had better stick to Exchange. On the other hand, if productivity (for this context) is defined along the lines of: ``Make email easily available. Make scheduling software work with email, and allow bosses to add to underling's calendars.'', then there is a chance that some other than Exchange program will be better.

I think that you have allowed Microsoft to write the spec's for your software purchases. Unsurprisingly, they have written the spec's to maximize THEIR bottom line, rather than yours.

As for the ``No-one wants to learn anything new'' argument, tough. If the job was fun, they'd get someone to do it free, and you'd be on welfare. That's true for everyone in IT, the filing clerks, the guys on the production floor and for the big cheese too. When the time comes to spend money on a system, if everyone has to adapt to something new to keep costs down, well, that's why they pay you the big bucks.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[haplo21112]

Well in a short answer PSS....that M$ support for the hard core Corp, if we say its broke anytime day or night these guess don't get to go to bed until they find out why its broke, have an explaination of it, and a course of action for the corection of it, if they can't do those things remotely an engineer who lives and breathes the software is no the next plain....there are actually few other corporations that will do that....thats what makes them special...

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[haplo21112]

Actually what I mean is it must work like outlook and on whatever the corporation decideds the platform will be...at this point more than likely 2000/XP...SO Client must be Outlook!(or very outlook like)...Honestly if there were a outlook alike that worked on 99% or OSes(here being windows, solaris, and Linux) and it had a server that was very exchange like, it would be compelling...

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[mpe]

I always hear about point #4 under the client side. "It's gotta work just like the Microsoft tool or users won't like it."

It's because Microsoft tends to be judged as some kind of yardstick, even when it makes little sense to do so.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[jhml]

Steltor's calendar web interface will not work with Mozilla as the browser.

Otherwise it is an excellent product....but we'll reject it if we have to use oracle's mail server as a result of the merger.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[Stinking Pig]

Have you used Ximian Evolution lately? It's so much like Outlook it's vaguely disconcerting to run it on a Linux box.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

CGPro does all of this. From Stalker, and it is freakin' cheap.

CommuniGate Pro. I think it is mostly used by big ISPs, but it would work awfully well for the Enterprise considering how fast the thing is.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[Derek S]

1. I think people do tend to notice the difference between native Outlook/Exchange MAPI communication and IMAP. With MAPI, messages just show up immediately. With IMAP, there's still a sense of having to synchronize with the server. The users might be hard-pressed to tell you exactly what's wrong, but they do sense that things aren't working quite as smoothly.

3. At a previous workplace, we had Sendmail piping every relayed message through a virus filter program. Easy enough to set up, but it was horribly inefficient. I think Sendmail, Inc. has implemented a real content filtering API, but I haven't had a chance to play with their commercial products.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[Dante]

I was on that bandwagon untill Oracle bought it, whe came up with a custom mail server with IMAP/exim/openldap and was planning to incorperate steltor. Now Oracle wants us to buy a whole buch of other crap to to get calendaring. *sigh* Well we still have a _realy_ old version of Netscape Calendar I guess we will stick with that.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[skirkby]

I don't think the replacement has to be exactly like Exchange in order for people to adopt it. After all, your own organization was willing to go through the pain. The benefits just have to outweigh the drawbacks.

Therefore, a proper "Exchange replacement" should solve more problems that matter, and do it in a better way, than Exchange does. Even if it's different than Exchange.

I'm pretty sure that most atomic organizations that use Exchange don't have 500GB of data, so if a potential replacement didn't have that capacity, I'm pretty sure it could still enjoy widespread adoption.

The replacement shouldn't use Exchange as a template, but should rather focus on the actual problems it should solve. If it does it better, it will be used, even if it's painful to do so.

--sk!

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[afidel]

Cisco does this too. One of the guys I work with was called at home by his boss at 2am to ask if he had his passport. He said yes and was on a plane headed for Norway 4 hours later.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[MouseR]

WE actually did Netscape Calendar. The company was then called Corporate Software and Technologies.

We had spun off another company, Lexacom, because of contractual restrictions with Netscape.

When the Netscape contract ended, and we opted not to renew, we merged the two companies together and called the fused company Steltor. Then oracle bought us.

The software had evolved a lot since the NS Calendar days.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[MouseR]

I have a hard time believing an Oracle equivalent will cost less (see 9i AS)

Given the XP Server + Exchange renewal fees, Oracle Calendar already costs less.

One thing you could say about Larry. Wether you like him or not, HE embraces Linux.

Oracle Calendar is basically Steltor's CorporateTime solution.

Oracle Collaboration Suite is a superset of our stuff added with other components on top of 9i. I don't have info on the price structure of all that. you'd have to consult the web site for that.

One thing you could say about Oracle CorporateTime; it runs on Linux. And that makes Bill upset.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[doug363]

Just a nitpick---MAPI is a software interface between programs on the client computer, not a protocol between a client and a mail server like IMAP is. It's designed with a lot of Outlook-type features in mind, but can't do everything that Outlook or Exchange can do. I'm not sure if the Exchange protocol has any specific name/abbreviation.

MAPI is used for implementing "Send to..." items in applications and for writing front-end email programs that don't want to implement the actual back-end part of talking to the server.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[Dante]

Yea I know you might be suprised about how much I do know. I just dont want to buy software I don't need.

PS The sales department is realy confused about exactly what to do: email me if you have any sugestions.. Also how goes openlodap support?

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[passthecrackpipe]

Well, I think this not too hard....

Server Side:
1. The replacement must support Outlook as a client, people actually like Outlook as an integrated client.
No problem - Outlook supports IMAP.

2. The Replacement must work with the Sendto functions of Microsoft Office
Well, this is a client-side function, handled by Outlook, so doesn't belong in your server list. If you will be using Outlook (or a 100% clone), this will not be an issue.

3. The Replacement must be able to scale to 10's of thousands of users, in geographically diverse locations.
Most serious open source IMAP servers (Courier is nice, as is Cyrus) have no issue with this. Combined with Postfix, MySQL and OpenLDAP, you have a killer core.

4. Must Support Multipule languages
What? A server? Support languages? Pass the crackpipe!! A mail server should *always* be language neutral.

5. Must be easily scannable for Virus protection, and must be able to deny delivery of messages that fit certain criteria.
The core can do this.

6. Easy rules based scripting of mail events stored on the server as part of the user's mail box.
Requires some messing around (and some laxing of security principles - that is how MSExchange pulls it off) but can be done.

7. Must support enterprise calendaring/scheduling.
This is the tricky bit. Do we support standards? Not? Also, if Outlook must be the client, you need to wire-trace the protocol. Not too hard, since Outlook message events are basically specially formatted SMTP messages. (Ximian pulled it off)

8. Must inter-operate with Exchange during migration
No problem - MSX speaks LDAP, IMAP and SMTP. Can even run in parallel for a good amount of time (a requirement often overlooked).

9. Must support server and OS of choice at the company(You know what that means)
No, I don't know what this means. As most Open Source software is, in good engineering fashion, not too hard to port, this shouldn't be an issue.

10. Must offer web mail capabilities equal too or better than OWA(this includes the ability to secure the web mail client via SecureID)
Yeah - I'm using one of the many webmail clients that leave OWA eating dust right now. It's called IMP, and it rocks. Is the requirement for SecureID all you need, cuz this baby can do lots more. http://www.horde.org

11. Must support massive data stores, on the order of 500GB-1TB(yes exchange can do this)
Yes - Exchange can theoretically do this - finally, after trying for almost 5 years. The core mentioned above places no limits on the size of the underlying datastore. It is irrelevant.

12. Must Integrate with our directory services, like exchange 2000 integrates with AD.
Yup - see under OpenLDAP

13 In short it has to do all the things that exchange can do, and more, and better.
You forgot cheaper - this is cheaper, as well as better, more robust, easier to manage, and requires less nursing. The most requested feature from MSExchange admins to MS is faster reboots of the servers. Reboots? I just smile.

Client Side:
1. Must have a client which supports all the functions of the server side. In short its gotta work like Outlook.
Well, you wanted Outlook, no?

2. Must Support OS, and hardware of choice.
Well, you wanted Outlook, no?

3. Easy Rules based scripting interface to server and client side rules(Think Outlook rules wizard)
Well, you wanted Outlook, no?

4. Must be dead simple for users to use, users don't learn they want everything to work just like it always has, even if you give them a new application to do it.

Well, you wanted Outlook, no?

Even so - there are alternatives to Outlook that work nicely. If you are willing to spend the time on the change management (I know - it requires soft skills and all, and you have to deal with users, but once you try it, you find it is not too hard.) you will see that users are not too hard to persuade to change. You do spend time on change management, no?

Cheers.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[passthecrackpipe]

"Actually what I mean is it must work like outlook and on whatever the corporation decideds the platform will be...at this point more than likely 2000/XP"

Huh? that is not so sure at all. Get out a bit. Look around a bit. Times are changing.

Re:How to defeat Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

i would modify this to include a phasic approach. phase I is just adding calendaring to my favorite postfix+uwimap+twig combo. that would take a year or so to get right, mimicing exchange on all scheduling events. phase II and III would develop later.

Phase I, support small companies who can suffer the pain of switching, and whose admins are willing guinea pigs for testing functionality:

Server Side:

1. The replacement must support Outlook as a client, people actually like Outlook as an integrated client.

5. Must be easily scannable for Virus protection, and must be able to deny delivery of messages that fit certain criteria
6. Easy rules based scripting of mail events stored on the server as part of the user's mail box.
7. Must support enterprise calendaring/scheduling.

I would add:

-- simple web interface, like twig's.

Client Side:
1. Must have a client which supports all the functions of the server side. In short its gotta work like Outlook.

3. Easy Rules based scripting interface to server and client side rules(Think Outlook rules wizard)
4. Must be dead simple for users to use, users don't learn they want everything to work just like it always has, even if you give them a new application to do it.

i would add:

-- tunnell everything over ssh/ssl

Phase II, support medium sized companies:

Server Side:

2. The Replacement must work with the Sendto functions of Microsoft Office
10. Must offer web mail capabilities equal too or better than OWA(this includes the ability to secure the web mail client via SecureID)

Client Side:

2. Must Support OS, and hardware of choice.

Phase III, support fortune 500 enterprises:

Server Side:

3. The Replacement must be able to scale to 10's of thousands of users, in geographically diverse locations.
4. Must Support Multipule languages

8. Must inter-operate with Exchange during migration
9. Must support server and OS of choice at the company(You know what that means)
12. Must Integrate with our directory services, like exchange 2000 integrates with AD.
11. Must support massive data stores, on the order of 500GB-1TB(yes exchange can do this)

open source in business land

[Shaleh]

I was approached by Bruce Perens at LWE and he stated that Debian needed better support for Open Office. I looked at him and told him as soon as one of us had a reason to care we would.

This is the fundamental problem with Open Source in business land -- you need a coder who has the time to code and actually cares about making it work. I see lots of sysadmin types complain about Exchange but no one seems to hate it enough to sit down and work on something better. Most of the businesses approaching Mandrake, RH, etc are looking to dump the Microsoft solutions entirely so Exchange is not a big deal there. Or they are only looking for server -> server solutions and not desktops.

Last but not least you have the problem that Exchange is 100% proprietary. Look at all of the "fun" Samba has had trying to get smb interoperability right. I also bet Microsoft would be VERY apt to sue a company that did this into the ground. Might as well paint a target on your head.

As with every other itch you just need to find someone to scratch it. You mentioned "clients", why not funnel some of that contracting cash to coders willing to work on the project.

Re:open source in business land

[IamTheRealMike]

Last but not least you have the problem that Exchange is 100% proprietary. Look at all of the "fun" Samba has had trying to get smb interoperability right. I also bet Microsoft would be VERY apt to sue a company that did this into the ground. Might as well paint a target on your head.

No, really, Microsoft have a good track record here.

• SAMBA - I don't know if they've been threatened or not, but I've never heard anything about it.
• NTFS - not a squeak
• Office file formats - this was even done by a corp (Sun) and as such are sueable. Nothing
• Wine - well, if we can clone the whole of the Windows APIs and have MS not do a thing, I think we don't have to worry about Exchange

There's a good reason for this as well. Microsoft don't sue projects when they know they have no grounding for it. None of these things could be protected in court, as they are simply MS implementations of widely available and well known technologies. Most of them are just formats and interfaces.

Like the other poster said, if you want a lawsuit happy company, look at Apple. You can't even make a Mozilla skin that looks like OSX without getting letters from their lawyers, despite the fact that it was established in court a long time ago that you can't protect "look and feel".

For all their faults, abuse of the legal system through faulty lawsuits is not high on the list.

Other Groupware

[yancey]

You could swap Exchange for GroupWise, which does essentially the same things and is not bound to the evil empire. I don't know if Exchange provides a web interface, but GroupWise provides a very nice one. GroupWise can even run on unix systems. No, you don't need to run a Novell server for GroupWise.

Re:Other Groupware

[duplicate-nickname]

No, please don't!

I've administered Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2000. Now I'm working on a GroupWise 6 system....it has got to be the biggest kludge out there.

Once again, Novell had a great idea but their execute sucks. They really need to scrap the antiquated code and rebuild it from scratch (client included).

Some tell Novell it's no longer 1996 please.

Re:Other Groupware

[TheCabal]

I don't know if Exchange provides a web interface, but GroupWise provides a very nice one

Yes, Exchange provides OWA- Outlook Web Access, which is a very usable web interface.

Re:Other Groupware

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll second this statement. I administer a 20 server GroupWise 6.x system. The GroupWise design is a terrible kludge, and I wouldnt recommend it to anyone...

- They dont have STABLE standards support (IMAP, POP3, iCal, etc...).
- They still havent integrated GW's user/password database into Novell's famed eDirectory/NDS database.
- Very little administrative control over the mailboxes.
- Poor backup solution (you MUST shutdown the email system to get a reliable backup). No, the GWTSA's dont cut it (based on my personal experiences, and statements from senior techs at Novell)...
- Novell has POOR support for automated administration and report generation out of GroupWise - GWCheck just does not cut it...

These things make GroupWise very difficult to administer in an enterprise enviroment...

Re:Other Groupware

[shyster]

You could swap Exchange for GroupWise, which does essentially the same things and is not bound to the evil empire. I don't know if Exchange provides a web interface, but GroupWise provides a very nice one. GroupWise can even run on unix systems. No, you don't need to run a Novell server for GroupWise.

Groupwise sucks. The server side sucks, the client side sucks even worse than Lotus Notes. Groupwise 6 has a nice feature list, but is kludged together, a bear to work with, and as unstable as MS Windows ME...and the client still sucks. The Groupwise plugin for MS Outlook makes Outlook suck. Novell seems to be digging its own grave, and it's questionable how long they will be around in their current incarnation...Netware and Groupwise both show signs of being on the way out. AFAIK, Groupwise is not OSS either...

Re:Other Groupware

[Latent IT]

- They dont have STABLE standards support (IMAP, POP3, iCal, etc...)

I use IMAP and POP3 through GWIA for 700+ users, off one box. It's been up 60 days, and that's because we moved offices two months ago.

- They still havent integrated GW's user/password database into Novell's famed eDirectory/NDS database.

Maybe not, but I manage them using the same utility. Nobody has anything better, really. And because of the way the post office works, you have to communicate with a specific server agent, not just any server in the tree, so intergrating passwords wouldn't really help any, unless you have no tape backups. ;p

- Very little administrative control over the mailboxes.

What complete bullshit. In NWAdmin, I can control every option of the GroupWise client, I can set it remotely, and I can grey out the option so the user can't change it. What the can't you do? You want to add rules or specific proxy access, just go in to their box with the client, and do it.

- Poor backup solution (you MUST shutdown the email system to get a reliable backup). No, the GWTSA's dont cut it (based on my personal experiences, and statements from senior techs at Novell)...

Not based on my experience with Backup Exec 9.0. Even if you don't use the GWTSA's, you just make everyone access the post office over IP, instead of file access, and backup the directory. The files locked by the agent can be rebuilt from the files that will never be locked.

- Novell has POOR support for automated administration and report generation out of GroupWise - GWCheck just does not cut it...

Hmmmm... I've never cared about getting a report, really. Besides, GWCheck is for repairing the system, not reporting. But since I don't know what kind of reports you'd like, I'll leave this one alone.

Groupwise is *great*. No, I don't work for Novell. Yes, I do administer a 2000 user enterprise system that runs Groupwise 5.5. We don't even need a dedicated e-mail guy, even for all 2000 users. And it doesn't even take up a big chunk of my time. I have 15 domains, 22 post offices, two internet gateway agents, and WebAccess set up. No issues, anywhere.

*ever*

I think you're doing something wrong.

Re:Other Groupware

[Latent IT]

You're just pissy because the server side agent doesn't have a GUI. ;p

Seriously, I don't have *any* of these problems. If you really have such huge problems, have you tried asking anyone for help? Ever?

Re:Other Groupware

[R3]

My company is currently in the process of migrating from GroupWise 6 to Exchange 2000, after being a loyal GroupWise shop since the WordPerfect Office 3.x days.
The reason?
The client. Server side of things has been very stable (save for occasional GWIA ABENDs), but the client is simply atrocious. Design-wise is is stuck in the mid-90's: any custom coding for it has to be done in either Delphi or Formativ (sort of like VBA for GroupWise) and even then it doesn't work all that well, integration with other products is minimal, and on top of everything it crashes at least a couple of times a day no matter what we do with it (patch it, unpatch it, involve Novell to fix it, doesn't matter). Users hate it, since 90% of them either used or currently use some form of Outlook at home or had it on their previous job, so they find GroupWise client rather counter-intuitive.
The biggest problem is that Novell built the client on top of Windows' MAPI and got stuck with it.
(Microsoft kept rewriting Windows MAPI until they ultimately scrapped it alltogether for "something better")
At one point Novell tried to make a GroupWise connector for Outlook client, which worked so-so with Outlook 97, then Microsoft tweaked the MAPI again and broke this connector beyond repair.
Tech support for the product outside of Novell is non-existent, and the remaining techs and consultants are busily converting to Exchange, Notes, in fact ANYTHING BUT GroupWise.
This situation put a tremendous burden on our users (and helpdesk support), so the company finally gave up and went Microsoft full-on.

Re:Other Groupware

[shyster]

You're just pissy because the server side agent doesn't have a GUI. ;p Seriously, I don't have *any* of these problems. If you really have such huge problems, have you tried asking anyone for help? Ever?

Well, you HAVE to have the UI problems on the client side, I'd think. As for the server side, I don't admin it...though I can certainly deal without a GUI. But, we have 3 CNE's on staff, so they get to play with Groupwise issues day in and day out.

We're a consultant shop, and of the 3 NW6/Groupwise 6 networks we've put up, every one of them has had multiple, ongoing, continuing problems. And yes, Novell has been called in on all 3. We've stopped recommending GW to clients (both because of stability issues and Novell's questionable longevity in the market) as a groupware solution.

OTOH, of the 20 or so Exchange 2000 sites we maintain, I can only think of 3 major issues. One was no more than a misconfiguration causing some bounced mail, one was because the customer didn't stay on top of their backups, and one is because the client refuses to get more disk space or upgrade their server....Similarly, our handful of Lotus Domino sites simply work with little maintenance...not that I'd recommend Domino to anyone who didn't plan on using it's extensive database features.

As an aside, it always seems that when something made by Novell breaks, it requires Novell Support much more often than a MS solution does...Of the 20 or so calls made to vendor support services this year, I think 15 or so have been to Novell, and none to MS (the remainder would be to Veritas, CA, etc.)

Re:Other Groupware

[Anonymous Coward]

Shyster..sounds like you and your staff are just plain stupid. I put up NW6/GW6 networks daily and have 2 people that work 1/2 time administering 15-20 networks at any given time...not once have I had any significant problems.
However...I have 5 exchange shops and have 10 people administering those full time...these servers have to be rebooted nightly due to serious memory leaks...these are being moved to Novell's NetMail as I write this...

Re:Other Groupware

[Anonymous Coward]

- I use IMAP and POP3 through GWIA for 700+ users, off one box. It's been up 60 days, and that's because we moved offices two months ago.

Well, good for you. Novell discontinued support for GW 5.5 on the 1st of this month. Clearly you are able to run discontinued software, and clearly I'm not... I didn't have these problems when I ran GW5.5, in-fact IMAP and POP3 support was stable. Well I'm on GW6sp2/NW51sp5, and it's not stable - plain and simple... Neither in my production nor development environments.

- Maybe not, but I manage them using the same utility. Nobody has anything better, really. And because of the way the post office works, you have to communicate with a specific server agent, not just any server in the tree, so integrating passwords wouldn't really help any, unless you have no tape backups. ;p

What a bullshit answer. With GW's separate username/password database, that makes for two authentication databases that I must maintain (top-down rebuilds of the entire fscking database, etc...) . For Novell to sell their eDirectory product as the be-all to end-all, their failure to integrate their two flagship products just shows where Novell is headed... If MS can integrate Exchange with ActiveDirectory, why cant Novell integrate GW with NDS - Novell's only been trying for, what, about 5 years now...

And, yes there is something better out there. I've tested multiple S/POP3 and S/IMAP daemons on the Linux platform that can authenticate to LDAP databases just as easily as /etc/shadow, among other back-ends... What I haven't yet found is a good iCal server, other than that, I've found everything else I need to replace GroupWise with a stable cross-platform backend...

- What complete bullshit. In NWAdmin, I can control every option of the GroupWise client, I can set it remotely, and I can grey out the option so the user can't change it. What the can't you do? You want to add rules or specific proxy access, just go in to their box with the client, and do it.

NWAdmin, I see you haven't been cursed with ConsoleONE yet (ConsoleONE is Novell's replacement for its aging NWAdmin structure). You lucky sap! Wait until you see the cruft ConsoleONE has to offer - I ended up having to dedicate one PC to Console One, and another to NWAdmin and everything else I run...

Back to controlling the mailbox though; No you cant control every aspect of the mailbox with NWAdmin or ConsoleONE (you've never been able to). You get control over some parts, but then not others... It's inconsistent, and quick frankly, I've resorted to tweaking the Win32 registry to get to the options I need to change...

- Not based on my experience with Backup Exec 9.0. Even if you don't use the GWTSA's, you just make everyone access the post office over IP, instead of file access, and backup the directory. The files locked by the agent can be rebuilt from the files that will never be locked.

You're trying to backup a live mailbox! You'll love what GW6 has in store for you (no it's not yet fixed in GW6sp2). I have a 60 user PO, with aprox 100MB in each users mailbox, and the PO currently takes about 32GB (yes, that's 32GB) of disk space - you do that math (hint: it should only consume about 6GB...)... No, we don't use document libraries, and no none of the GWChecks fix it - no the ones run by me, Novell, or the consultant we brought in to try to fix it... Of-course I inherited this problem from a previous administrator, which means I stopped backing up a live system, and started shutting down the entire mail system to reliably back it up...

- Hmmmm... I've never cared about getting a report, really. Besides, GWCheck is for repairing the system, not reporting. But since I don't know what kind of reports you'd like, I'll leave this one alone.

No, GWCheck is also for reporting on the system as well. It's the only window into what's in the encrypted GroupWise message store - short of changing my users passwords and logging in as them... For example; I need to know things such as how many .tiff, .jpeg, .mp3 attachments there are, reports like this are things I can easily get out of other messaging systems...

- Groupwise is *great*. No, I don't work for Novell. Yes, I do administer a 2000 user enterprise system that runs Groupwise 5.5. We don't even need a dedicated e-mail guy, even for all 2000 users. And it doesn't even take up a big chunk of my time. I have 15 domains, 22 post offices, two internet gateway agents, and WebAccess set up. No issues, anywhere.

Well, that's your opinion, and I'll respect that, but I'll also consider the opinions of my peers that I regularly meet with regarding computer and networking issues. Most of the members in my groups are Novell and Unix fans (zealots in some cases), and nobody seems to be a fan of GroupWise 6...

- I think you're doing something wrong.

That's a pretty bold statement, considering I've had Novell techs and knowledgeable consultants working on the issues as well, and considering they they never got any further than I did (digging through the Support Forums, the online knowledgbase, and the best practices documents - while also pulling from my 7 years of prior experience and training with GW systems)...

GW is a dead-end solution, within no growth potential, and a messaging solution I wouldn't recommend to even my worst enemy... In-fact, my experiences with Exchange pale in comparison to the issues I've had with administering and building GroupWise systems..

What timing... Gotta run, one of my dedicated GroupWise servers just abended again (no, I'm not kidding).

Re:Other Groupware

[talon77]

I'll tell you you're full of crap. I have set up/and support quite a few groupwise, exchange, and freebsd mail systems... Well freebsd systems are quite easy and make the most sense in the majority of my client's situation's, Groupwise systems are still my favorite to setup and maintain. As to your bogus points:

---They dont have STABLE standards support (IMAP, POP3, iCal, etc...).

*Actually, yes they DO have STABLE standards support (POP3, IMAP) I use them EVERY SINGLE FREAKING DAY. In fact, I have over 20 clients right now running pop3 on groupwise, without any problems. Its just as stable as my freebsd mail servers.

---- They still havent integrated GW's user/password database into Novell's famed eDirectory/NDS database.

*You Admin them through the same utility! What do you call integration?

---Very little administrative control over the mailboxes

*Give me one example of "administrative control over the mailboxes" that exchange, sendmail, or whatever has over the mailboxes that groupwise does not.

--- Poor backup solution (you MUST shutdown the email system to get a reliable backup). No, the GWTSA's dont cut it (based on my personal experiences, and statements from senior techs at Novell)...

*Bah. Buy an open file agent for your backup software!! Even without an open file agent, I have restored groupwise post office's succesfully using both arcserve and backup exec. But yes, you should buy the open file agent to ensure you get a proper backup. (and yes, this same problem happens in exchange. With this agent, backups are extremely reliable.

--- Novell has POOR support for automated administration and report generation out of GroupWise - GWCheck just does not cut it...

* What kind of report are you looking for? I get the GWIA logs mailed to me ever night from over 20 of my groupwise clients, those logs tell me every internet mail transaction that took place. What more do you want?

I'll tell you, I've dealt with alot of email/messaging solutions. Of all of them, groupwise, and Novell products in general, are by FAR the easiest to Administrator. Novell products are the best available right now, and its a damn shame that most software packages are writing there stuff geared towered nt/2000 servers instead of Novell.

Re:Other Groupware

[Frank of Earth]

What a fucking joke. Someone defending Novell point for point. Dude, get out of the 90's. Novell is fucking dead and you're only digging your own resume ditch by working for a company that still uses it.

I worked for a backwards ass company that had some serious assholes that would NOT give up Novell. A few years after I left, they finally saw the light. Hopefully, you'll see it soon too.

Re:Other Groupware

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll tell you you're full of crap.

Well, I am feeling a little bloated today, but I didn't think much of it until now.

SNIP

*Actually, yes they DO have STABLE standards support (POP3, IMAP) I use them EVERY SINGLE FREAKING DAY. In fact, I have over 20 clients right now running pop3 on groupwise, without any problems. Its just as stable as my freebsd mail servers

In addition to the frequently broken POP3 and IMAP support, lets not forget the broken HTML formatted message support as well: in order for GroupWise to support HTML formatted messages, it requires TWO copies of the message be stored in the user's mailbox. One in MIME decoded format, and the other MIME encoded. To summarize the issue with an example: If my user gets a 10MB email, GW consumes around 22-25MB of disk space to store it (MIME-encoded messages are about 1.33 to 1.5 times the size of the unencoded message/attachments - which is the reason it's around 22-25, instead of 20). Dont give me the bullshit about how GW compresses the message. Most email attachments these days are already compressed, and you cant compress something twice and expect to gain anything more than MAYBE 1 or 2% (and thats streaching it).

I have setup many companies for either GroupWise, Exchange, or Unix based POP3/IMAP email systems as well. The most stable is the Unix based one, next comes Exchange, then comes GroupWise. Personally, I perfer Unix, and many times thats all my customers need. In the rare exception, Exchange is setup because they want calendering solutions that work. The GroupWise systems are only setup if they have an existing NetWare deployment, and are not intrested in re-investing into Unix technology.

*You Admin them through the same utility! What do you call integration?

Simple, when I can tell my users: "Your email and login passwords are the same."

Novell cannot, plain and simple. Sure I can try to use the kludgy LDAP interface on the POA (which still does not work right, even though they tried to patch a few things in GW6SP2), but my users still have to use a separate GW password for remote mode. Many of my users and clients use GW remote...

*Give me one example of "administrative control over the mailboxes" that exchange, sendmail, or whatever has over the mailboxes that groupwise does not.

I'd dig up my list, but this argument is getting tiring, here's two examples off the top of my head:
The ability to stop any user from RECEIVING emails once they've reached their mailbox size quota.
The ability to stop users from SENDING emails from a POP3 or IMAP mailbox (using the GWIA as their outbound SMTP server), once their mailbox has reached its quota.

*Bah. Buy an open file agent for your backup software!! Even without an open file agent, I have restored groupwise post office's successfully using both arcserve and backup exec. But yes, you should buy the open file agent to ensure you get a proper backup. (and yes, this same problem happens in exchange. With this agent, backups are extremely reliable.

Oh, like the OFA that comes with Arcserve's backup software? That POS crashes the server with EVERY NetWare SP release, even the latest ones....

Quite frankly, I don't know of any database vendor that recommends using a OFA to backup their database. They recommend using the tools they provide to dump the database to another medium (ie: spare disk, or even straight to tape), and Novell does not provide a tool to do this, without constantly babysitting it. I wouldn't recommend anyone backup a live DB using an OFA. My major concern: The OFA essentially takes a copy of the DB/file at that instant in time, not taking into consideration the fact that it may be "snapshotting" a file in the middle of a series of writes related to each-other, among other issues...

* What kind of report are you looking for? I get the GWIA logs mailed to me ever night from over 20 of my groupwise clients, those logs tell me every internet mail transaction that took place. What more do you want?

Well, good for you. I want logs that are summarized for me automaticly. I want logs that tell me who sent messages to who in POA to MTA to POA activity. I want the ability to run whatever report I need to run against a mailbox, and the ability to write my own reports (ie: see how many users have unread mail that is 60 days old, see how many .mp3 files are floating around, see how many users have setup proxy rights incorrectly etc...) Like what I can do with say for example the Exim SMTP daemon, and an associated IMAP daemon ... One of the core ideas that goes with enterprise systems management is automation. Well, that's very difficult to do with the kludgy tools that Novell offers with GW.

Novell's solutions are a dying breed, as a result, I rarely recommend them (unless the customer already has a significant Novell infrastructure). Novell's BorderManager product doesn't support standards that have been out for YEARS, GroupWise fails to support what are now considered basic features everywhere else, and NetWare still requires DOS to boot/run! Whenever I speak to a Novell rep about these issues, they just point at the developers and claim that internal politics are dictating what Novell does now...

Re:Other Groupware

[deviator]

Agreed -
GroupWise *is* great. No one really cheers for it because there are such a small percentage of people using it (who _understand_ why its designed the way it is) compared to Exchange and Notes. It's really a well-orchestrated collection of small, well-thought-out design choices.

GroupWise actually fits in between Exchange and Notes in terms of functionality (more capable than Exchange, but less capable than Notes) but is actually (in my experience) easier to administer than Exchange (don't have much experience administering Notes unfortunately) and more reliable than Exchange (by far).

GroupWise does some things that have no equal in the open source world; the unified client with its Universal Inbox is a major one. The concept of an "item" with a type (rather than separate notes/appointments/tasks/documents that don't get along) that can be easily changed into another type of item is lost with Exchange completely.

Other MAJOR features missing (or inferior) in Exchange include:
- FULL-TEXT server-side indexing of the ENTIRE post office database, including documents and all types of items (appointments/notes/tasks/phone messages/other third-party types of items/etc). This full-text indexing is turned on by default and is accessible in the client with one button & allows for a high degree of specificity.
- The PROXY function that allows average users give one-click access to parts of their mailbox to other users, even across post offices and domains
- Server-side rules that are ALWAYS server-side rules. (There are no client-side settings anymore; everything lives on the server. You can do local caching now for improved speed/less network traffic/offline capability & for "reliability" (like the post office ever goes down??))
- ROAMING PROFILES. A user can log into another workstation and as long as they are authenticated to NDS GroupWise will automatically load and access their mailbox PERFECTLY, without changing ANY settings on the workstation. This one really gets me. I can't understand why Microsoft makes it so fricking hard for a user to simply get up and walk over to another computer to get their email (or anything else, for that matter) without a bunch of handholding from a network administrator. YES, I am aware of the ways this can be done with Outlook but NONE are as simple as GroupWise - it does it by default! _That's_ enterprise software. (GroupWise even has algorithms in the connection code that go "looking" for the post office if it gets moved or renamed, or the address changes, or the station moves, or whatever... and it generally finds it.)
- The completely RSA-encrypted & Stac-compressed post office backend is nice. Oh, and the client-server and server-server connections have ALWAYS been encrypted. Now they use even use SSL if you want.
- The built-in transaction logging was a big deal a few years ago, but considering Exchange is still largely based on crappy JET technology, I guess it's still a big deal.
- And the fact that the database engines (agents) RUN ON NT, LINUX, AIX, SOLARIS, 2000 and NETWARE should count for something!
- oh, and the web access client in GW6 supports WAP, HDML, Compact HTML, PQA & std. HTML (with or without Java) OUT OF THE BOX. no third-party software is needed.
- Did I mention the fully-indexed document management system with database-like functionality & user-specified permissions?
- oh, and GW6 has other stuff like native load-balancing and fault-tolerance. GW was originally WordPerfect Office way before Outlook even existed, so the basic functionality of the Exchange+Outlook combo was there several years ago. Now Novell is basically quietly adding the latest features and enhancements to it without a lot of fanfare. And you don't hear about it that much because It Works. (And unfortunately, Novell doesn't have the equivelant of a Steve Jobs running the company)

GroupWise is a very capable system. I am totally underwhelmed with any of the open source solutions (or even the pieces) I've seen that try to duplicate groupware (all types). There are some great ideas out there, but none that I've seen so far come close to matching the rich set of features a package like groupwise can give you.

I will give up GroupWise when something better actually comes along. Believe me, I'm always looking (I'm not entirely happy with how Novell is handling groupwise updates & support at the moment, but considering their size compared to Microsoft they really aren't doing THAT bad of a job)... But no other product has surfaced yet that makes me want to dump GroupWise.

Re:Other Groupware

[yancey]

I don't know why you're having such problems with the GroupWise client. I run GroupWise 6.0.2 (5.5.3.1 before that) on Windows 2000 and have not had a single crash.

We did have some issues with other programs (like Netscape) replacing the MAPI DLL's, but that was completely solved once we found out about the FIXMAPI command.

Re:Other Groupware

[Latent IT]

Well, if you're actually looking for legit help, I'll give you the one piece of advice about the only major Groupwise problem I've had - don't run it on the former version of Netware. They really don't test it all that well, and it really does make a difference.

If you have instability problems with the Groupwise 6 agent, move to Netware 6. On the two Groupwise 6 domains I have, I still have no issues. They're running on Netware 6.

I had the same problem years ago - Groupwise 5.5 on Netware 4.11. It was a little painful. Upgraded the server (fastest upgrading server OS I've seen lately) and it ran fine. On the 5.1 servers with GW 5.5, I still get the vaunted Novell two year uptime. (only because I don't patch as often as I should)

Re:Other Groupware

[Anonymous Coward]

I can assure you, I am looking for legit help from many sources, and Novell claims that NW51sp5 is as-much a tested platform as NW6. With a $100,000+ investement in NetWare technology (that includes the MLA license's 25% discount), my primary employer is not willing to spend more on yet another upgrade, when the one we have SHOULD work - where it clearly doesnt.

We've already pulled the Bordermanager product off our production equipment - as the main strength behind this was the VPN technology. Well, Novell's VPN solution is STILL not IPSEC interop compliant (MS, Cisco, Nokia, etc.. are though), and the VPN technology requires such unreasonable hardware requirements (ie: 400Mhz+ processors, 128MB of ram, etc..) - we've replaced all of our Bordermanager VPN servers with FreeS/WAN equipment (which are P-120's with 32MB or ram). As a result we have not seen a single failure since (wheras Bordermanager crashed regulary, and each VPN server had to be in its own tree - as per Novell, amoung other NetWare related issues...). Novell's own sales reps have told me that Bordermanger's development has stagnated over the last three years, mostly due to internal politics.

Novell's product quality has gone downhill drasticly these last few years, and quite frankly, I'm tired of hearing the excuses I get from them. It's time to move onto something better... I rarely recommend GroupWise to anyone, based on Novell's recent history with their other flagship products, and Novell's failure to keep GroupWise up to par with the big guys...

Re:Other Groupware

[Anonymous Coward]

Point for Point:

GroupWise *is* great. No one really cheers for it because there are such a small percentage of people using it (who _understand_ why its designed the way it is) compared to Exchange and Notes. It's really a well-orchestrated collection of small, well-thought-out design choices.

Well, I've been using and administering GW for around 7 years, I'd hope by this point in time I'd "..._understand_..." GroupWise.

GroupWise does some things that have no equal in the open source world; the unified client with its Universal Inbox is a major one. The concept of an "item" with a type (rather than separate notes/appointments/tasks/documents that don't get along) that can be easily changed into another type of item is lost with Exchange completely.

What's your point, and how many times have you REALLY had to convert an email into an appointment? I really don't see the usefulness of this in almost any environment - especially when GroupWise training support is so hard to find nowadays, many of my users would just create another item, than try to figure out how to convert one to the other...

Other MAJOR features missing (or inferior) in Exchange include:
- FULL-TEXT server-side indexing of the ENTIRE post office database, including documents and all types of items (appointments/notes/tasks/phone messages/other third-party types of items/etc). This full-text indexing is turned on by default and is accessible in the client with one button & allows for a high degree of specificity.

Again I don't see how this is beneficial in a production environment. Rarely is this indexing used, and I have email clients (Mozilla for example), that index a mailbox as the data is downloaded. So who cares if it indexes the post office in the middle of the night, I don't use the index then, I use it when I'm opening/reading my email, and when I'd have access to indexes created when, for example, I download my email...

And document management: Most environments don't need this functionality. Since GroupWise still does not support the restoration of individual mailboxes, or documents without having to restore the entire post office, I sure would not consider implementing it...

- The PROXY function that allows average users give one-click access to parts of their mailbox to other users, even across post offices and domains

This is a nice feature, but in most cases overkill for what most people need. A shared folder is more than sufficient in most cases. I'm not going to consider a "major" feature, something maybe 1% of my users MIGHT use.

- Server-side rules that are ALWAYS server-side rules. (There are no client-side settings anymore; everything lives on the server. You can do local caching now for improved speed/less network traffic/offline capability & for "reliability" (like the post office ever goes down??))

GroupWise's rules still don't work right. For example: try getting a rule to handle an email based on the contents of the headers. Cant be done. Try getting GroupWise to do anything to an email without a subject line, again, cant be done...

- ROAMING PROFILES. A user can log into another workstation and as long as they are authenticated to NDS GroupWise will automatically load and access their mailbox...

I've had very few circumstances where a user moved to another PC for a long period of time, and did not need access to other applications on the old pc. Web based access to email works very well, for users who need temporary access to their mailbox from a PC that is not their primary , in addition you don't clutter the second PC with a cached copy of that user's mailbox (whereas you do with the GroupWise client).

The completely RSA-encrypted & Stac-compressed post office backend is nice. Oh, and the client-server and server-server connections have ALWAYS been encrypted. Now they use even use SSL if you want.

So, I can do the same thing with the simple to setup S/IMAP (SSL & IMAP). The fact that the backend is encrypted: I know of very few circumstances where you cannot trust the administrator who runs the email server, and where the illusion of security with the backend encryption might be beneficial (ie: the NSA and FBI come to mind). The fact of the matter is, the illusion of security granted by this backend encryption only hinders my job (it makes the data I am working with, mostly inaccessable). This backend encryption is easily defeated by taking a copy of the post office (ie: from tape for example), and building a secondary/development/testing system with it. Now I have access to this email at my leisure, from an unmonitored, non-audited environment...

- And the fact that the database engines (agents) RUN ON NT, LINUX, AIX, SOLARIS, 2000 and NETWARE should count for something!

No, GroupWise does not FULLY support all of those environments, only Windows and NetWare (fully), and Solaris and AIX (with diminishing support: the latest GW client for AIX or Solaris is GW5.2, the GW Unix agent was last updated in May of 1999, to version 5.5). Either way, it still REQUIRES a Win32 environment to administer it (ConsoleONE snapins for GroupWise don't exist on other platforms)...

, and the web access client in GW6 supports WAP, HDML, Compact HTML, PQA & std. HTML (with or without Java) OUT OF THE BOX. no third-party software is needed.

Whop dee doo. Most users will never use these wiz-bang features (HDML, Compact HTML, PQA, WAP), all they want to do is read their email. Again, I'm not going to design my messaging system around a feature that maybe 1% of my users might find usefulness out of...

- Did I mention the fully-indexed document management system with database-like functionality & user-specified permissions?

Did I mention that this is useless in an environment where the users don't know how to use it, and that GroupWise training options/materials are diminishing, not growing...

- oh, and GW6 has other stuff like native load-balancing and fault-tolerance. GW was originally WordPerfect Office way before Outlook even existed, so the basic functionality of the Exchange+Outlook combo was there several years ago. Now Novell is basically quietly adding the latest features and enhancements to it without a lot of fanfare. And you don't hear about it that much because It Works. (And unfortunately, Novell doesn't have the equivelant of a Steve Jobs running the company)

No this does not just work. Its implementation is flaky, with support just starting to reach what I would consider beta quality on GroupWise 6 with NetWare 6, with expensive hardware (SANs etc...)... Overall, consulting and support from other than Novell is also minimal.

GroupWise is a very capable system. I am totally underwhelmed with any of the open source solutions (or even the pieces) I've seen that try to duplicate groupware (all types). There are some great ideas out there, but none that I've seen so far come close to matching the rich set of features a package like groupwise can give you.

The features are poorly cobbled together, and as a collection of features, diminish the overall quality of the systems. For example, in order to support HTML formatted emails in the GroupWise client, I have to allow GroupWise to create/store TWO copies of the email in the Post Office (see my previous posting regarding a link to back this claim up).

I will give up GroupWise when something better actually comes along. Believe me, I'm always looking (I'm not entirely happy with how Novell is handling groupwise updates & support at the moment, but considering their size compared to Microsoft they really aren't doing THAT bad of a job)... But no other product has surfaced yet that makes me want to dump GroupWise.

No single product has surfaced, but many independent products put together do come very close, and are far closer to providing stable standards support then GroupWise is...

Re:Other Groupware

[Anonymous Coward]

You put up NW6/GW6 networks daily, but yet only have 15-20 to administer? Have you only been in business for a month?

Sounds like you're trying to pull the wool over someone's eyes...

Re:Other Groupware

[deviator]

Most of your points are "yes, we have this feature, but we don't see any need for it." If this is the case, you're much better off using POP3 e-mail. It's unfortunate that your users aren't receiving the proper training necessary to take advantage of a cohesive, integrated _GROUPWARE_ package such as GroupWise. Which goes back to my point: Most open-source people don't really understand GROUPWARE as compared to simple POP3/IMAP-based e-mail with Calendaring extensions.

Those extra features exist in GroupWise, and when used properly they can be a great boon to productivity.

Re:Other Groupware

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually no they were not; half of my response detailed GroupWise failing points, and the other half detailed "not useful in most production environments". Don't try to twist my words around, or minimize what I have to say...

Either way though, we are pretty much in line with the real world. For most small to medium sized companies (less than 3,000 employees) I've worked with/for, they don't have the desire or the budget to put their employees through a training program for email/groupware. Especially when many employees still have difficulty with simple tasks, such as determining where a document was saved. On-top of that, any professionally setup training program is going to be hard to find, and expensive for a dying product such as GroupWise...

It sounds to me like a lot more than just "...open-source people..." don't understand groupware, I'd be interested in hearing in detail how you think a proprietary, and non-standards compliant groupware package such as GroupWise would help productivity for an average company. An average company being; someplace where actual products are manufactured and sold (not some dot-bomb). Meaning, most employees don't care about email, and don't care to use the calendaring system; they don't want to haul around some "...geeky...", and expensive palm-pilot to sync with the calendar, and they don't want to be tied to their desk either... This also means that they must collaborate/communicate with other systems, and companies as well.

Out here in the real world, most people only want to use their computers to get what they absolutely must get done. Let's take an analogy: How many cars out there do you see running with owner-initiated modifications (ie: things that improve the traction, mileage, or safety). Or how many vehicles do you see out there with dents on the side/front/back of it, where you'd think "it looks like that driver did something stupid", and then that same idiot cuts in front of you, slams on the gas, and whizzes though traffic. In the grand scheme of things, people don't care to make the changes necessary to improve either their driving habits or their vehicle, even though the benefits are clear, all they want to do is use the car to get from point A to point B.

The point is; everything but the basics is overhead, and most people are not going to go out of their way to use or change it... After all, most "...fully integrated..." groupware systems require the the company reshape not only itself around the product, but their systems as well. ERP products are not near as popular anymore, now that most have found that it is a waste of time and money to try to reshape a company around a computer system - in-fact, many companies have failed while trying to reshape their-selves. Customizing groupware does help to some extent, but it still requires the company shape itself around the product.

Some people may find groupware the best thing since sliced bread for the first few months, but as time goes on, and employees come and go, they will find it less and less useful. That is, until yet another expensive training session comes along (expensive both for the actual training, and for the employee's lost productivity), and then the cycle starts all over. The real question is; where is the cost/benefit analysis, and how is a package that provides standards based calendaring and email exchange/mailing lists, any better or worse than a proprietary all-encompassing groupware package?

An excellent paper regarding groupware lies here: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~grudin/Papers/CACM94/cacm9 4.html

Re:Other Groupware

[deviator]

I can't resist...

But it would seem to me that you're tired of the propretary systems and want things to go to POP/IMAP. You see no value whatsoever in groupware (as it has existed in the past) and are now trying to convince yourself, others, perhaps management, and now me, that groupware isn't worth a hill of beans and a system pieced together from a number of open-source solutions will be a better fit for what your users need.

Well, to each his own. I've worked with _dozens_ of companies in the past and they've used more than just "the e-mail piece" in the systems I've installed. It's unfortunate that companies don't place enough emphasis on training _in general_ but if they knew how much money they'd save in support by having clueful users then they'd probably jump on it. But your complaints still seem based on "we have these features, but no one uses them, so POP/IMAP would be a better fit." That's unfortunate.

Thanks for the link, Mr. Coward. That paper is interesting; it presents the state of how things are in many companies at the present time, but I think we can get past that. Most "average users" didn't know of e-mail five years ago; now many are demanding more features. GroupWise & other groupware packages were then, in fact, way ahead of their time if this is the case. We'll get there... but don't knock down a product because it's "too good" for your users.

Also, an _excellent_ resource geared towards user-side tips & tricks is Novell's GroupWise CoolSolutions website - http://www.gwmag.com. In the past I've found that there are key users in each group that _are_ eager to learn more and will take on the responsibility of "local expert" to train their associates. Some people LIKE learning new things.

Re:Other Groupware

[erth64net]

Yes, I am tired of proprietary systems, ones that change at the vendors whim without regard for what the customers are clearly requesting, and ones where I've had software written for - for the vendor to only make yet another undocumented change that breaks it. Or for the vendor to lock the system details up, so that I, as the owner of the data, cannot get to it without jumping though inefficient hoops that only give me a porthole to drag the mountain through. In-fact, I feel these types of issues are a core catalyst behind the upsurge in the open source movement.

I've worked with quite a few companies where more than just email worked for them, in-fact the calendaring is pretty useful in may cases. My concerns are with designs that lock my data up into proprietary systems, inaccessible to other systems without expensive third party tools, extensively written custom software or expensive and ad-hock consulting services - when open and well published standards exist that better facilitate interopability. I'm tired of systems that don't allow you to interoperate with others outside your organization, without jumping though yet more hoops, making the whole process inefficient and cumbersome.

Nature has told us, time and time again, that the simplest system is the one most likely to succeed (ala: Ockham's razor)... Which may just help to explain UNIX's still strong success after its incarnation 30+ years ago, where nearly every process/program/library still serves a specific purpose, KISS...

Training does help, but it does not resolve the issues completely. Systems must be easy to use, or over the long term, they will not be used. It really is just that simple, as humans are pretty lazy when it comes right down to it. There is that group that wants to learn, but then there is that much larger group that wants to stay they way they where.

In regards to the referred to paper, yes it does accurately reflect where we are now, but it was written 8 years ago, and based on papers mostly dating into the mid to late 80's. If you really think we can get past that, or that we are headed past that, why arent we clearly past it, or moving past it now... The fact is, existing groupware systems are far too complex for the average user to grasp. Anyone who expects the average user to grasp these proprietary concepts and methods is living a pipe dream, especially when these systems change so frequently...

Novell has done a good job these last few years communicating to the end-users with tools like CoolSolutions. In-fact I've been on the CoolSolutions mailing lists since they first started, but the fact is - not everybody shares the same passion into computers as most of us on Slashdot do. Most "...normal..." people (if you can call them that :-) feel they have better things to do with their time. Yes, I do have those users who are the local experts, and those that express a desire to learn more about the systems, but in reality, these valuable people are far and few between.

Why do I knock down GroupWise? It is a collective system that historically has not worked well for the environments I've seen and heard of it in. It's a system full of half-baked implementations, and broken and inefficient features, that Novell has acknowledged, and for years has promised to fix, but still has not followed through. Novell has allowed the development to stagnate over the last few years, and the excuses I'm hearing are that the development team feels that they don't need to listen to the customers. Now, from what I understand this developer issue may be changing, but many of Novell's other products are in the same situation, so I have to question how much if this is just another line of excuses.... Other than vendor supplied case studies, I know of nobody that has implemented an all-encompassing proprietary groupware system, in an normal business environment, where interopability with different systems was maintained, and was cost-effective to setup and deploy.

RFC 2447

[Neechee]

What about RFC 2447? The iCalendar protocol looks to have been developed jointly by Netscape, MS and Lotus. Exchange may support this, and even if it doesn't, this would be a good place to start.

As for the client-side, I think that I fully-featured web mail system can easily replace Outlook on the corporate desktop. They may all have Office, but they've got browsers too!

Re:RFC 2447

[ostiguy]

You are correct, in fact, I am 99% certain that MS Outlook Xp sends out its calendar requests, etc by default in that format.

That said, I am an exchange bigot - exchange 2k's web mail + IE > 5 is the closest thing to a real mail client via the web.

ostiguy

Re:RFC 2447

[sapgau]

This sounds like the correct starting point for an Open Source project. At least it could get a head start in communicating with an Exchange Server (in the parts that it complies with the RFC)

Re:RFC 2447

[On Lawn]

In theory yes. However, for some reason Outlook 2000 cannot read Outlook 2002 iCal cards, and neither can read Evolution iCal cards.

Re:RFC 2447

[khang]

OWA is still very limited, you should check out the iNotes client from Lotus. I don't like Notes, but it's very nice. It's pretty much a real Notes client.

http://www.lotus.com/products/inotes.nsf

Re:RFC 2447

[TechnoWeenie]

As for the client-side, I think that I fully-featured web mail system can easily replace Outlook on the corporate desktop.

Yeah, that works great until you are at 30000 ft (in coach, thank you very much internet bust) and want to plow through all your accumulated email. These days you have to consider that the corporate desktop, more often than not, is mobile.

Re:RFC 2447

[abiogenesis]

Exchange 2000 web mail works smoothly with Mozilla as well.

Re:RFC 2447

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately web mail clients are not powerful enough to stand up to any power user's demands, they are slow to load, insecure and just plain ugly, I'm all in favor of using web applications but I don't blindly believe you should convert applications to web applications, especially when converting them offers no benefit.

Exchange already has a web based client, yet Outlook is still used as the client of choice, why? Because the web based one just isn't good enough to use in a real company.

Re:RFC 2447

[joesilicon]

I don't like web based email, calendars etc. It is too time consuming to move email to new folders, move folders, create folders, select categories etc.

I prefer a real client, with spell checking on the fly and no waiting for page reloads.

Also, I don't know how well you can get webmail type applications to interface with your local apps --for instance the File Send To Mail feature that works with Word and WordPerfect in Windows with whatever back end you have in place.

Re:RFC 2447

[kperrier]

Web interface to email? Ugh. They all suck. I believe that having one available is nice to have, but living in one would be hell.

All IMHO.

Kent

Re:RFC 2447

[Anonymous Coward]

What about RFC 2447 [faqs.org]? The iCalendar protocol looks to have been developed jointly by Netscape, MS and Lotus. Exchange may support this, and even if it doesn't, this would be a good place to start.

Products like Exchange support all the underlying "basics" for calendar interchange (iCal, vCal, iMIP, iTIP) but none of those is a direct client and server protocol (in this case, referring to a method of exchange running directly over TCP or UDP). Such a protocol (CAP) is currently in development/draft, but since it hasn't yet been completed there are few (if any) implementations. That is the problem.

As for the client-side, I think that I fully-featured web mail system can easily replace Outlook on the corporate desktop. They may all have Office, but they've got browsers too!

Bzzzt!! Thanks for playing. Everyone has this attitude that Exchange is only used for e-mail therefore you can easily replace Exchange with some other e-mail solution on UNIX. If you raise the issue of directories, LDAP and OpenLDAP and thrown back as solutions. So far so good, two for two. Now things really get tough.

What about server-based calendar and contact sharing? Something that is integrated seamlessly into the clients on multiple desktops and platforms? It's just not there (yet - some of the pieces are in place but no complete solution as yet exists).

What about no-brainer file-sharing that's easy and secure? Nope. Sure, there have been efforts made in this direction (eg., with KDE's sharing of files via HTTP, other options including running sharing atop of WebDAV, etc.) but remember we're not talking about "yet-another-product" we're talking about something that is integrated as though it were all the one product (it doesn't have to be, just needs to look like it's one product as far as the user is concerned).

Then there are all the other supposed "benefits" thrown in with Exchange, include chatting, v/conf and whatever - things that some companies (like it or not) actually drool over (especially because it's all in the one product).

Finally, what of clients? You cannot simply dismiss the use of Outlook on many corporate desktops - there are plug-ins for Outlook (and only Outlook) that allow such additional features as centralised document management, a legal requirement in many cases; with no alternative seamlessly integrated solutions for a lot of these things, people must use Outlook on their desks.

Don't give me that crap of, "Hey, you can do all that in Perl!" This is the real world buddy where organisations concentrate on their core business, not on aiding geeks who want to spend their time hacking "kewl stuff" - if the business needs a tool and Microsoft is selling such a tool, they'll buy it. There are no viable (note that second word well) competitors in the open source world.

As someone else already posted, until the calendaring protocol issue is resolved, you have no hope of unseating Exchange. Even then, it'll only be the first step...

Re:RFC 2447

[Anonymous Coward]

But purely browser-based means: no synch with palm
or outlook. Why is it that these days, everything
has to be web-based anyway? Start with a good server
and a good protocol, write the clients (of which some
may be web-based) later.

Re:RFC 2447

[Anonymous Coward]

iCalendar/iMIP only specifies the message exchange, but not the way they are stored or managed.

Which is why you need a calendar server.

Ximian's evolution *does* speak the imip/itip protocols with iCalendar, but it wont get you the groupware functionality you need. You need access control, a place to post the events, and a place to look up other people's calendars.

Re:RFC 2447

[rbmyers]

Netscape 6 Calendar server apparently complies with this protocol. Maybe they could be persuaded to get smart with the open source community again. Maybe there are other candidates? Just look at what OS has done for Star Office and vice versa.

Re:RFC 2447

[1010011010]

So, what you're saying is, a web-enabled, open-protocol mail system would be a good thing for the corporate desktop?

Re:RFC 2447

[driehuis]

First of all, please don't shout. About the only thing missing from the esteemed AC's post was the tag.

I've tried to figure out how to do calendaring with open tools for the longest time (though from the other end of the spectrum, looking for a *NIX client that talks to Exchange for calendaring).

I cringe when I hear the words "protocol" and "Exchange calendaring" used in the same sentence. When I was young (but not as pretty), the word "protocol" in the context of networks involved documenting how to get at something without having to use the proprietary bits.

Apparently, Exchange 2000andsomething will change that. I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Not a monolithic beast, but what about componen

[Wicked187]

I would have to agree with this. I thought about putting something together for this before, but as I do not know C, I cannot really code it, unless I go with something else. I was planning on using qmail, since it is extremley powerful, secure, and modular. Just need to add in an authenticator that can work against either SAMBA or Active Directory, and then the client connection code that emulates Exchange. I was reading about Ximian Connector, and all of the stuff can be stored as normal folders... Could someone take this further?

MS License bull$h1t

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft will not license the APIs needed to do this. Any if you think they will release the specs to the APIs as part of the DOJ deal, you're sadly mistaken. What they have done so far is release a subset of broken and incomplete stuff. They ain't about to give away their cash cow.

Not just a matter of need.

[FreeLinux]

When it comes to selling to clients such as these, the product must provide much more than the client "absolutely needs". That is one of Exchange's selling points. It is "so extensible" that it can do anything. It doesn't matter that most places don't use half the features that it has. They perceive it to be important to have the features in case they need them in the future.

Sure, Exchange can be used as a voicemail server where you can listen to your voicemail from Outlook and there are even a few places that do this but, most never will. But, they all like the idea and hope to implement it one day therefore, their groupware server must be capable of doing it and, Exchange is.

I would guess that 98% of Exchange shops use it only for email and scheduling. Most probably don't even use the public folders. But they all bought it with some pipedream of using it as an all encompassing enterprise level meail server, voicemail server, document management system, coffee warmer and back massager.

In the end, if your product can't do all that, they'll buy Exchange.

Exchange is a killer app

[Anonymous Coward]

There are all sorts of reasons why replacing exchange will be difficult.

As much as you might not like it, Exchange is an excellent messaging program despite what its critics say. Yes it had some problems early on but many of the have been fixed as new releases came out and now its only rival is Notes. You must realize that exchange is much more than email and calendaring. It has a lot of plugin's, database driven. All sorts of storage options.

Example: Your CEO sends out 1 copy of a 300MB office presentation to everyone in your company. Aka 20,000 users. Now exchange can be configured to keep only 1 copy ( or a few depending on your design of exchange ) of that attachment instead of 20,000. No training users to use the file server or web server to distribute the attachment and no melt down of your email storage system.

Don't forget that software products can be purchased to nicely backup your emails and keep a history of them. Something that is hard to do with a POP or IMAP based email system.

A bit about these guys

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to contract with them back in 01, they were a sweatshop of Indian H1B's even then. There was no innovention in anything they created. I was given the position of guiding 4 developers on a side project they did for the gov. I gave the guys the usual pep talk and had gave them a flow of what to do, but sadly I was rather innocent with the techniques used in Bynari. A week after my implementation plan was laid out, a finished product was rushed to me as a presentation, I WAS STUNNED. I remember stammering and saying, this is not possbile (since my estimates said that it would take the 4 developers 3 full months to work it out into implmentation ) and what I saw in front was a full launch product. I asked them various questions as to how they came up with a product that fast, but the answers never came... Thus, I did a little bit of sleuting (Right after I left that consutling job (one good thing about consulting btw)), and here is what I found.

The guy I put in charge of programming (Krishna) what he was basically doing was going onto Soureforce and similar opensource sites and looking for projects that he can strun up and assemble into our product (sicne our product had generic thing that can be done like that -- it was multimedia traffic controlling unit). Krishna over a few beers (and after being laid off aftr the fall of etc etc.. ) told me that this is how everthing is done there, he went onto say that 90% of everthing in the product that I supposidly helped produce came from the net and opensource projects, one guy in the team was good in obsfucating code, the other was good in putting the different modules to work together.. I didnt know what to say, later I looked at the opensource projects in question and two of them have died off over time... This is sad, the guys at Bynari got over 1.5 million dollars for what we made. BTW, if your a journalist or some opensource person interested in this story, I could be reached at krugerfi@NOSPAM.GRIconsulting.com

Re:A bit about these guys

[Anonymous Coward]

This is true, I used to work there and we did some shady stuff, but management got shuffled and a lot of things have been made more legitmiate. BTW, Bynari is a word play on Binary (ofcourse it's how ppl from India would say it ;) ).

Re:A bit about these guys

[Anonymous Coward]

My cousin got a job at Bynari cause she wrote in her resume that she knows how to use outlook. They gave her a programming job then told her to go through SF.net to make her programming better, I dont think she was told to steal anything from those.

Re:A bit about these guys

[sg_oneill]

That is a radical claim your making there!
But hey if it's true.... YipEEEE! Let's force that bitch to GPL and finally get an open source WEAPON against the Ms/exchange beast.
Oh yeah. Mod that post up. It's important.

Re:A bit about these guys

[Anonymous Coward]

Your English grammar and spelling is probably worse than than that of the Indian programmers you describe

GoldMine

[jimbobborg]

GoldMine software. Granted, it's a Windows client only, but the backend database runs on any file server, and can use any POP/IMAP/SMTP server for mail. So Samba/Sendmail/Qpoper combo works on this. As for the client, I haven't seen a Linux/Unix client yet.

Re:GoldMine

[dacarr]

Probably better to avoid this, as Goldmine is prone to self-deleting anything from notes to entire records. YMMV....

Re:GoldMine

[shyster]

GoldMine software. Granted, it's a Windows client only, but the backend database runs on any file server, and can use any POP/IMAP/SMTP server for mail. So Samba/Sendmail/Qpoper combo works on this. As for the client, I haven't seen a Linux/Unix client yet.

Goldmine has one of the worst UI's to ever hit the market (second only maybe to Act!). Nobody likes Goldmine, and their design quirks are too numerous to mention. Oh, and the integrated email client is horrendous...nowhere near even Netscape mail.

Re:GoldMine

[JamesGreenhalgh]

We have goldmine where I work.

It is expensive, astonishingly expensive. It is bug ridden to the point of being unbelievable. It loses records. It requires almost daily reboots on all associated servers, even the call ticket generators. It is simply one of the worst piles of utter shite I have experienced in the workplace.

However, there *IS* a linux client ;) You have to be running the iHeat server on an NT/whatever box, but there is a linux client. It comes as rpm or deb, and appears to basically vnc you into a very cut down windows session with the client launcher. It probably uses vnc code.

I totally agree...

[Mustang Matt]

We need a nice calendar protocol.

If we had some sort of calendar protocol that could authenticate using some other standards and allow groups to login to their system with different access rights from windows/linux/java/everywhere I think that would put a huge dent in the side of exchange.

The Mozilla calendar is pretty sharp. It would be cool to see it evolve in this direction.

Coders don't like schedules

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're writing OSS in your spare time, do you keep to a strict schedule? So why would you write a tool for schedule tracking?

OOogw

[Mournblade]

Check out OpenOffice.org's groupware project. In the early development stages right now, it just got promoted to an "incubator" project. In addition, they just announced a deal with OEone to work together on improving the Mozilla Calendar project (as part of the overall OOo groupware effort).

Re:OOogw

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been subscribed to the OOGroupware mailing list for 2 years now and it has gone no-where. Not even one single line of code has been written, it has just sat there having people saying "I'm not a developer, but I can beta test!"

no one there is a developer, so the project won't be going anywhere fast.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Mozilla/OEone is working on it...

[HaeMaker]

OEone and Mozilla are working on an Open Source calendar server. Support it!

Re:Mozilla/OEone is working on it...

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

That page is completely outdated. The part about the calendar server that is. When I first found it I started searching all over for more info. The libical mailing list turned up some stuff, but apparently nothing has been done with it in about 6 months.

I did see new talk on the mailing list a month or so ago about another effort to try and do a CAP server finally.

BTW, ftp and webdav support aren't good enough. So everyone saying that mozilla does calendaring needs to get more info. It's not shared calendaring a la Exchange or Notes until you have a server that talks CAP.

Everything else is proprietary or asynchronous and doesn't support shared resources (conference rooms, etc).

Sorry to be such a stick in the mud today...

Exchange stifles competition

[Anonymous Coward]

An open source, open-standard solution to Exchange would be welcomed by everybody including Microsofts competition.

I can't count the number of software projects out there stifled by Exchange server, or free email services like Hotmail and Yahoo. Microsoft makes it very hard to develop for these services by keeping their protocols and methods under wraps.

Try getting into the corporate market with an email filter that doesn't support exchange ; or an email client that chokes on hotmail. Sad but true - even though free email services are a joke, especially to businesses with an IT department that can configure infinite email addresses for free, on the fly -- free email services are used in *every* business model. It's rediculous!

Open source needs to open the floor for innovation.

--Doug

Re:Exchange stifles competition

[Anonymous Coward]

RIDICULOUS

not "rediculous"

RIDICULOUS

The root of the word is "ridicule", you fucking simian.

Re:Exchange stifles competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, are you some know-it-all gay torontonite hipster-wannabe moron or what?

Relax alltalk, it's ok.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[skinfitz]

I've been running an exchange server v5.5 for three years now - it's never crashed. The anti virus has crashed three times, and it's been rebooted about 6 times total. This is with an 800 user workload, used continuously every day.

Perhaps I'm just lucky?

ISP's Hate Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of my company is an ISP that deals mostly with small business. Exchange is always causing new headaches. Since we provide business class DSL with static IP's we will often have some call us to inform us thier email is down. After looking at thier account records and discovering that we are simply pointing an MX record to thier internal mail server, we inform them that it's not our problem. The problem is convicing the executive assitant that calls that they need to call thier network person to have it fixed. In most of these cases, some tech hotshot that is no longer with the company set up the exchange server as an open relay two year ago because it "looked so easy" to run a mail exchanger with Exchange. Of course because everyone is addicted to the calender functions, it's impossible to convince the company to let us handle thier email on our *nix box.

In general, it would be nice to have a replacement for Exchange that works well in a virtual hosting/ISP environment.

Re:Priorities, people. Priorities!

[revoemag]

Electronic Warfare Intercept Strategic Signal Processing/Storage Systems Specialist huh? I find that hard to beleive since you think that a cell phone transmits at 5 watts. Try .6 watt max and more like .2 watts in digital mode. I guess they forgot to teach you that in spy school. Or is that HIGH school.

Replacing exchange with...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, really, people, why would you want to replace Exchange with something similarly functional, when it was prone to attacks from Melissa and ILoveYou? Do we really need that kind of functionality?

Because groupware is a hard problem

[sphealey]

The world can be divided into two kinds of people: those who think groupware is useful, and those who don't.

I know that mentioning Lotus Notes violates the Code of Slashdot Posting, but take a look at Notes sometime. The people who designed that system spent a long time thinking very hard about how to build a mobile, distributed, secure groupware system (note: you do not need to agree with the solution they built to acknowledge that they thought very deeply about the problem). Then - they spent a lot of time and money building what they had designed.

(Exchange is basically an imitation of the 45% of Notes' features that are most commonly used, without the thought, design, or security).

Who in the Free Software/Open Source world is going to spend that kind of time and effort? Particularly given that most Linuxians fall into the "don't like groupware" camp?

sPh

Re:Because groupware is a hard problem

[Agent 00p]

... Particularly given that most Linuxians fall into the "don't like groupware" camp? ...

It doesn't matter if we fall into the "don't like groupware" camp. If implementation of a non-MS Exchange-Like OSS system is possible, why spend thousands of dollars to Exchange ?

Re:Because groupware is a hard problem

[PONA-Boy]

Groupware IS a hard problem but I can only agree with part of your adoration of Notes. The backend might have been well-thought-out but the client is one of the worst conglomerations of crap I have ever used.

I gave it a chance...a good, long, two-years-worth of a chance...even migrated to the new Domino client. I'm sorry. The Notes client is an enormous kludge, no matter the well-designed backend.

-PONA-

Re:Because groupware is a hard problem

[Knightfall]

I do not understand why Notes is such a taboo here. I have setup and administrered multiple Domino servers creating multiple mail and database domain structures all without hitch or incident. Updates go flawlessly. Uptime for my email servers is 99.89% for one and 100% for the other (that's right, not one second of downtime since I installed it over a year ago, and it is running on a *GASP* WinNT server). Calendar works perfectly, remote users never have a problem replicating that isn't phoneline related. Administration is incredibly easy with R5. And hey, it's NOT eachange. Oh, and CLP's get more respect and a helluva lot more money than MCSE's.

Re:Because groupware is a hard problem

[PONA-Boy]

I do not understand why Notes is such a taboo here.

Don't get me wrong. I admire Notes for their single-minded dedication to their product. I just can't STAND the client.

Re:Because groupware is a hard problem

[jgalun]

The world can be divided into two kinds of people: those who think groupware is useful, and those who don't.

I guess this puts you into the "those who think groupware is useful" type, huh?

Har har.

Sorry about that. :)

Re:Because groupware is a hard problem

[sphealey]

The world can be divided into two kinds of people: those who think groupware is useful, and those who don't.

I guess this puts you into the "those who think groupware is useful" type, huh?

Actually, the world really can be divided into two kinds of people: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't! ;-)

Seriously, it is funny what people have imputed to me because I brought up a discussion of Notes. I went from using mail on 4.2 BSD, to IBM Profs, to cc:Mail, to Lotus Notes, to Exchange. I like some features of Notes and find some other laughable. Of all of those, cc:Mail was the cleanest and easiest to admin.

I will stick with my statement that Exchange is 45% of Notes features without the design, though.

sPh

Re:Because groupware is a hard problem

[hey!]

Every time a new version of the Notes client comes out, I scratch my head and wonder, with all the money they poured into it, why they couldn't afford to hire a usability expert.

Granted, some of the thing things people have complained about come from not understanding, for example the security concerns Notes tries to meet. on the other hand, the UI looks like the product of some marketing weenie with delusions of greatness.

Re:Because groupware is a hard problem

[FatRatBastard]

Actually, the world is divided into three types of people:

People who can add and people who cannot.

Re:Because groupware is a hard problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the world is divided into three types of people:

People who can add and people who cannot.

No, the world is divided into 10 types of people -- those who understand binary and those who do not.

Re:Because groupware is a hard problem

[Pfhreakaz0id]

Indeed. I have to use this at a client occassionaly (although for the most part I just have it set to forward -- although it took me an hour to figure out how to set up a server rule to do so with the damn thing..)

My favorite quirk. Log in, receive mail, mark some for deletion. Wait awhile, then exit. It demands a password! I understand, intellectually, that it doesn't really delete mail until you exit, for some reason, but YOU CAN'T SKIP IT! It will demand the password for a while, then demand you point to a new mail database or something... It's weird.. the only program in my 20 years of computing that wanted a password to EXIT!

Re:Because groupware is a hard problem

[Anonymous Coward]

> It doesn't matter if we fall into the "don't like groupware" camp. If implementation of a non-MS Exchange-Like OSS system is possible, why spend thousands of dollars to Exchange ?

Because no one's so far been willing to build the system because the fall in the "don't like groupware" camp.

Without the developers, who builds the s/w?..

Notes Sucks

[KlomDark]

From an admin's point of view, yes, there are lots of problems with Exchange.

However from a user's point of view, Outlook runs circles around the crappy Notes client interface.

I'd much rather look at a ground-up mail server/mail client implementation than want anything to do with a Linux port of Notes.

I guess it's on OS X.

[BoomerSooner]

Who knows maybe you could run it in conjunction with QMail on Mac since darwin is bsd based I'm sure compiling it wouldn't be too difficult. Although getting everything configured on my end for the first time was more difficult than I anticipated.

BTW I switched all my servers from windows to linux/x86 (except the db went from windows to solaris/sparc). Exchange is what made me change. When I was reading a help file that said "It is frequently advisable to backup and reinstall Exchange Server instead of wasting days looking for some buried setting that conflicts with your setup." That was the end. And I was about to buy 2000 Server, SQL Server and Exchange 2000 (since that was what I was familiar with from my job). All unix based now and no problems since the first week (accidently left wuftp port open and unpatched).

Linux and Solaris kick the rear out of Windows. Now when 9i is ready for XServe I'll definately consider it (maybe when they get the DDR fixed or move to G5's). But for the time being Solaris/SPARC is good enough for me.

ROFL

[pretzel_logic]

that is right on!!!

Re:ROFL

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh shut the fuck up and go back to your fifth-rate web hosting scam.

Jeezusss! I hope that if I was hosted on your servers that my pages would appear a little faster than yours crawled into my browser window.

Spent 4 hours looking into this yesterday.

[Spy4MS]

I have a similar problem. I'm trying to move all of my clients to IMAP (which I love), LDAP (which I don't like so far), and a nice group calendaring solution (which I haven't yet found, iCal perhaps?).

I found a lot of projects on Sourceforge that were in various stages and trying to solve the Exchange-on-server problem.

Courier looks promising. And here's a group calendaring option. Eridu is a sourceforge project in beta that tries to solve the problem with web-based email and calendaring, but you can't drag a message from one folder to another on a web page :(

IMAP works beautifully for storing and retrieving messages on the server, but Outlook (which I also hate) doesn't handle it too gracefully. Email notifications always send you to the Personal Folders inbox, rather than the IMAP server inbox. No way to fix that. I will probably always have to deal with Windows clients since that's what everyone is used to and programs with, so Evolution, nice as it seems to be, is not an option. I came across InScribe in my searches for a good email client with calendaring and inbox filtering. It might be worth a look.

Re:Spent 4 hours looking into this yesterday.

[Anonymous Coward]

My company has been running/deploying/migrating several installations of Qmail+Courier-IMAP+IMP into Windows client/server networks for two years with much success. Our clients are pleased not only with the savings of money and licensing, but with the functionally and performance.

Recently we've found Twiggi as a Groupware solution for Linux. It provides webbased mail, contacts, scheduling, notes, todo and integrates with HylaFAX for faxing.

So far our clients love it.

Question?
Has anyone experienced MS Outlook and Outlook Express in a IMAP setup, duplicate mail if you change your hostname/IP of your IMAP server?

ie, Setup an IMAP account for mail.somedomain.fake and then later on change the hostname or give it an IP that points to the same mail server and have Outlook duplicate all your mail.

It's really frustrating to find Outlook setups pointing directly to the IP and then need to change it to use a hostname for say, SSL certificate reasons and then have users mail duplicate.

innovation????

[Anonymous Coward]

this just dawned on me so i thought i'd tell the world. everyone in the free-software community is always complaining about microsoft's lack of innovation - how they are always supposedly copying other peoples ideas/software and branding it as their own but has anyone looked in the mirror??? the free-software community is basically a huge factory for trying to re-invent the microsoft wheel. all you guys do all day is try to replicate in open-source form what microsoft has already done. and much more often than not you are trying to replicate something that you will at the same time complain about as being a horrible idea from the satan in redmond. you're all a bunch of hypocritic little whiny kids. get a life

Mozilla Calendar

[yancey]

Coincidentally, I just ran across the Mozilla Calendar Project

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[vrmlknight]

nah you just know how to set up a server properly.

sad but true

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as there are NT administrators, there will be exchange

Wild Guess

[Snafoo]

...because the problem isn't interesting enough.

Open source shows a strong prediliction for solving interesting problems well ahead of boring ones. For instance, we had useful, powerful distributed databases, cryptography, new languages and C compilers long before we had a functional word processor and spreadsheet combo. Quite simply, we have already solved mail distribution and address-book sharing on their own, and have relatively little interest in peeling apart a proprietary MS standard for same which is liable to change next week. This is also the reason why OpenOffice is great for everything except reading and writing Word documents.

This flows into my new theory about how Microsoft intends to go about attacking Linux: A deluge of boring, repetitious, pointless APIs and interfaces for problems that were long ago solved but now must be addressed using these new, uselessly variant interfaces simply because that's what everyone else has to do. (Think dotnet.) A hacker's familiarity with extant interfaces is his or her number-one resource, and is therefore that which he or she will part with least readily --- even at the expense of the compatibility or useability of the code they're writing.

Microsoft's strategy is reminiscent, in some ways, of an ancient Incan technique for pacifying politically difficult villages and towns. By forcibly migrating the entire settlement to some distant part of the empire, the usefulness of the skill-sets of these hunter-gatherers was greatly reduced, making them dependent on the (massively centralized) government for handouts, and therefore suddenly rather polite in their relations with the regime.

In the same way that a hunter-gatherer depends on his knowledge of the land, a geek depends on knowledge of the problem and solution spaces. Furthermore, most OSS projects are extremely long-term endeavours; think GCC, think Emacs, think the Linux kernel(*). OSS developers work by building things slowly and correctly with a minimal expenditure of precious manpower; Microsoft works by using more coders, more money, insane work hours and a blase attitude toward standards (even difficult, complicated, important standards) so that they may get to market early , recoup such expenditures, and get to work on the next total (and totally incompatible) revision of their product, which people will use simply because of the upgrade path that MS will kludge together with exactly the same bloodyminded application of superior capital.

Simply put, we need stability more than they do, because they have more time and money. We write things right the first time, whereas they have the luxury of making as many mistakes as they need to in order to grab market share. But more importantly, we need the projects of the past to have been written right the first time; we need a working libc, kernel, and so forth, otherwise OSS simply doesn't happen. Microsoft has no such prerequisites to its growth, as, in a pinch, *it can simply replace its foundations by fiat*. Their hunter-gatherers can, metaphorically speaking, simply create (with a certain expenditure of time and effort) the landscape best suited to their requirements. Thus they can march along beside us, setting the pace, forcing a speedup, replacing good APIs with new because every step into new territory costs them less than it costs us, dissociates us from our well-known and powerful (if somewhat lacking) APIs and encourages our work to depend on their own work, which will then be changed, etc, rendering ours much less useful.

Ultimately, the strategy is designed to encourage hackers to go take up billiards or chess or something with a potential of being useful to remember or think about or use five minutes hence. The ultimate goal of cycling APIs is to induce *indifference*, as we face a choice between working harder on minutia or walking away, hands in the air.

(*)Note that, of these projects, two are sufficiently low-level to be immune to all but the most radical shifts in design; this is again indicative of what OSS excels at.

Re:Wild Guess

[enjo13]

I thought OOo had very good support for the MS formats. I can open up almost any file I care about, the damn thing even supports revisions.

Re:Wild Guess

[LibertineR]

You are right on the money, dude.

OSS doesnt have the patience, resources or the coordinated manpower to replace Exchange, and would rather opt for short-term glory fixing easier stuff.

Nice analogies.

Re:Wild Guess

[Snafoo]

Well, it has excellent rw support for Excel files, but IME it can really butcher a Word document (or create a butchered-looking .doc, for that matter.)

AFAIK, StarOffice 6.0 sells itself on (a) having better MSO compat, and (b) having Adabas. Is this correct?

Re:Wild Guess

[need_change]

Serious question: If OSS has no patience, resource or manpower, how did all the stuff on a linux distro come into existance (os, utils, window systems, networking, graphics, device drivers) ?

Re:Wild Guess

[Winnipenguin]

I now longer have the book, but about ten years ago I read a Royal Academy of Engineering study that referred to hunters/gatherers of IT. I used that line a lot with my clients, it helped them figure what I did for them :)

Anyone else read it/have it/rememeber it?

Replacing Exchange is not a trivial task

[Anonymous Coward]

I've implemented several Exchange servers in a few large organizations in my day and to replicate what it does would be not be easy.

I think this is part of the problem with any existing attempts or lack thereof to replicate it...Exchange very elegantly handles messaging, calendaring and basic groupware with elegance.

For instance Exchange uses databases with transactional capability to provide extreme scaleability and reliability on the back-end. It has backup APIs that support amazing throughput for on-line hot backups. The database reclaims pages and defragments itself essentially in real time. Exchange supports every protocol in the book...but most customers implement it with their proprieatary MAPI protocol because it actually works a lot better than things like POP3, & IMAP.

Single instance storage allows Sally from marketing to send out her corporate spam to all internal unsuspecting users and the message will only be stored once in the database, there are semaphore links that track who has read the message or deleted it from their mailbox, disk consumption and server I/O load is dramatically reduced, especially when the message is 5 megabytes across 15,000 users!

I could easily come with a design document for a system that would essentially clone Exchange, the problem is around actually programming the system.

You would need a robust database back-end with excellent management support for things like hot backup and real-time database page reclamation, powerful & scaleable MTAs, an arm's length list of supported protocols and APIs, a user friendly cross platform client...

The ability to get all the developpers to agree on how to solve all of the above would be the biggest challenge.

Re:Replacing Exchange is not a trivial task

[stubear]

And it will only get better when Yukon and Exchange.NET are released.

Re:Ximian Evolution - beware - it will break other

[jay_in_pa]

I tried to install Evolution on my Redhat 7.2 system, and it broke a lot of programs for me. Open office no longer functions properly, all the drop down menus had their text replaced with what looks like dashes, unless that is just really really small text. I forget what else broke, but I do know that it replaced a lot of .RPM packages (mostly libraries). WHat I researched trying to undo these changes, most people said the best solution is to wipe out and re-install redhat.

Exchange: useless

[Mr. Slippery]

Why is there no free software equivalent of Exchange? Because it's a useless piece of bloatware, that puts together functions that should be kept separate.

It's not being duplicated, because it's a bad piece of software.

Re:Exchange: useless

[bling..bling]

Can you quantify 'useless piece of bloatware'? If it was useless nobody would use it. People 'do' have choices as to what products to buy. Lotus, Novell as well as many others offer mail servers and clients, so why pick Exchange? Exchange 2000 and Outlook together provide a great solution (I know it has it's quirks and problems). If you think Exchange sucks, try using Lotus Notes, GroupWise or other groupware products... They suck way worse than Exchange. Besides what is the benefit of having separate products? Are you suggesting that you have a separate calendar app, contact database app, etc? What is benefit? People (normal users) just want to use email, see when coworkers can get together for a meeting and manage their contacts. All of these functions are pragmatically integrated so if they can be bundled together to make everyone's lives easier, than do it.

Re:Exchange: useless

[Mr. Slippery]

If it was useless nobody would use it.

Ah, would that it were so. But fact is, it's pretty easy to get people to believe that they need something that they have absolutely no use for whatsoever. It's been the basis of the American economy for decades.

Are you suggesting that you have a separate calendar app, contact database app, etc? What is benefit?

Benefit is choosing best calendar app, best contact database app, best e-mail app, etcetera. Even better - me choosing best e-mail app for me, you choosing best e-mail app for you, etcetera.

My Swiss army knife is an "integrated" solution. My toolbox isn't. Guess which one I'd grab for a serious piece of work?

THAT'S A JOKE YOUR MORON MODERATORS

[Anonymous Coward]

_+=

Vitals + Clincher = Linux Adoption

[skeptic]

It has long been my contention that the 'clincher' apps everyone speaks about (the ones the Linux platform needs to compete for corporate desktops) aren't clinchers at all -- they're vitals. Without a decent GUI, office suite, web browser and email client, Linux would never be viable. Now that those all exist (for the most part), Linux is a player, but it's still missing the one app for which Microsoft faces no competition: Exchange.

And Exchange is damn good. If you ask me it's the reason why Windows has remained on the desktops of so many businesses. But I *know* that many, especially small, cash-strapped, businesses would love an inexpensive alternative. But none exists. So MS marches on in the corporate space, and most people continue with it on their personal desktops 'cause it's what they know from work.

People are starting to get fired for buying MSFT

[FreeUser]

Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.

I know of three people who did get fired for buying Microsoft.

A friend of mine is now providing consulting to the companies in question. Two are running Twig on Linux servers, the other has their old non-ms, non-unix server back up and working (again) while they slowly transition to Linux.

Despite all the "I'll sound wise and neutral if I make out to be 'admitting' free software's flaws and giving Microsoft its due" commentary one sees here on slashdot as either an effort at karma whoring, or an effort at pro-Microsoft propoganda and astroturfing, the fact remains that there are really very few shops that cannot do without Microsoft, and many that actually benefit from running other platforms.

What is very interesting is the number of non-technical people who are coming to realize that, and while they don't necessarilly embrace free software in general, or GNU/Linux in particular, they are beginning to recognize just what a financial, technical, and time drain Microsoft and their products have become to their enterprises, and they are looking for ways out.

Even to the point where, now, people are starting to get fired for blindly purchasing Microsoft, and treating MS propoganda as a substitute for technical research and savvy.

Its a rather refreshing change, actually.

Here is a good start

[chipperdog]

It's from 3 years ago, but it should give one a good base to start from

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-11 -07-001-05-NW-LF

Share the crack

[Chibi Merrow]

I've got non-computer savvy users who blow me away with how far they push the functionality of Exchange and the calendar/meeting functions. It's been an incredible boon for us to have this system in place.

On the flip side it's horribly complicated, unreliable, resource intensive, and when it breaks it breaks BAD. But even with all those negative things going against it, there's NOTHING else we can use to replace it. There is no competition for our dollar in this area, commercial or free.

And as far as Microsoft support... try getting them to help you fix your broken Exchange 5.5 installation sometime. We don't call Microsoft for anything--we don't believe they could be of any real help. As with any software that the user has to modify after installation, there's not much a phone tech guy can do to help.

oh don't worry, it's already happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehehe, some companies, though few and between, are already moving to other OS'es. Microsoft seems to be charging too much to middle sized and small companies for their upgrades to WinXP and licenses.

I'm happy to say that I've been charged with the task of looking for a viable desktop alternative to Microsofts infamous Windows, as long as some of the functionality remains available.

My first instinct was to grab my debian CD and start installing, but to be honest Mac OS X is a tad more userfriendly than Gnome or KDE is (IMHO).

The great thing about it all is that most of these companies want to migrate away from Microsoft products completely, including Outlook and Exchange. Most of the customers I've talked to are happy with the horde demonstration I give them (though it is still lacking certain features), but thanks to fink promoting Evolution shouldn't be too much of a problem, once the gnome tree is updated to 2.0.

My advice: let it kill itself. If the smaller companies decide that this is a good move, perhaps the larger ones will follow trend. Many people are mad about the outrageous licensing prices, and they're looking for alternatives with great intrest. Steering them in the right direction and continuing development on open source projects will eventually show them that there are very viable alternatives.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[Anonymous Coward]

i hear that. the IT outsourcing company i work for supports over 1500 exchange servers (mostly 5.5, maybe 10% exchange 2k) with at least 500 users per machine and we reboot maybe 3 or 4 of them a month tops due to issues with exchange services/queues. guess this is the wrong forum to find competent exchange/nt admins....

They don't need it.

[fmaxwell]

The reason that there is not an open source alternative to Exchange is because the features provided by exchange are really not that valuable. In fact, for many, it is just one more piece of annoying collaboration software foisted off on them by management as a panacea for all of their project woes. It rarely does anything to improve the project's success and frequently turns into a gigantic time sink -- just like the equivalent features in Lotus Notes do.

Re:They don't need it.

[sg_oneill]

Boing. Lose a point. The calendaring and like are damn usefull , particularly in service industries. It's a handy thing having the girls at the front desk take an apointment for me and drop it straight on my calendar. Too easy, never lets me down.
Except that I loathe ms :(

Re:They don't need it.

[fmaxwell]

It's a handy thing having the girls at the front desk take an apointment for me and drop it straight on my calendar.

Putting aside the sexist remark, it's simply not a useful enough feature for 99% of the world to justify running Exchange over a normal, standard mail server.

Re:Not a monolithic beast, but what about componen

[Spy4MS]

I have yet to find an open source solution that is "hidable".
Samba requires all kinds of hoops to be jumped through to get passwords to synch, and still isn't bullet-proof. I'm prefectly comfortable SSHing into a linux box to check mail, but nobody else in my office is.

There is no way to program COM, ASP or .NET on a Linux server. All of our developers use those technologies and we won't reform until there's something better for rapid app development available as open source.

The best I can hope for is something that meets our needs and doesn't require too much training. Some open source tecnologies are close, but none are transparent.

rubbish

[Anonymous Coward]

i personally have fired m$ drones for their inability to think outside the box. heck, some of them can't even think /inside/ the box.

the outrageousness of your statement beggars belief.

Excellent start.

[FreeLinux]

You're right on the money. But, there are other features that your shop might not use that others will require, so this is not a comprehensive list.

Frankly, a good deal of your list can be done easily or has already been done in various different OSS apps. But there is no single app that has them all and none with good scheduling capabilities or APIs to allow for further expansion of the systems capabilities.

Regardless, the list you have provided clearly demonstrates part of the reason why there is as yet no such OSS app. Simply, it's a really big job. Furthermore, it's not something that most programmers might want or need, it's what corporations need. And that's the kicker.

Most OSS programmers do it to scratch their particular itch or enjoy providing a solution for the masses, the fame or whatever. It's what interests them so they do it. On the other hand, building a huge beast of an app that doesn't really interest them and will only be used by corporations doesn't really draw a crowd of developers willing to work for free.

Re:Excellent start.

[mpe]

On the other hand, building a huge beast of an app that doesn't really interest them and will only be used by corporations doesn't really draw a crowd of developers willing to work for free.

That's because the only way to make a "huge beast of an app" viable is to package it as a product. Probably very few people would use all of its "features"
A more interesting question is if a huge monolithic app (either server or client) is the best way to get the job done in the first place. The problem with a monopoly like Microsoft's is that their stuff is used as a yardstick even when it's an awful solution.
Proprietary (especially box shifted) software tends to go for a monolithic throw in everything including the kitchen sink type of approach, whereas open source tends to go for a more modular and structured design.

Free clonage or real software ?

[theefer]

I think one of the main issues about this "let's make an OSS alternative to X" (where X is a univerally used proprietary software) race is that we feel obliged to make a clone, if possible as good as the original, sometimes better.

I agree that this allows people to come from the windows world, and not be completely lost in new GUI and stuff. Evolution really looks like Outlook, Mozilla really looks like IE, OpenOffice really looks like MS Office, etc. Yeah there are skins and all, but if you think about it, it's really close interface.

Now, besides the easier migration issue, why just copy an existing software ? Yes, the original works, why change ? I'm glad some people *don't* think this way otherwise we wouldn't have evolved a bit !

I'm not saying we shouldn't have our own free software instead of using M$ or anybody else's. But I'm wondering whether there is room for some innovation out there ? I mean, I'd be really curious to see the ration free-copy/new-software. Just think about the number of ICQ clones.

To me, it sounds really like the video game industry, just harvesting games which have worked and not even thinking about innovation (How many doom-like for one Myst?). Is business slightly coming into the OSS world ? I don't think so though, I think it just has something to do with innovation, and real thinkin about our needs.

Let's think about the reason why we use software rather than just blindly make our version of the original one. This is more a process of reflexion than coding (coding will have it's time afterwards), but it really seems to be a small part in most software creation.

Instead of building our copy and say "Hey, look, this new feature is great and is not available on the original program!", we maybe should rethink the way the program works, what he does, and how it's used, instead.

I prefer a software which uses a new, optimized and interesting approach to its goal than a simple clone of the base program, even if the former lacks a few features. And this goes for any kind of program, obviously.

Re:Free clonage or real software ?

[leshert]

Because in most of the cases you point out (Evolution, ICQ, OpenOffice), the Open Source replacement needs to be compatible with the closed source original, or else many people won't use it.

Re:Free clonage or real software ?

[theefer]

That's sad and true.
However, I can quote Jabber as a slightly different IM, OpenSource and nice, though compatible with ICQ, MSN & co. Or OpenOffice compatibility means it has to open MS Office files. It doesn't mean it has to have exactly the same look and feel and interface ...

Re:Free clonage or real software ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... This is exactly how nature works, differentiation is the result of imperfect copies/clones, and the ones that live longest/reproduce most effeciently proliferate. So, we just need to get some focus groups on the issues... We need to get a metric on the itch prior to scratching our skin off groping for it...

Re:Free clonage or real software ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The original poster has an excellent point. I think that FS/OSS should focus on creating innovative approaches to solving problems that happens to also read and write commonly used formats and can skin to look like other existing programs for low learning curve. The more killer apps that exist in the FS/OSS universe, the more compelling reason for users to consider switching over.

Exchange implements IMAP

[Spy4MS]

And it works. Very well. There are no folder problems where you can't put mail into a folder that has other folders.

I thought that would be a start to get my clients moved over to a Linux server, using IMAP on the clients. But you have to switch to Internet Mail Only to make IMAP work at all in Outlook, and when you do that you can't use the group calendar any more. I hate Outlook but it's all there is on the Windows platform that integrates mail and calendaring well.

Re:Exchange implements IMAP

[Spencerian]

Cool...that's optimistic.

But it essentially seems to follow that support for IMAP must be activated...or is that part of the feature defaults?

Oh well...no need to educate me on it. My Exchange coworker is bound to give it to me with both barrels for my lack of understanding.

Re:Exchange implements IMAP

[TheCabal]

It's part of the install. You have to turn it on. You can do this at the site, server or user level.

Try Lotus Domino on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Comes bundled with SuSE http://www.suse.com, if you buy thier groupware server, or something like that.

Beg pardon?

[nosferatu-man]

Sendmail? Are you thinking of the same Sendmail that I am? The group of science rocketists who've given us *this*:

R$* $: $(dequote "" $&{client_addr} $)
R$-.$-.$-.$- $: $[ $4.$3.$2.$1.rbl.maps.vix.com $]
R$-.$-.$-.$-.rbl.maps.vix.com. $#error $@ 5.7.1 $: 550 no access from [$4.$3.$2.$1], see http://mail-abuse.org/rbl/

?

I can't think of a anyone, anywhere, less competent to write a complex, featureful, information interchange mechanism. They've had their chance, and that's as good as they could come up with? Egad!

And then, in a brilliantly ironic twist, I can't post those sendmail.cf snippets as text, because of Slashdot's indescribable "lameness" filter. It's the irresistible force versus immovable Taco, and we all end up losing. Figures.

'j

Re:Beg pardon?

[b1t r0t]

And then, in a brilliantly ironic twist, I can't post those sendmail.cf snippets as text, because of Slashdot's indescribable "lameness" filter.

And because of the wonderful design misfeature of sendmail.cf where tabs are important.

Re:Beg pardon?

[kweiske]

When's the last time you had to hand-hack a .cf file - M4 is the way to go, baybee...

IMO, group calendaring is a red herring -- I've never seen a company where they actually use it. PHBs don't update their calendar, execs go ahead and squat in conference rooms without using the reservation system, and so on...

I once had a

[t0qer]

person try and pitch yahoo calendar over exchange.

What this boils down to...

[Anonymous Coward]

What this basically boils down to is that you would rather people work hard to produce a great piece of software that does exactly what your business or clients need and then give it away to you for free. Basically you are a bum who wants it all for free, without charge. You want hundreds of people to spend months creating something that you aren't willing to compensate them 1 penny for. Have I hit the nail on the head yet? Isn't that the open source ideal - that everybody work for free so that we can all benefit from the poor saps that program this stuff and get absolutely nothing for it? The whole idea is the stupidest thing I've ever heard and I'm surprised that you people are so blinded as not to see the real demands that you guys are making. YOU ARE CHEAP, BUMS, LAZY AND DISPICABLE. Your entire thought process is corrupt and you are truly the definition of sloths. Eventually your whole community will come crashing down around you and you will not know what hit you but I will tell you now what it is. REALITY HIT YOU WITH A TWO BY FOUR ACROSS THE HEAD.

Re:What this boils down to...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Basically you are a bum who wants it all for free, without charge. You want hundreds of people to spend months creating something that you aren't willing to compensate them 1 penny for"

BINGO!!! WE HAVE A WINNER!!!!

Actually, it's not so much that they're bums, more like they're communists/socialists.
They want all the programmers to work 'for the people', but they don't have the guns to back it up like china/russia/cuba does, so they try and use 'social pressures'.
'M$(read: capitalism) IS EVIL' they shout,
'we need a OS for 'the people'',
'linux is cool/the new 'thing'/fighting the power',
'M$ programmers are sellouts',
'viva la revolution'...etc

They'll find their useful idiots(cs undergraduates in the uber-liberal/socialist universities) that will parrot the OSS dogma for a while, hand out copies of redhat (hehe,red)...until they have to get a real job and move out of their parent's basement.

The only thing that can possibly save linux now is a revert to it's roots...a hobby OS. People doing it because it's something to play around with, but not taking it as seriously as the zealots do.
Linux doesn't have to 'crush m$', be on every desktop, prove that socialism works(clue-by-four...it doesn't). The contant rants of the hardcore zealots are starting to piss people off,because
a)they don't care
b)OSS doesn't work as good as they say it does(aka: waddaya men you can't get it to work, n3Wb1E ,RTFM)

As a hobby, linux might survive, as a way of life...it's already been tried...it doesn't work

Re:What this boils down to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Question, how many programs have you pirated cause you diddnt want to pay for them?

A possible replacement?

[wasp sting]

After reading some of the posts it seems to me that the most needed feature for a possible Exchange replacement is the group scheduling and calendaring.
It is already possible to use KOrganizer to fullfil that need, it wont replace an existing Exchange installation, but it maybe all it takes to avoid one :-)
Oh ... and lets not forget that the next version of KMail (in KDE 3.1) will have LDAP support, courtesy of the Aegypten project.

Is Anyone Really Using Samsung Contact?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone using Samsung Contact in a _real_ business production environment? With Outlook clients? How about a report on how well it works?

Apple is slowly getting there...

[toupsie]

Thier new iCal is step one towards an Exchange replacement. It supports vCal, can share calendars online and hopefully in the near future, Exchange calendars. Apple's new system wide Address Book (w/ LDAP) and nice Mail application along with iCal can replicate majority of the Exchange functionality.

What is the freaking obsession with...

[mbogosian]

...integrating e-mail and calendaring into the same window?

I understand the legitimacy of being e-mailed new/change meeting requests, etc., but WTF is this irrational draw towards Outlook? Why isn't WebCalendar (or Meeting Maker for that matter) and your favorite desktop mailer (or SquirrelMail and your favorite browser) an equally good solution? Please don't tell me it's because of those gawd-awful blackberry things.

Yes, we do. all the time.

[mekkab]

800 people on this campus alone.

And I keep my Visor and Nokia sync'd up.
(I like the silent vibration of the phone to remind me) and the Visor and Nokia talk to each other.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[GlassUser]

Not really. Most of us just hide, afraid of the slashflames. Exchange is quite simply the best collaboration system out right now. I run exchange 2000 at several locations. It doesn't crash. I have never had a virus go through exchange or outlook. I had to reboot my exchange server three and a half months ago, but that's because it was moving across town, and that's the one I use for client hosting.

Even with all that, I don't like it. Why not? Because, while she treats me very very well, exchange is not very interoperable. That's not really exchange's fault though. As far as I know, there is no standard for calendar and scheduling. If there were, and usable software supported it, I would pick the standards-compliant solution. That's the biggest gripe I have about the open source genre, that there just isn't enough quality software out there. Yes, I realize that this is my fault, at least in part. It might be yours too. Will you help me change?

SuSE has eMail Server 3.1

[FrankieBoy]

And it's here.

Never or just now

[gmuslera]

If your definition of what is needed is "everything Exchange/Outlook/whatever do" or some rewriting of this, then maybe never, would be like Zenon trying to reach the turtle. By the time you reach what exchange do they already changed it, even if they do it at turtle's speed.

But if you try cleanly to see what you can have now, and realize how useful is it, then you already can do the switch. Maybe what it gives you is not exactly the same that exchange do, but in its own way could be even better.

I.e. some time ago I was arguing with a friend on switching to Twig, in example, you have mail, calendar, groups, access from everything because is web based (a branch have even a wap module), and because it is based in imap, sql, sendmail, etc, you don't need to only rely on it as the only way to access mail, appointments, etc.

exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

works fine..I like it..it's the Microsoft product I like the best..Why ditch it? Oh i know why..because you want everything to be linux+free..

oh well, you still have shit for a desktop w/ linux, and the linux coders cant seem to keep up with MS..

so exchange will continue in my shops..

Linux Server, Outlook Client.

[Anonymous Coward]

I still want to use Outlook as the client. So what are my options? The higher ups want the pretty shared Calendar, Contacts, etc. LDAP is a nightmare to configure. We have been running Sendmail for years with no problems. Six weeks after we turned on Exchange we got relayed.

How ironic..

[Frank of Earth]

.. that the thread is about getting rid of MS Exchange and right below the article is a BIG FAT BANNER for Visual Studio.NET "Get your free trial DVD from MS"

Apparently, it's ok to bash Microsoft every 5th /. post, but it's ok to generate revenue by displaying their ads.

Alternative to "massive compensation"

[devphil]

They sign contacts that make people have it fixed within a specific time period or they recieve massive compensation.

I work as sysadmin on an Air Force base. We have a commercial support contract with Sun that specifies they get replacement parts to us in 4 hours. The other day a hard drive died, and I had the amusement of writing in the support request, "I know where Sun's headquarters are; get me a new hard drive in 4 hours or I call in an airstrike."

(Then I thought some more about it and erased that sentence. Damn humorless paper-pushers. (So of course it took six hours for the drive to get to me.) Oh well.)

Buy the source for something that already works?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much do you think Caldera would want for Volution Messaging Server? A push like the below? $10M ? $20M? $10/per interested Slashdot reader? "The Blender Fund, established a month ago in order to buy the IP of the 3D Pakage Blender and, at last, GPL it, has accumulated 90K Euro (90K$) of the required 100K in less than 4 weeks. As it indicates on the Website, Ton Roosendahl, father of Blender, is preparing to release the sources which should happen within the next week or so. Time for a Blender icon on /."

Who the hell sues?

[misleb]

I don't get this argument. I have never heard of anyone successfully suing Microsoft when Windows (or Exchange) crashes. Microsoft (or any software company) is not liable for their product crashing or otherwise not working and they are under no obligation to MAKE it work for you. I find it hard to believe that the Suits don't know this. Any corporate type worth his weight in gold is going to value a solution that works rather than simply having someone to point the finger at when things don't work. So, lets take "accountablility" out of the argument. Its spurious.

Lack or certifications? Who cares about certs? In this day and age, what company is going to hire just any MCSE off the streets? A stupid one. And I say let the stupid companies be stupid. They don't deserve good software. Last thing we need in the Open Source community is more stupid people making free software look bad. :-P

Yes, hiring a good tech is hard. But this isn't limited to environments with "unfamiliar software." You'd be just as hard pressed to find someone who knows anything beyond the surface of Exchange as you would in finding a person who can figure out your "unfamiliar software." Again, if your just hiring any idiot off the street with a cert, your stupid. And shouldn't even be running the company, much less putting in a new server.

-matthew

Re:Who the hell sues?

[Anonymous Coward]

if your just hiring any idiot off the street with a cert, your stupid. And shouldn't even be running the company, much less putting in a new server.

have...uh... you ever actually *worked* in corporate america? :o)

Re:Who the hell sues?

[flinkflonk]

Well, for me it would be nice if they chose a solution that works for a change. I've seen it happen again and again (and the last time it really hurt, because it was the infrastructure I built that was replaced): good, working, practical and well-performing systems are replaced with that moloch called Exchange, which some hype-believers want to throw money at. Never mind the hardware cost - so what if the working solution is running on four year old hardware, we need that multi-gigahertz monster with over a gig of RAM. Never mind the "old" solution outperforming the new, shiny Exchange server by a factor of four, even if it is running in a fifth of the memory required for Exchange. Never mind that people are not grasping the way they have to book meetings now, while the PHP-based open source solution (MRBS) didn't even have to be explained.
Sorry. I'm ranting again. But it still hurts.
BTW. in addition to what it did when it was our main mail server, the old box is now our web cache (running squid) and the dynamic DNS server needed for Active Directory. And it still hosts the mailinglists and switches every non-internal mail, while the Exchange box throws a fit everytime we try to do a mailbox-level backup. So, in the end open source wins again.

OpenCAP

[Anonymous Coward]

I will agree with you 100% on that the missing piece is a a calendar server. Cuerrently if you use any of the iCal/iCard clients (Evolution, Eudora, Outlook, Notes, & most PDAs) they should understand the data when transfered via Email. In this manner there is a working, but VERY cude networking system.

I was looking to see how the libical team were doing when I noticed that www.opencap.org has sprung into existence, and hopefully they will get further along than icapd did. This way we can break the cycle of not wanting to finalize the ical protocol without a funcional demo, and no one wanting to make a demo of a system that is not finalized.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[LlewR]

The Outlook/Exchange user experience, especially in large corporations, is the best email, calendar, and collaboration experience available today by orders of magnitude over anything other product combination out there.

The Exchange store is practically bulletproof (when it goes down, it goes down HARD, but it hardly ever goes down), and the integrated Active Directory user administration makes account administration relatively easy.

The only real administration headache I have heard about (and this is a biggie) is that backups are extremely difficult. Also, when you're running Exchange, you are completely locked into Microsoft and it's practically impossible to get off that treadmill.

I haven't tried Oracle's solution, but I haven't heard anything (good or bad) about it from anyone else either.

I WISH someone would come up with an alternative, because I have to run an Exchange server in my home office (yes, I have RedHat Linux here, too) to get the user experience and functionality that I need. I get a real kick out of using Evolution to access my Exchange email, though. Excellent work, guys!

But it doesn't exist today, and that's not going to change anytime soon. I don't even see anyone taking on this problem, or I would jump in and help them.

But beware! If Microsoft puts a Home version of Exchange on their Home Media Server with, say, 5 email accounts on it, everyone will be running Outlook and Exchange at home, too, and sharing their calendars with each other like Apple's new iCal!

It's not easy (he say's from experience!)

[Lost Spirit]

I wrote (and GPL'd) a web-based e-mail and group scheduling system called GoMail, and even though figuring out MIME types for mail were the hardest part, the group scheduling was a pain in the ars that took a looong time to get working properly.

I even integrated iCalendar support, so you could import Outlook meetings into GoMail, but that's a stopgap solution to my mind.

Ideally I'd like to be able to integrate the server side (Python, Apache, mod_python) with an API that allows Outlook to think it's an Exchange server, or at least support the new web calendaring function in Outlook (although I have NOT checked that out very much yet...).

We were never an Exchange shop, but I am (was?) certified on Domino in a previous life, and it was important to me that I only include the functions in GoMail that I saw users actually using.

Now if I could only get the menus to work properly in Mozilla....

Jakarta James

[pgoldstein]

I encourage developers interested in working on such a replacement to take a look at Jakarta James ( http://jakarta.apache.org/james ).

James is a mail server project designed on top of the Jakarta Avalon Framework. It's a rapidly developing project that is designed to provide mail (SMTP, POP3, IMAP) and other essential services (i.e. NNTP). Speaking as a committer on this project I can tell you that I would welcome a new sub-project to develop iCalendar/vCal compatible services. I think it would be an extremely valuable addition to the project.

Exchange for other then e-mail?

[nexusone]

You mean I can do more the get e-mail with it....

Re:open source in business land QWZX

[Anonymous Coward]

I also bet Microsoft would be VERY apt to sue a company that did this into the ground. Might as well paint a target on your head.

YAMB (Yet Another Microsoft Bigot). Yeah, let's just ignore the fact that Microsoft has ZERO history of suing people over technology issues (yes, they did sue Lindows over naming issues, which is a legitimate claim).

There are enough legitimate things to criticize Microsoft over that "Making Shit Up" is really not necessary.

If you want to pick on someone who's lawsuit happy, pick on Apple. Microsoft is clean on this issue.

Just a few thoughts...

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

I've been trying to do this for a couple of years. I wrote the Exchange Server Replacement HOWTO back in '99 when it looked like this might be possible very soon.

Essentially I talked about how to get IMAP/POP3/SMTP with a global Address Book and authentication and user accounts via LDAP. I've been watching this space with a lot of interest since then. The lack of updates to the HOWTO should give you some idea of what's changed, not much.

As far as calendaring goes, here's the skinny: CAP is the current IETF draft, and has been for some time, although when it will be finalized is anybody's guess. Why aren't there any shared calendaring servers? Cause there's no shared calendaring standard. You can get asynchronous calendaring in IMAP by having a decent IMAP client and using a Calendar folder, but that's hardly as feature rich as Outlook/Exchange. libical has kept up with the draft but has no server process. It's used in Evolution and the Mozilla Calendar client. So we have calendaring on the client side, but nothing on the server side. From what I've been able to discern, nobody wants to write a CAP based server till CAP is finalized, since it's gone through too many changes during the drafting process already.

The other problem is the outlook clients. The way Bynari and OpenMail (Contact) have gotten around the proprietary Exchange RPC call stuff, is to write a MAPI driver for Outlook that intercepts the client calls and sends them to the server in whatever proprietary method they might have. Integrating Outlook clients will either require a server side project on the level of Samba or a client side MAPI replacement that uses CAP, unless M$ has a change of heart and decides to support it.

In order to replace the functionality of Exchange you would need, a Calendar Server (none exists in the Open Source world), a searchable document share (WebDav on Apache can't index M$Office documents AFAIK), searchable email w/ public folders and mailing lists (Cyrus + majordomo or Sympa could feasibly work), a global address book (OpenLDAP).

Now,the real kicker, it has to all be integrated, single point of management and have a web interface for users to boot. There are a million and one PHP/Perl based web interfaces to one piece of this or another. However, trying to integrate all of this is impossible. Why?

For starters, everyone seems to want to do LAMP, as if these apps all live alone and users want to log into a seperate web interface for each function then cut and paste data between web pages and not be able to search everything as one data repository, if they can search at all.

LDAP has been available for years, and the guys at OpenLDAP have been there to solve a lot of these problems for years. Quit using an RDBMS for everything, for data that applications should share, use LDAP, stuff like authentication and application user information. LDAP has seemingly been ignored by a lot of open source programmers. Evolution's LDAP support has flat out been broken, everytime I've tried it. Mozilla's works but lacks some functionality. Granted LDAP takes about as much knowledge as learning an RDBMS to understand, but ther are currently about 3 decent LDAP management tools (lape, Directory Administrator and GQ). With LDAP you can essentially have a database schema that all apps can program to, cause it's standardized (inetOrgPerson, etc.)

Other apps seem to be developed without a thought to integrating with other apps. I tried to integrate Sympa, OpenCA, cyrus, sendmail and OpenLDAP with a custom web front end about a year ago. I paid the salaries of myself and 2 other developers for about 8 months, trying to do this. It was a failure, especially in the cases of the Perl pieces. The CPAN Perl libraries didn't do LDAPv3 extensions, isolating code in most of these projects to use a different front end was hopeless and providing an interface to manage the configuration files for the servers was a lot of work. We got about 80% done before I sold the company (and codebase). We had originally planned to GPL our work then sell support and customization, with a calendaring solution and MAPI driver for outlook in the 2.0 feature set.

Most of the frustration we had and was due to using other people's code that was not extensible or modularized. If I had to do it over again, I'd do it in Java on JBoss (esp considering the BEEP servlets JSR for CAP and the great LDAP support via JNDI).

I don't think that developer's of various open source projects need to have some overreaching design group (a la GNOME or KDE) to implement these projects with integration in mind. There are plenty of standards already out there. It just takes some good design and up front research (something I've done a lot of) and thinking about how other developers and users might want to use this stuff for their projects.

Now, I don't want to sound like I'm whining about my own failures, I should have made sure we had enough capital to do it all from scratch. I'm more concerned about our ability to compete with the Exchange servers and Lotus Notes of the world and have a stable, customizable platform that we own. Quit rewriting the same stuff over and over and build new stuff... innovate, be creative, push the industry forward.

There is a glimmer of hope, the Open Source Java community is doing fantastic stuff. I've never seen more modularization, code reuse, integration and faster development in any environment or community. JBoss really takes the lead, the feature list is amazing and I've used it in several corporate environments where it beat out commercial J2EE app servers. JBoss pulls from Ant, XDoclet, Jetty, Tomcat, JacORB, Axis, HyperSonic SQL and a bunch of other projects. Struts and the Java commons and taglib projects at Jakarta are another example of really cool work.

The point is, it all works together. End users don't care if you wrote it in Perl, PHP, Python, C or Java... Just that it makes their lives easier, if we want Open Source to get more places we have to make sure we can deliver on this. Considering most of us make a living programming, supporting or administering networked systems, which would you rather have, propietary crap or really good open source stuff? So next time your designing that project, or writing some more code think about how you can make integration easier. Documentation helps too... we shouldn't have to know fifteen languages and countless codebases to get stuff working together. Most of us specialize in a couple of things.

Well, that's been my experience and is currently my struggle, so hope you get something out of this... BTW, I'd loved to be proved wrong on any pessimism I may currently have.

Re:Just a few thoughts...

[Stinking Pig]

(WebDav on Apache can't index M$Office documents AFAIK)

Zope can IIRC, and has a WebDAV interface to boot.

Re:Just a few thoughts...

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

And now integrate Zope's searching with the cyrus message store and make those documents available in public shared folders as well. Not to mention revision control of said documents.

All of the features can be done seperatly with various bits and pieces of open source software, but they rarely integrate together seemlessly, especially without some inelegant hack on top. Plus, the more you add stuff like this, the more languages and coding styles you wind up supporting just to get it to work.

This is why M$ is so successful, it integrates and fufills 80% of users needs, even if it is crap. The users don't care about security or elegance of design, they just blame the poor admin if it doesn't work all the time.

Re:Just a few thoughts...

[jhml]

This has been an intensive issue in my firm (law firm, 120 users, two locations).

We avoided Exchange (there are all kinds of plusses and minuses there).

For email we use iPlanet's messaging server but are in the middle of switching over to Cyrus+postfix.

Our email clients are mostly netscape with some mozilla/outlook/outlook express/eudora. We plan wholesale conversion to Mozilla.

Many users prefer to use a web interface for email. Inital feedback on IMP has been good.

For a global addressbook we use Rolodap http://rolodap.sourceforge.net which is LDAP based. Rolodap has a web interface for searching, word processor use, data entry, etc. and also provides integrated autocompletion services to all the emailers we use. We also can extend its searches to include the local University (also LDAP) and Bigfoot if the sought address is not in our own database.

We use a central employee LDAP server (not the same one we use for Rolodap--rolodap has 35000 contacts in it) to manage email/mailboxes,web access, etc from a single interface. Though we are a touch "broken" now because of the conversion to Cyrus we will shortly be back to the goal of adding, changing, delting users, forwarding email, etc. through a single central interface. LDAP is our vehicle for that.

We like LDAP. A good open standard has all kinds of collateral benefits.

We use Steltor as our calendar -- calendaring is an important app for us and we are worried about its purchase by Oracle. LDAP controls Steltor as well.

Our documents are organized by client so the client network directories are what we use for shared files. We are about to add a means to email documents to the client file using Postfix and a little home grown app. Sharing files outside the client directories would cause us some concerns about whether we would meet our professional needs of maintaining a coherent client file.

A few observations:

First, we do not necessarily want a "one server does it all" solution. In our experience that compromises security, reliability, and redundancy. It kills flexibility, if for instance, to chnage your calendar you have to change your email server and addressbook. We much prefer to keep functions separate so long as we can have a rational presentation to the user.

Second, our users largely prefer web based interfaces if they have high performance. They find them simpler to use and more understandable. We find it simple to do "cheap" superficial integration by just giving them a master web page. Web based also provides an easy way for us to do remote access.

So for us, the key to replacing Steltor, if the Oracle acquisition doesn't work out, is a shared calendar that offers the same features, has good performance, integrates via LDAP. I do not know of an OSS app that does this.

I think both we and the original enquirer are looking for the same thing. A shared OSS calendaring server. We have email, contacts/addressbook, shared files, covered. We don't, outside of Steltor, have calendaring covered.

The original enquirer wanted calendaring that worked in Outlook. Browser based would be OK with us.

yes, I have looked at phpGroupware and its ilk and at SUSE Mail Server. All of them however provide me with too much integrated together or have deficiencies in the features/performance side of things.

Re:Just a few thoughts...

[MrWorf]

Having developed a commercial webbased Calendar/Contact system in PHP, I can only agree that too few applications out there are aware that we don't want to logon to each subpart of a groupware system. It should all be integrated. We ran into the same problem when the customers wanted to integrate our system into theirs (when we designed the system, it was for internal use, so we didn't care about billing/authentication that much), so that became quite a nightmare to add afterwards.

A few points on how to better succeed with groupware:

• Plugin architecture. VERY IMPORTANT, since the system most likely will evolve many times and you don't want to rewrite/patch it all the time.
• Plugin authentication. Never assume anything about how to authenticate a user.
• Modulelize (is there such a word?) your application, thus minimizing the risk of bugs when editing parts of it.
• Abstract database access. As with authentication, don't assume everyone runs mySQL
• Session managment. You must be able to run your own session or/and make use of a provided session mechanism when interacting with other systems. Or it will be useless (see authentication)

There is probably alot more to be said, but these are the ones that spring to mind immediatly when writing this.

Last but not least, do your homework. A plugin authentication must work with LDAP/mySQL/HTTP or even pre-loggedin users (thus, no new question about login) or it will not do. Again, never assume anything :)

My personal experience and work has lead me to think twice about undertaking such a huge project again. Atleast, I will try and avoid doing the same mistakes again, and I hope you'll learn something from it too. Don't get me wrong though... it was a fun thing to do (and, incidentally, my first major work in PHP, so it might explain some of the shortcomings... or so I keep telling myself ;))

Re:Just a few thoughts...

[thingy]

It sounds like you have had a lot of knowlege experience and lesson learned on this have you ever thought of starting something on source forge. If you started something on source forge where you go after one feature at a time (each being a different application to lessen dependencies like one of the guys/gals said below) other people might join and get this thing done. If you make everything module and pluggable by design more people could pick which features they could use.

Of course I wasn't sure from your post if you were trying to get a product that you could sell so I am not sure if you want to do that. I don't know all the capabilities of the exchange server I just know about email and calendaring but if someone started something I would help out anything to get linux and other open source programs a better chance.

Exchange gives us some leverage... ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the heck would we want to replace exchange?
I work for a large department of a gov't in NA.
We are a unionized shop - though not all of us can strike - the guys running the mail servers with me are not designated (therefore we could strike once the legal conditions are met).
By using exchange servers for all our corporate email we have an environment that is pretty much guaranteed to crap out every two or three days unless it gets TLC and a few reboots.
The may not do anything really useful with their email - but all the bigwigs in my org seem to think they really need it.

There are no solutions because there is no problem

[Alex Belits]

Really, what does Exchange do other than implementing known things (mail, calendar, etc.) using its proprietary protocol? Cyrus is superior to Exchange in everything that it does, and the only thing that it doesn't do is calendar.

There are a lot of calendar applications, however the main reason why they aren't used widely is BECAUSE PEOPLE WHO WRITE SOFTWARE, HATE, HATE, HATE BEING ON THE CLOCK, especially when it involves "meetings", and especially when it allows others to force their schedules on them.

You have to look at it from an End User's POV

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's face it, no users really care what goombah or gizmo is running the show behind the scenes. They just want the ability to open notes and calendars to look busy, and an added bonus of not return-recipting until they want to.
All you would really have to do is create a sweet-easy to use client with some user-catching feature like greeting cards or something to convert the masses. The back-end stuff would follow.
The Client always drives the innovation.
Someone needs to come up with a feature that is so compelling that they are willing to suffer the shortcomings. What that will be is the million dollar question.
Notes? Boy the GUI sucks rocks, but gee their business flow processes sure are nice.
Exchange? Yeah Yeah it gets attacked by everybody's virus lab, but gee the calendar sure is nice.
Pine? umm gee well, it kinda works. Sendmail? Wow look at all the options, gee you look really cool if you can get it to work, and talk about job security, but the end-user (see -> Bill Payer) could give a rat's behind for an open source crusade.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[NanoGator]

Exchange has it's plusses and minuses. I like how easy it is to set up, I like how easy it is to maintain, and it's pretty easy to make the features it has useful.

However, there are two issues with it that bother the hell out of me: (Note: This is Exchange 5.5, not the latest one. Nobody where I work is interested in paying gobs more when there's free stuff out there.)

1.) The copy we have is limited to 25 licenses. This means that 25 connections are allowed at one time. More than that and Exchange punts you. "Sorry, you have to wait until a connection is open."

The IMAP protocol is particularly attractive, so it's used a lot. But it counts as 2 connections because it makes one for inbound and one for outbound. So you can have 12.5 simultaneous connections before Exchange says "Sorry, give me more money."

What makes it worse is that IMAP is rather persistent, as opposed to POP3 that just hops in and hops out. My company of 19 had to tighten control over who uses what and when over it. This alone is enough to make us move away from MS.

2.) You cannot uninstall Exchange 5.5. I boogered up the install once and had to reinstall WinNT because it wouldn't give me the option to remove Exchange and start over. Maybe a little more poking and prodding could have solved it without a rebuild, but I was in emergency 'We need it yesterday!!' mode and didn't have the keys to the company Tardis.

Exchange gets points for being very easy to use and run, but it is a huge moneypit. If I were running on less than 15 people, I'd be fine with it. However, for more than that I'm ready to learn how Linux works and build a server with that.

Notes replication is incredible

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it. Know of nothing else that comes close.

But their UI is butt ugly. It improved slightly in R5, but not by much (and that was the last version I used.)

Started using notes around the end of version 3. As much as I am a fan of their code, they need big help in the UI department.

Oh, and sametime kicks ass.

Re:The reason to run Exchange QWZX

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd fire the bastard that bought exchange here. I work for a large investment bank and we had several multiday email outages over the last year. Must have cost the firm millions.

Yeah, that makes sense. Fire the person who bought the software, rather than the person who set it up and maintains it. Did it ever occur to you that it's YOUR administrator's fault, not Microsoft's?

Nah, that couldn't be it. It couldn't be the incompetence of YOUR company's personnel.

hunger site is a scam

[SethJohnson]

FYI: The hunger site is a scam. I suggest you remove that link from your .sig. That company is profitting off the good will of people trying to help others. If you want to encourage social action, I recommend that you substitute a link to a genuine non-profit organization like the Bastrop Family Crisis Center.

Cordially,

Seth

There's a thought for IBM

[starseeker]

I see many people here aren't real fond of Lotus, but what would happen if IBM really decided to shoot the whole works on Linux and release Lotus as open source on Linux/Unix platforms? Here are some points for and against it - I suppose only IBM really knows how they would balance out.

For:

1) Would be a huge boost to their Linux effort, and might convince a lot of companies to get a Linux solution from IBM.

2) As open source, people could finally start to address all the things they don't care for in Lotus. Perhaps a license could be arrived at which retained for IBM exclusive rights to distribute binaries for non-open platforms, and include on those platforms innovations submitted by the open developers. For open platforms such as Linux and BSD, full availability.

3) As a free and open solution, Lotus might begin to do some serious damage to that end of Microsoft's business, and at the same time focus more IT departments interest on IBM.

4) Support contracts could still be offered, and in large scale operations would probably still be bought. Even with an open Lotus, IBM is still the logical supporter for the programs.

Against:

1) IBM wouldn't get any direct license fee income from Lotus on Linux.

2) Legal issues with releasing the code could be considerable.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[Rascalson]

And I run twenty of them and have a stronge urge to call you a liar.

Oh come on! Exchange scaling?

[consumer]

3. The Replacement must be able to scale to 10's of thousands of users, in geographically diverse locations.

I've never seen an Exchange installation that can scale to hundreds of users in one location without huge amounts of downtime, both planned and not. On the other hand, I've seen Unix-based mail servers that just work with no problems for years.

If someone just provided a calendar sharing system to go with the strongly supported POP, IMAP, and LDAP we already have, I think that would be enough for most companies to switch.

Reverse Engineer?

[smoon]

Is there some overwhelming reason that the server portion (i.e.: the communications) couldn't be reverse-engineered to make a samba-style "bug for bug" compatible "exchange server". Once the protocol was figured out then people could continue to use outlook. Backend might then be SQL server of choice + Sendmail/qmail/whatever + a webmail product (squirrel mail?) + ... you get the point.

Ideally this mythical product would support both the proprietary exchange server protocol(s) and some open protocol that other clients could interoperate on. Then Exchange/Outlook could compete on features & function rather than being the only game in town.

Re:Reverse Engineer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there some overwhelming reason that the server portion (i.e.: the communications) couldn't be reverse-engineered to make a samba-style "bug for bug" compatible "exchange server".

The biggest problem with this, is that there are too many bugs to program, and I for one, hate intentionally writing bugs.

Right under your nose!

[Anonymous Coward]

Basicly, you are looking for a Email-enabled database application.
You could live with a web browser interface, but it would be best if it could be used thru outlook.

It needs to support users and groups, and direct messages to specific users in diverse locations. And scale from 10's to 10,0000's.

How is Slashdot or SourceForge all that different? Perl/PHP support all the I/O functions you are requesting very easily. The only thing really missing is caleldaring, and that is simply another database app.
Mirroring, load balancing, backup are already taken care of for sure. Frankly, I would find a forum based system that included email more powerfull than something like exchange. The mass mess of emails back and forth is out-of-hand in most companies anyway. It would improve corporate usage and also people's manors.

Just a thought...

No, and to the Wannabe's, Put up or Shut up

[LibertineR]

Disclaimer: Former MS Employee

Not a troll, just the truth. First, there isnt and never has been a functional replacement for the Exchange/Outlook combination. Wanna know why?

Because its DAMMED HARD to build. If it were a no/brainer, you would have a dozen choices by now. The fact is that all these OSS wannabe coders bitching about Exchange are in no position technically or financially to replace it, no matter how much bitching about it they do.

I was in the Exchange group, back in 98, and I can tell you that as bad as Exchange is, it is still better than anything else approaching its functionality, and all these people know it. Dont like Exchange? Go fuck with simple SMTP, and shutup. Hell, I remember when Lotus Notes installs had to cross their fingers every time they sent an attachment. Groupware? Kiss my ass. People dont work that way.

The reason that Exchange/Outlook are #1, is because they do the most things that people want done, more OFTEN and naturally than its competition. Is it perfect? Hell no, but it is BETTER than everything else out there.

Microsoft wont say it, but Exchange's reputation is more the fault of brain-dead MCSE's than anything else. It is Microsoft's fault that they made the product approachable to any idiot that could get their hands on the software, but the fact remains that Exchange is the best Messeging/Calendar product on the market, and if anyone things its easy to beat, SHUT UP and BUILD IT!!!

Work began this week on the CAP server

[jdclucidly]

As indicated by this Mozilla status update, work on the CAP/Calender server has begun and a preliminary build is already available for OSX.

Re:Oh come on! Exchange scaling?

[DigitalCH]

Then you have never seen a real exchange installation. We have 65,000 users in 50+ locations around the world.

Just because you work with incompetents doesn't mean the product doesn't scale.

You are wrong about a simple calendaring system being enough... Once you have really used Outlook/Exchange in a business setting you realize that it beats every other client out there hands down.

Another thing you forgot is that exchange can do some far out things like host Vmail... this is huge from a business standpoint...

Don't write a client; use a Web interface

[mcstout]

I'm seeing people try to replicate Exchange's protocols so that a replacement server app can use Outlook. Wouldn't it be wiser to use a web interface; the mail part's already been done for Qmail and Sendmail, to my knowledge. That's most of what Exchange/Outlook users want. the shared folders, calander and address book features are all that remains, and probably some of that's been done. The Web interface lets macs, Linux/Unix and Amiga's be clients, and you don't have to care who has Outlook, MS-Office or even Windoze at that point. Seems obvious to me, but I don't see it suggested. Maybe there's a reason why it shouldn't be done that everyone else understands but me.

Re:Don't write a client; use a Web interface

[mla_anderson]

The reason a web interface is not easily done is PDAs. People want to be able to sync with a PDA and there's not a good way to do that with a web only interface.

Re:open source in business land QWZX

[Shaleh]

While I may bash Microsoft given the chance this was not one of those times.

My guess is that to 100% implement an Exchange replacement you will have to reimplement some proprietary Microsoft technology. There is a good chance you could be legally attacked for patent violations, trade secrets, etc.

Exchange is a cash cow for Microsoft. Not only do they make money on it they make money on the bundle as well keeping users locked into their OS. A big reason NT shows up in corporate environments is to house Exchange. I have seen companies nearly 100% Unix that had a NT machine or two just for items like Exchange. If you honestly believe that Microsoft would not put 100% of their muscle against a true competitor in that market then you are clearly blind. This is not bigotry this a reflection of their past actions.

Finally, some common sense on this thread

[LibertineR]

You got it 100% right.

Very easy to design a replacement, but impossible (for OSS) to agree on how to code it. It will never happen. NEVER.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[4of12]

Two real world minuses of Outlook/Exchange in MyCorporateWorld are:

• Practically, it's hard to afford giving users enough space in their inboxes. They cannot be trained well enough to delete mail or to move it to other folders. Of course, it would help some if they didn't attach huge Powerpoint files to their messages.
• After using Exchange for several years and ironing out the initial glitches, there's still instances where "messages go missing" that users were certain they had saved, maybe in one of those other folders.

I still use Unix mbox files for incoming mail along with MH and glimpse for searching and haven't run into any problems with insufficient inbox space or missing messages. But I like a GUI for casual use as well as a terse command line when the conditions demand it.

Outlook users generally enjoy a reasonably well-designed GUI and integrated calendering features that's hard to beat.

I'm going to try Evolution in the near future. I'm wondering if the Bynari connector will give me a pretty good interface to the Exchange server if I need to use it?

Surprised noone feels insulted

[VortexVertigo]

This AskSlashdot is trying to demand code from the Open Source community. That is rude in my opinion. If he wants a copy of Exchange and Outlook, I expect him to put the effort into it. Learn to code and then start a project. Demanding that people who code on things for enjoyment start working on something else just because you need a free alternative to a costly product, that is arrogant as well as rude. From the sounds of it, he wouldn't even like to contribute to the project only use it.

Re:Surprised noone feels insulted

[LibertineR]

Damn!

I was going to say just what you said(only meaner)but I thought for sure people would think I was just trolling.

Re:Surprised noone feels insulted

[slittle]

Why does the open source community have the right to be insulted? They continually insult Microsoft users for their "choice" in software, crapping on endlessly about the superiority of OSS. Well, someone's finally calling you on it - if it's so fucking superior, PROVE IT.

So, to the OSS community, take your pick: a) write the apps people really want, b) STFU & leave everyone else alone.

We are working on an Exchange replacement!

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Check out the Citadel project. This started as a BBS server, but it's gradually being built up into a groupware system. We've spent the last couple of years building up a solid messaging architecture and a fast, efficient server architecture. Right now it does IMAP, POP3, and SMTP natively (no tedious mucking about with Sendmail or Cyrus), and it's got a web interface, too. It has a single-instance, transactional data store. It has a pluggable, extensible architecture. And one of our design tenets is that it must be easy to install.

No calendaring yet, I'm afraid. We're still finishing up the server foundation. As soon as there are some decent calendar clients out there to test CAP (Calendar Access Protocol) with, we'll start building the calendar server.

I am absolutely serious about this project. This is not vaporware.

Re:We are working on an Exchange replacement!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's prety much the problem isn't it? O.S. really is always a brides maid, never a bride. 99% of everything is perpetually 1.0. Mail is the least of Exchanges functionality and calandaring is second least. It's an entire enterprise communications and collaberation system. I'm not sure any one writing O.S. really knows it's heights and breadths. It is probably 5 years ahead of any O.S. offerings in this area.

Just tell us when it's done and is a one for one match to what is available now. This always 5 years behind commercial software thing is rather old (and getting older)

Re:We are working on an Exchange replacement!

[pondlife]

Honestly, forget "easy to install" - hopefully you install once and spend months/years/decades running the software. Ongoing admin costs are much more important...

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had very good luck with simple, but
unorthodox designs..that is jigsaw solutions..
A webmail client, an ldap based address and (very basic) calendaring system and , yes, catering to outlook users, but only with
pop3.
I'm glad that I never have worked in a larger
shop. We were using groupwise at one time, which I liked quite a bit..none of the users did..
Go figure.

(OT)Trademarks are adjectives

[yerricde]

Also, they are addicted to their palms & blackberries (or is it blackberrys as blackberry is a TM)

Trademarks such as Palm(tm) and Blackberry(tm) are adjectives. To pluralize a trademark, pluralize the generic noun that follows it: Palm device becomes Palm devices; Blackberry device becomes Blackberry device; Microsoft Exchange server becomes Microsoft Exchange servers; Macintosh computer becomes Macintosh computers; Pizza Hut pizza becomes Pizza Hut pizzas; Slim-Fast shake becomes Slim-Fast shakes.

BillGroupwork

[tader]

Some time ago I came accros this link, I havn't read the details, but it seems to be a free exchange server implementation... Maybe there's a catch somewhere... ;) Have phun, Thomas.

The link:
http://www.billworkgroup.org/billworkgroup/ home

Re:open source in business land QWZX

[Anonymous Coward]

you will have to reimplement some proprietary Microsoft technology.

Reimplementing (key word) technology is perfectly legal.

There is a good chance you could be legally attacked for patent violations, trade secrets, etc.

You can only get legally attacked for violating a trade secret if you are in a position to know the trade secret and then give it out. Reverse engineering has nothing to do with trade secrets.

As for patents, it's theoretically possible that you might step on a technology patent, but highly unlikely that there would be something that couldn't be coded around or differently.

Exchange is a cash cow for Microsoft. Not only do they make money on it they make money on the bundle as well keeping users locked into their OS.

MS/Office is a much bigger cash cow. How many lawsuits has Microsoft launched over import/export filters? That would be a big fat ZERO.

If you honestly believe that Microsoft would not put 100% of their muscle against a true competitor in that market then you are clearly blind.

My eyes are wide open, thank you. It's YOUR eyes that are blacked out by your paranoia and irrational ravings about Microsoft.

This is not bigotry this a reflection of their past actions.

And as I continue to point out, THERE ARE NO PAST ACTIONS. You have ZERO history to back your point. Microsoft has NEVER used the lawsuit as a weapon against people who make workalike products.

From A[ccess] to Z[ip]

[yerricde]

the free software community doesn't have an equivalent to

Microsoft Access (gui + form builder, not just Jet)

Replace the Jet backend with MySQL, and replace the form builder with any tool for building HTML forms. Stick some PHP glue in the middle, throw it all on an Apache server, and you're set.

ESRI ArcGIS (Grass doesn't count)

In a killer app discussion, it's wise to state why the Grass package does not perform GIS to your standards.

WinZip

Last time I used GNOME (about 1.2 or so), it had functionality equivalent to Microsoft Windows ME and Windows XP operating systems' Compressed Folders feature.

Re:From A[ccess] to Z[ip]

[Anonymous Coward]

Same AC. I'll concede the point on Winzip.

Microsoft Access (gui + form builder, not just Jet)

Replace the Jet backend with MySQL, and replace the form builder with any tool for building HTML forms. Stick some PHP glue in the middle, throw it all on an Apache server, and you're set.

This is still a lot of work unless the available technologies have changed when I wasn't looking. To duplicate Access's RAD features, the HTML-form building tool will need to contact the database and get a list of all the tables and field names; currently, I don't know of any that are designed that way. That glue in the middle has to be written means that there is currently no equivalent drop-in product, and it's cheaper for a business to spend an extra $100 per seat for Access than it is for them to build one.

In a killer app discussion, it's wise to state why the Grass package [uni-hannover.de] does not perform GIS to your standards.

True. Grass is equivalent to the basic Arc+Info package without the ArcGIS applications that have been developed within the past few years. ArcMap brings GIS into the domain of "normal users", that is, users with days rather than months of training. Grass's GUI is based on the concept of creating widgets for the program's command-line functions instead of creating widgets for the user to run whatever functions are necessary. As a result, Grass requires a Grass specialist just to get it to draw a map while ArcGIS is being used by police officers and such people who are by no means computer experts.

Re:From A[ccess] to Z[ip]

[johnnyb]

Actually, you can do this with OpenOffice and MySQL. There is a HOWTO about it somewhere, but it takes about two minutes to install the driver.

I've been thinking.....

[Alaryss]

I've been thinking about this alot lately. If I knew more about programming I would've started a project like this. I thought it'd be awesome to make a mail server that's as easy to set up and use as apache. I say apache because I like the idea of being able to easily install new perl modules. If someone could develop a mail server project foloowing the same structure, I think alot of people would move to it (as well as develop new mods for it).

Open source no

[ToasterTester]

HP had an Unix solution I believe called OpenMail. They killed it off a year or so ago. That only leaves Sun's iPlanet, it does what Exchange does and more.

Why there is no open source solution is an interesting question. I think its because it doesn't interest them. Programmers who donate their time want to write code that is interesting to them. I guess writing a Exchange replacement doesn't turn them on like a kernel, compiler, graphics, or ???

Re:Open source no

[MrChuck]

iPlanet just whaled on their staffing by big layoffs.

And they dropped Linux support (for LDAP at least) and are expected to drop other non-Sun platforms.

Sendmail has a high performance IMAP server, webmail, directory server, but I don't know about replacing the Contact management that Outbreak has.

OpenSource? Well you can kludge together stuff, (cyrus, calendars, webmail, sendmail) but there's a lot of unpleasant work (MAPI support) that tends not to be trendy enough for people to tackle Open Source.

And that's the key: If you can replace exchange without replacing what the users see and believe they need, then you win. And you can start to replace the desktop end later; without panicking the users.

Open Source Equivilents

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out these projects, one of which is aiming to offer an 'email server in a box' like solution for Linux - designed with simplicity in mind for NT admins looking to migrate:
http://rhems.sourceforge.net/

Re:open source in business land QWZX

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't they go after Stacker for reverse engineering the boot loader? Didn't they threaten the Samba project at least once? Didn't they patent an essential bit of CSS and then point out they did so ("decommoditize protocols" indeed)?

Adobe is the M$ of publishing

[yerricde]

10 LET M$ = "Microsoft"

Since when was Photoshop a Microsoft product?

Adobe Photoshop is available only for Microsoft platforms. Apple's Mac OS X is at least partially a Microsoft platform because it comes with bundled IE and because Microsoft owns (or owned?) several million dollars worth of non-voting Apple Computer Inc stock.

Another view: Adobe is the Microsoft of publishing software.

However, if you are happy with the feature set of Adobe Photoshop Elements (a $100 Photoshop package without high-end output capability which should be enough for most of those who do no work in print), you might also be happy with The GIMP, which is also available for Windows.

why isn't there an open source solution yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the kind of people who write Open Source Software are smart enough not to use Exchange, huh?

Its being done...

[alexborges]

Well, take vpopmail/vmailmgr+phpgroupware+axisgroupware+mozil la+ldap+mailman, install it and you have an almost ready, PalmSync enabled, collaboration featured web groupware suite.

They are all projects in very active development, i know of medium to large enterprises installing this kind of setup and working very fine with it, thank you. I cannot disclose right now who those enterprises are, but they will come forth as soon as the deployments are stable.

The projects ive mentioned even have some methods/scripts and knowledge to migrate from Exchange to this setup.

Give it time, by the end of the year, this combined suite of Free Software projects will have a fully enabled intranet collaboration suite.

Is it as easy to install, configure and administrate as exchange?? NO, its not. But it saves a bundle of dough (pays well too).

So, sit tight, contribute to this projects, and you will see.

Now, on the other hand. If you dont need windows on the desktop, evolution is a GREAT groupware suite supporting icalendar and other open protocols which include the sending/receiving of calendar data, tasks and contacts from one evo to the other. Of course the damned thing is b0rken in debian for which some people should be shot or...err... helped or whatever....

Use Cygwin!

[yerricde]

Where's Bourne shell??? Where's vi, sed, and egrep???

Here.

How do I get GUI applications to display over the network???

With this.

How do I read a PostScript file???

With this.

I know that many of these things can be done on Windows eventually

Red Hat Cygwin. The future is now.

No, Red Hat is not paying me to plug Cygwin.

Re:Use Cygwin!

[Frank of Earth]

I agree. Use Cgywin. It's so damn easy to install, you'll be amazed.

What I do is start up ssh. Create a session into localhost that is configured to run by typing scmd [super cmd] and I'm into my workstation, with all the wonderful unix utils.

Everytime I *have* to be in a cmd prompt in NT, I feel so constricted!

Re:Use Cygwin!

[pmz]

Use Cygwin!

I have heard of Cygwin and have used the MKS toolkit. While these do a good job of making Windows feel more like UNIX, they are another piece of 3rd-party software that must be installed to make Windows useful (from my point of view). This certainly isn't bad in small offices, but it is likely that such toolkits would be spotty in large installations.

Also, many traditional Windows users are totally numb towards such toolkits and will continue to use whatever they are used to. I learned this the hard way after writing platform-indpendent Makefiles to work with MKS Make and a couple versions of UNIX--not one Windows user used them (they just continued to use their IDEs or whatever). I have learned that no amount of quality code, documentation, and advocacy will sway people who simply don't want to learn something slightly different from what they already know.

I guess my point is that there really is a philosophical divide between Windows and UNIX. There will always be people who simply won't try nor like the alternatives, no matter how attractively they are presented. Trying to make one environment behave like the other (UNIX-like things for Windows; Windows-like things for UNIX) just doesn't always work out as well as planned.

Outlook IMAP support is broken

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a bunch of users using Outlook 2000/2002 with our UofW IMAP server. There is a problem with Outlook accessing large IMAP folders over a fast (100baseT) network connection. It tends to hang or slow to a crawl more often than not. Not sure what the exact issue is but the only solution I've found is to slow down the network connection. Outlook in IMAP mode is much more stable over a 802.11b, dial-up, or VPN connection.

Now Outlook Express on the other hand doesn't suffer from this problem. In fact, as much as it pains me to say it, Outlook Express is the most stable windows IMAP client available. (though in all fairness I havn't given Mozilla a serious test yet.) OE does have a bug which manifests itself in Headers being downloaded but the bodies not being available. This is eaisily avoided by not using the "send/receive" button (you don't really need it).

Emacs?

[yerricde]

Proprietary (especially box shifted) software tends to go for a monolithic throw in everything including the kitchen sink type of approach, whereas open source tends to go for a more modular and structured design.

Most rules have an exception, and it is Emacs.

Re:Oh come on! Exchange scaling?

[consumer]

The last three companies I've worked at had constant problems with Exchange. The users would gladly have swapped it for something else with simple, reliable IMAP mail if they could have just kept their scheduling. Your experience at one company does not change the fact that many companies have problems with Exchange.

Exchange Replacement == Teamware for Linux

[ckm]

There is actually a really, really nice Exchange replacement called Teamware.

It's made by Fujitsu, and runs on Linux, Solaris and NT. It has a really good web client, and fat (desktop resident) clients for WinX.

It does calendering, email, forums, file sharing and syncs across multiple sites. Directory services use X400/LDAP.

It's really cheap compared to Exchange and you can talk to it via IMAP, NNTP and, in version 6.0, webdav.

Check it out at www.teamware.com.

Chris.

Re:Not a monolithic beast, but what about componen

[Todd AvErth]

Please excuse me for being rather incompetent myself, but I do use ASP on linux rather effectively. SunONE ASP server (formerly Chili!soft ASP) is a rather nice ASP server used in a number of *nix webhosting environments.

I agree that it would be nice to improve Samba. I've actually considered dealing with some of the password issues myself, but, being incompetent, I probably would do a horrible job. Even so, for most windows users simply accessing a Samba share, there isn't an issue. It's the linux samba clients and domain server functionality that could be improved.

As for the Exchange replacement, I suspect that a peer-to-peer networked calandering solution would be the way to go. I'd rather control my own calander thank you very much, and then I don't have to deal with a single point of failure taking out everything. Then again, people much smarter than I have been thinking about this stuff for years, so what do I know.

Re:why using MS standard makes life easy for corps

[Anonymous Coward]

One reason is training costs and time. Virtually everyone you might hire has some experience with Office tools. It was probably on their PC at home and in their high school. Then they got more experience at college. Certainly, people you'd be hiring from other corporations will know it. Ditto for hiring temporary workers, which is a major part of the workforce for lots of corps.

So, if you use MS, you can have any recruit, temp or whomever just sit down and use the PC. If you use something else, you'll have to put your people through training, you'll have to pay more to hire specialized temps, etc. This really is a big deal.

And, don't say that the UI differences are minor. I was part of a team migrating a large bank from OS/2 and Lotus to Windows and Office, and it was amazing what a big deal subtle differences in the UI were. And it only went relatively quickly because most people had used Office applications at other jobs or at home. Going the other way would have been a nightmare.

Most people don't think in abstract terms like, "Now I will start my mail application, view my inbox and forward a message to fred with an attachment", then translate those steps into the specific functions that implement them in a particular application. Many users think of it in terms of, "I click the gold-and-white 'O' icon, click the word "inbox", press that button o the right, go to the Tools menu, click such and such button when a dialog that looks just so appears," and so on. They are remembering sequences of clicks and keystrokes, not sequences of actions.

A version of Outlook that was identical in function but with menus arranged differently, different names for actions, look of diaglogs changed, etc would require a significant training program. A new application with similar capabilities but different ways of implementing them and a different look and feel would be a huge step for a large company.

Been done. Ooops!! That was Microsoft too! (OWA)

[LibertineR]

Seriously though, check out OWA(Outlook Web Access) to see the emplementation, if you havent already.

Again, it is the server handling all these messages, that is going to take years to design, code and test, no matter what kind of interface you want to put in front of it. Frankly, were Microsoft to get stupid and provide OWA clients for other platforms, the game would be over.

No chance of that happening, though.

A big problem in building an Exchange Server replacement, is that you end up with the same inherent security challenges that Exchange has. RPC's alone are enough to gag a maggot. Now try sticking all that on a web server, with the Calendaring, Authentication, and other processes, give it 4 9's of uptime, and when you(and your 100-person coding team) are done, I'll be dammed if you dont try to make some money from it. It will NEVER happen. Use Exchange.

Re:No, and to the Wannabe's, Put up or Shut up

[ryanvm]

The reason that Exchange/Outlook are #1, is because they do the most things that people want done, more OFTEN and naturally than its competition.

Bullshit. Exchange is #1 because Office (and hence Outlook) is #1. Nothing else.

The only thing difficult about making an Exchange replacement is the technical (and legal) difficulty of deciphering MS' proprietary protocols. If the Justice Department made MS disclose that interface you'd see Exchange's marketshare drop overnight.

Hell, I remember when Lotus Notes installs had to cross their fingers every time they sent an attachment.

Hmmm, I remember when MS shops had to reboot their Exchange servers nightly to avoid lockups. Oh wait, people still have to do that.

Re:No, and to the Wannabe's, Put up or Shut up

[pyrrho]

Groupware? Kiss my ass. People dont work that way.


people don't work in groups?

Re:No, and to the Wannabe's, Put up or Shut up

[Anonymous Coward]

MS runs Exchange. It handles 100000+ PC's all over the globe. Guess what? It works just fine without rebooting or whatever. So maybe that guy was right about MCSEs? Aren't you a MCSE by any chance?

Can an IMAP server solve this problem?

[aoteoroa]

We have an office of 6 guys, and a mixture of Linux, Macs,and Windows boxes.

If (when) a Windows operating system crashes so badly that the whole OS needs to be re-installed the e-mail is often lost. Outlook Express seems to store it's data somewhere deep in the windows system folder on Win9x machines.

I'd like to find some way to set up a server that periodically checks the pop accounts at our ISP saves the new messages on the local server then we could each connect to the local server using our preferred email client and retrieve our messages.

I have searched the web and bought an OReilly book on setting up IMAP servers but everything I have read about IMAP makes the assumtion that the server will sit somewhere on the internet at a known addreess with a valid dns name however I would like something that can sit in our office behind the firewall.

Any ideas on how to proceed?

Re:Can an IMAP server solve this problem?

[drfreak]

I use fetchmail here to do that. fetchmail will pull all your pop3 mail off of the ISP's server. You can then do what you want with it, such as have your win boxes imap off of the linux server.

Re:No, and to the Wannabe's, Put up or Shut up

[LibertineR]

The only thing difficult about making an Exchange replacement is the technical (and legal) difficulty of deciphering MS' proprietary protocols.

This is the exact nonsense I'm talking about. Write your own fucking protocals!! Do it, if its so damned easy. It aint.

You and your bretheren think its better to just take(by government force)MS's intellectual property, so you sit back and whine, rather than put your heads down and code a replacement.

Fact is, 99% of you wouldnt know where to begin, which is why Exchange is in no danger. Most of it, is actually easy, but then try integrating it, genius.

If Microsoft and Chevron with their 100,000 member server clients not rebooting nightly, surely any company can install and configure Exchange correctly. Bottom line, 80% of MCSE's dont know squat.

"Someone to sue" is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I know its oft repeated that business people want 'someone to sue' and thus are drawn to corporate produced software, however I don't know of any examples where a business type actually uses that line of reasoning.
PLEASE let me know, has ANYONE ever sued or successfully sued a company, and won damages over faulty software of the shrinkwrapped, EUALed type? Last i checked: No.

Large Databases?

[bobdole34]

Most of my clients have massive Exchange databases, how do these products cope? Have they been properly tested up to 60-160 gigs?

vmware is your friend...

[hklingon]

I'm using NT4 under VMWare with Exchange 5.5. We opted to do this instead of an upgrade W2k adv. server for several reasons: 1. cost. 2. speed. Having the NT4 system in the sandbox means I can just copy a file here and there to move it around. No more paranoia on whether I'll get a blue screen chaning the revision of the scsi controller, or whatever. Did I mention samba works soo fast with network profiles and file sharing?

You can probably pick up exchange 5.5, NT4 and VM ware for cheap. (Old servers on Ebay, etc, often come with NT4 and Exchange 5.0 or 5.5) VMWare was about $300. And use this in the interim until a more mature linux version comes about ;)

Win4Lin anyone?

[system5]

I want to first say that I work for NeTraverse, so now that it's out in the open, I would like to suggest that Win4Lin is a good option for running Outlook, even quaranteened, under Linux. And it really is not too expensive!

check it out at our website: http://www.netraverse.com

Re:Oh come on! Exchange scaling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Smells like either CSC or Accenture has moved to Exchange.

I know Accenture was planning on doing that, even though Lotus Notes worked far better than the Microsoft clients ever though about doing.

Also you might note that those servers are distributed between offices, so no ONE server is that scalable.

Groupwise is a great solution

[themurray]

And it gets better every time with better features and I do like NDS administration.

Re:Groupwise is a great solution

[Anonymous Coward]

GroupWise was heavily discussed further near the top of this discussion. Basically, it cant do it...

moregroupware

[tiger_66_y2k]

First off, no I don't develop for the moregroupware project, but I have used it. I used an older version of it at a company that I used to work for (and they still use it). I set up a normal mail server so they could setup Outlook for email if they are lazy, or they could just log in via a webpage. Granted it's not an end all solution, but anyone with a little bit of PHP knowledge can create modules specifically for whatever they want. Anyhow, moregroupware worked out wonderfully for me as an exchange replacement. Plus all the data I kept in an MySQL server for backup purposes. PS. www.moregroupware.com - Cheers, I have no sig -

The Issue is NOT Features

[Yiliar]

Please examine why you are running exchange. The most common reason is that some manager in your group decided that you NEED to run exchange for some reason X. X is the marketing tool used to sell more Micro$oft products to your company. And besides, Outlook is already installed on 99 percent of the desktops in every business, so why not take advantage if ITS features. You know, the calendar would be so cool and all. Those arguments have been swallowed whole by management since Exchange was first shipped, and they will continue to be, because IT management in corporate America is GROSSLY incompetant as a whole. That is why you are running Micro$oft products in the first place. It is NEVER for technical reasons, it is ALWAYS about contract obligations and software availability (which most managers now equate to: 'What product from MicroSoft does that?'). There is no need for Micro$oft Exchange, and there never was. If your company uses Exchange as your principle email handler, then you are suffering, even if you do not know it. But many here do. The company where I work has an Exchange system. The people who run it are so well trained that they do not know what IMAP and POP are, which must be turned on by default because they are running here. The have learned to push buttons to add users. Log into your NT domain and Outlook automatically knows you. So tell me mister support person, what is my login and ID for Exchange? "What, do you have trouble with Outlook?" No, I want to use IMAP from my UNIX system. "What is IMAP?" It is an email protocol and it is enabled on your system, I simply want to know what my userid and password are so that I can use it. "Well we do support MAPI, we can set that up now." I am not trying to use a windows program to access my email. "Well sir, I am not sure what you need from us." I just want to know what my user id and password is for the exchange server. "Are you having trouble with Outlook?" ... And so it goes. There are now monkeys where people used to be, and I suppose that we are saving money that way, but I still cannot read my email. :(

Re:The Issue is NOT Features

[alan_d_post]

The most common reason is that some manager in your group decided that you NEED to run exchange for some reason X.

Certainly matches my experience. Add to that: "and resolutely ignored valid objections from vastly more knowledgeable employees, who are powerless because of how the organization is structured." What makes this even more egregious that this experience is at a *proprietary software* company -- you'd think that management would know all about vendor lock-in!

Re:The Issue is NOT Features

[pcause]

Actually, Exchange does support IMAP, POP, etc. Most IT shops don't set it up becuase they just use the defaults. I was in an Exchange shop but used IMAP.

I found the calendar stuff much over rated. Unless everyone keepts their calendars completely up to date, the scheduling stuff is a joke. You just get into email discussions about cancelling meetings and why someone doesn't keep their calendar up to date (travel!!!).

Re:The Issue is NOT Features

[acarey]

So tell me mister support person, what is my login and ID for Exchange?

Just in case you're still interested in knowing the answer to this, the password is your Windows NT account password, and the login is

\\

So, for example, user Joe in domain FINANCE with mailbox JoeB would login with

FINANCE\Joe\JoeB

Works for POP3 too.

Cheers,
Alastair

Re:The Issue is NOT Features

[acarey]

Sigh. That'll teach me not to preview.

<DOMAIN>\<NT USERNAME>\<MAILBOX ALIAS>

Mozilla Calendar is one solution.

[k-s]

Hey, mozilla calendar (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar) is one working solution.

The client is ok, the server is planned, but will come, at least as an OEOne paid service.

I think as more and more enterprises come to linux, solutions will become avaiable, both open and closed source.

Re:open source in business land QWZX

[Shaleh]

They have never needed to sue anyone simple threats have been enough. Or they have simply bought the offending company. The Samba group is constantly fighting with Microsoft.

Office is often a bundle and yes they do make money on it as well. But no where near the level of cash they get from Exchange and its related and attached products.

As for paranoia I have read Marc Andreson's comments about the Netscape/IE war. I have talked with others. Microsoft knows how and where to swing their money. And in all honesty this could just as well be Apple or some other large computer co. In this particular case the company in question just happens to be a favorite target here. However my comments are meant to reflect my own readings and the current state of the industry where patent attacks and DMCA warnings are the norm.

Re:No, and to the Wannabe's, Put up or Shut up

[LibertineR]

Let me clarify.

People dont work in Collaborative Groups. At least not very well, anyway. This is why Groupware features in Exchange were downplayed when the product was being developed.

A typical sell against Lotus Notes went as follows:

Client: -"Do you have field level replication?"

MS: -"No, but would you like to recieve attachments reliably in your email, wouldnt you?

Client: -"Sure, but what about this groupware thing? Lotus tells me it will change the world."

MS: -"When is the last time you sat down at the same time with 10-20 people to write a memo?"

MS: -"A report?"

MS: -"An MRD?"

Client: -"Never."

MS: -"Would you really want to trust a company responsible for marketing Ami-Pro?"

Client: -"Tell me more about Exchange."

Easy: Communigate Pro from Stalker.com

[ejoe_mac]

While it's not free, it's by far the widest platform support setup around, and while the full on Exchange Server emmulation is in the version that is in beta right now. I've had a number of calls to them discussing things, and here is the extra kicker that will make every Exec take an extra look -> Intergration with the Danger Hiptop. So now there is a competitor to the MS Exchange / Crackberry setup that runs on *nix in addition to everything else. Oh, and don't forget to toss in the anti-virus plugin from NAI.

Danger.com & Stalker.com

It's still being updated.

[Jedbro]

Just today it was updated.. check out
www.mozillazine.org for more information.

If you go into teh BUgzilla and check out the latest bugs/fixes, you will see a huge amount of work being done. True, not much is there at the moment. But it's just getting off it's feet and running. If you dig even deeper into bugzilla you will fine postings that the ultimate goal is to make Mozilla Calendar on par or even better than exchange. Just remember, we need to get there first (baby steps).

Also, 2 articles down on mozillazine states that OEONE is in partnership now with openoffice. The future could be bright.

Re:No, and to the Wannabe's, Put up or Shut up

[rsd]

MS runs Exchange. It handles 100000+ PC's all over the globe.

So, one globe, one server and it is windows.

right...

Re:People are starting to get fired for buying MSF

[Oriumpor]

Microsoft has a HUGE foothold, and "blindly" following microsoft, for some people, is just listening to their support provider, who also happens to be their software producer, who also has a contract with your hardware vendor, who in turn won't sell you systems without the MS logo on it somewhere (preferably in the boot sequence of that hardware).

If that's the case, buying MS isn't exactly a choice. And I'm sure there are Government entities who end up either buying from Microsoft vendors (you know who you are) or putting forware purchase orders that don't get approved because it doesn't have MS's name on it.

To say nothing of their expertise at buying^H^H^H^H^H^Hmaking good software, some people have no other option.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[Anonymous Coward]

An NT server that gets rebooted every six months! I'm sorry but I find that hard to believe.
I've installed literally dozens of Exchange servers and if they are hit hard, they need to be cleansed (rebooted) at least every three months for optimal performance. The IMC is the least stable connector and is the #1 reason they need to be rebooted. My clients are mostly engineering and architectural so they send large attachments. I used to use a clendar to keep track of when my client's NT servers should be rebooted!

I too am looking at an exchange replacement. The few exchange servers I have out there now only provide internal mail and calendaring, I use postfix for Internet mail and LDAP servers for the address books.

It's Not Too Terribly Difficult if You're...

[Uggy]

willing to ditch Outlook. My company sells servers that feature the following:

• Qmail (mta, plugins for virus scanning etc)
• Courier (IMAP)
• Squirrelmail (with lots of plug-ins)
• OpenLDAP for company address books
• Webcal (with email reminders--- not terribly feature rich, but it does what it says, and is web-accessable)
• Htdig for file repository (does word, pdf, html, text in different languages and is web accessable)
• Hylafax for remote webfaxing (send receive)

Until LDAP becomes the standard by which everything authenticates, we've got perl scripts to tie together all the password hell for all the different parts. It works, and hell, you don't need your damn Outlook client to check your calendar, email, or get a file you need when you're in Shanghai

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[Hektor_Troy]

I'm not ENTIRELY going to agree with the "easy to set up". Silly me wanted to grant access to certain newsgroups via the server and I must have done something wrong, because it tried to download the entire feed from news.wol.dk which is some 21+ thousand groups ...

How do you delete 21+ thousand groups from the server then? ONE BY ONE!!! You cannot select more than one group to manipulate.

ARGH!!!!!

[space] [delete] [y] [space] [delete] [y] [space] [delete] [y] ... 21+ thousand times ...

I killed a keyboard that weekend ...

Mod Parent Up

[Verizon Guy]

n/t

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[NanoGator]

Here's what I meant by 'easy to set up':

I know nothing about mailservers, but within a day I was able to install it and have it ready for my company to use.

I have no doubt there are things that are obstructive at best. heh.

In your position, I would have looked for a way to automate that. Windows Scripting Host maybe? (I woulda used VB, it can do that...)

Secure IMAP server

[cras]

Well, probably too late for anyone to actually read this but lets try anyway.

I've been writing for the last few months a secure and fast IMAP server, named Dovecot. Suggestions and other feedback appreciated :)

Other projects seem to be creating all-in-one products which probably are easy to install and maybe to maintain, but much less powerful than the products that focus on just one thing. I have no plans on creating yet another useless SMTP daemon, Postfix and Qmail will do very well already. Of course, some people can merge those into some packages that are easy to install and administrate.

Re:open source in business land QWZX

[Anonymous Coward]

The Samba group is constantly fighting with Microsoft.

Whatever that means. Call me when Microsoft files the lawsuit and gets them shut down.

Office is often a bundle and yes they do make money on it as well. But no where near the level of cash they get from Exchange and its related and attached products.

Are you insane?? Microsoft probably makes 10 times the money on Office than they do on Exchange. Office is a HUGE part of Microsoft's revenue. It might even be higher than their operating system revenues.

As for paranoia I have read Marc Andreson's comments about the Netscape/IE war.

Andreeson? Yeah, there's a reputable, unbiased source. Put out a complete piece of garbage as a product (aka Netscape), and then cry when Microsoft puts out a better one. Andreeson is nothing but an empty suit who took credit for other people's work.

Like I said, there are plenty of things to criticize Microsoft about, but you're barking at shadows when you bring up lawsuits.

Ahem.

[Doktor Memory]

If Lotus spent so much time thinking about Notes' design, why did they get it so horribly, horribly wrong?

Re:Ahem.

[sphealey]

Again, I am not trying to sell you Lotus Notes, or convince you that its design is a good one. I am just pointing out some issues surrounding groupware.

But to address your question, and the brilliant observations of the iarchitect.com web site: please do keep in mind that Notes was developed before Windows 95, and long before Microsoft released the Common Interface guidelines, at a time when there was no agreement on how GUI interfaces should look or work. Every application at that time (including the various Microsoft apps) had its own look and feel. The designers of Notes built a platform-independent GUI from scratch without any guidelines to use and before most of what passes for "UI research" today was published (I am no big fan of the Microsoft CUI standards myself).

As for iarchitect.com, the first thing they rip on are the fat double-click buttons and tabbed desktop. Whereas when I was supporting Notes, the first thing that non-geekaziod users would ask me after they had used Notes for a while was how they could add the fat buttons and tabs to their other applications! So I am not quite so convinced that was a bad choice...

I also find it funny that the denizens of this site post violent diatribes concerning Microsoft's stifling monoculture and lack of innovation, but when faced with something a little different rip on how it "doesn't follow standards"!

sPh

Re:Ahem.

[artemis67]

I took a quick look at Notes R5, and the R6 beta, and I thought it was still clunky. To check for new mail, you have to hunt around for a non-obvious Get Mail button; you press it, it downloads messages, and then it seems nothing happens. OHH, you have to click a button to REFRESH THE WINDOW to see what new messages titles appear!

Oh.

My.

Goodness.

Sorry, but that's just not acceptable. I don't like throwing more money than I have to at Microsoft, but I'm not about to reward poor interface design, either. My first loyalty is to myself; How do I make my job easier?

Re:Ahem.

[cygnusx]

I also find it funny that the denizens of this site post violent diatribes concerning Microsoft's stifling monoculture and lack of innovation, but when faced with something a little different rip on how it "doesn't follow standards"!

Oh please. Standards in UI are a Good Thing for the vast majority of computer users.

Notes' internals (data store, object model, etc) are well done (better IMO than Exchange), but the Notes client UI sucks. Not because of the tabbed workspace or the fat double-click buttons, but because:

1) You can never figure out when to double-click and when to click.

2) "Smarticons" in Notes are *dumb* icons. Even when there's *nothing* to copy, the copy toolbar button will be visible (and will say "can't execute the specified command"). You'd think the Notes developers could've looked at Lotus SmartSuite, that got it right. (Don't tell me they need a Interface design standards document to figure this one one out -- it's common sense!)

3) Replying to internet mail is *hard* unless you reprogram your mail template. Ever received a reply from a Notes user? Noticed the mangled text? (to be fair, Outlook/Exchange is as bad)

4) Horizontal scrolling is insane (c'mon, do I really need to use View|Show|Horizontal Scroll Bar to scroll horizontally?)

5) No equivalent of Outlook's digital dashboard or my.yahoo.com's MyYahoo -- i.e., a personalized portal page (yes, I know you can "customize" the welcome screen -- but it's horribly watered down compared to Digital Dashboard or MyYahoo.

Note that I haven't criticized them for having their own look and feel. L&F is a superficial issue (witness the success of Winamp 2.x), UI design goes a bit deeper than that.

The problem is: Notes is a hugely sophisticated unstructured database/CMS, but 90% of its users treat it like a PIM. And as a PIM, it sucks.

And yes, I use Notes/Domino for email every day, and am familiar with with programming it as well.

Re:Ahem.

[mcn]

The notes client works and behave like a web browser (be it IE5, netscape, etc..) It retrieves documents stored in Notes/Domino databases in different server. It's like a browser that retrieves web pages when you give it a URL to hit.

Well, Notes was the Intranet before the term "Intranet" was coined to describe internal corporate networks based on Internet technologies.

Notes is not a e-mail application. It is a collaborative platform. E-mail is but one of the many possible applications that can be written to make use of its collaborative/workflow features.

Remember, we need to do the same (refresh) when it comes to reading web-based mail off the web browser. No doubt M$ products are more user friendly... but don't forget, it still didn't invent the web browser...

Questiob Re:It's the administration costs

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear this line of reasoning often, but has anyone sued Microsoft for damages due to faulty software and won? Ever?

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[Robber Baron]

1.) The copy we have is limited to 25 licenses. This means that 25 connections are allowed at one time. More than that and Exchange punts you. "Sorry, you have to wait until a connection is open."

Soooo...why don't ya turn off license logging???

wasnt netscape going to offer a solution?

[cheekyboy]

Didnt netscape show some super uber java deskstop groupware/email/calander system 4 years ago?

or is it called AOL v7.

4billion$ of cash, and zero brains.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[NanoGator]

What? There's a switch I can flip to disable that? Or are you pulling my leg?

Re:No, and to the Wannabe's, Put up or Shut up

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh how refreshing, a flaming M$ fan club leader. I'm sure MS would love to pull a Sigma Designs with the entire linux communities intellectual property. There are lots of people with their head down coding already and several projects have already been mentioned on this board. Exchange is still a piece of crap even after SP4. I admin 20 of them. What a waste of money. 98 % of the users don't use the calender at all. 19 of the servers are on Branch location BDC's usually with less than 20 active users, none of whom use the precious calendar On protocals, name even one protocol that MS developed alone (not purchased), then name a protocol that they didn't develop that they also haven't tried to embrace and extend/decommoditize. How about you go crawl under a rock with some cyanide you piece of shit shill

Re:No, and to the Wannabe's, Put up or Shut up

[vegetablespork]

By Microsoft's own recommendation, 100,000 users require 67 servers:

"Limit the number of concurrent connections (users) per node to a maximum of 1,500, and proactively monitor the cluster to ensure that the CPU does not exceed 40 percent (load generated from users) loading."

If you're going to astroturf, at least know the company that's hiring you's product.

alternatives for calendaring

[Jon-o]

At McGill University most people use Corporate Time, by Steltor (recently bought by Oracle). It's not open-source or free, but it seems to work quite well. Most people in my department seem to like it, though I don't have any need for it, really - a notebook with a date written on each page is all the calendaring I need.

At the very least, it's an alternative... and it can sync to Outlook, and to Palmpilots.

Also, it's got clients for many operating systems, including linux (I haven't tried it) and a half-decent web interface.

Uh, Notes/Domino does this already!

[Anonymous Coward]

...without third party add-ons!

Whats more, Lotus provides replication not only via their proprietary client, but also in the web browser.

Sorry, not impressed with your "solution"

Re:Uh, Notes/Domino does this already!

[rawlinsconstruction]

I said: "there is nothing else that can do this - and do it in an offline manner" silly me. I must have been drinking to say a thing like that. Hrm, that was asking for flames. My bad. And your correct, I didn't know Domino/Lotus had offline support though. It looks really quirky though, I just d/l'ed Lotus Notes and Domino 6 release canidate...looks like a have to learn their own subset of functions to get grouping views. Figured out how to get the custom properties and such...looks rather good. Too bad it doesn't integrate with Office though. What I don't see however is being able to create a public 'folder' that is for contacts which can be added as an addressbook for resolution in outgoing mail. Of course, it can probably be done, I haven't found it yet. Either way, we need this in an open source solution ;) If we did, Microsoft and Lotus/Domino would have little choice but to follow. They're moving everything into an SQL server anyways though, so it'll be interesting to see what happens. (Oracle wants everything in Oracle, BEA wants it all in BEA, and Microsoft wants it all in MSFT SQL Server). Should would be nice if I can setup offline syncronization with offline forms that query using an SQL syntax and HTML in a asp/cf/php or jsp like offline way.

outlook is not exchange and other stuff

[congiman]

Outlook is the client.
Outlook can act as a POP/IMAP server.

However, outlook acts "better" when talking to exchange.

You can do nifty things with fonts etc. that you cannot do in pop/imap mode.

You can look up users differently (dont need to configure LDAP).

But, if most of your users dont care, or they wont know the difference, you can have outlook talk to a imap/pop +ldap server.

At that point the calendaring becomes the big issue.... as in how do you send calendar requests from outlook in non exchange mode... I dont remember how this works....there might be some method of doing this, but I think not.

Also you lose public folders and depending on your site, this may be in use that you cannot replace it.

now as to having linux boxes talk to exchange, you can do the imap/pop/ldap, but you will still have the calendar/task list/public folders problem.

You could try a metaframe/citrix type application and get all your outlook out of that.

You end up paying for a terminal services+Outlook license+exchange license, but that might be cheaper, (but not by much) that a win2K + outlook + exchange.

To truly see savings you need a unix based server that talks all the exchange protocols.

now on a similar tangent, imagine this:

Your exchange users, on their exchange servers.

you, the linux person(s), set up as a remote mailbox. (ie: it says: deliver joe@foo.com to joe@unix.foo.com).

Then joe@unix.foo.com can be on a mail server running imap/pop/ldap.

then you can get a calendaring package. (suse e-mail server offers most of this).

Then all you need is a way for the calendaring package to talk calendars to exchange....I think this is the part that does not exist..

but this does move the list of tasks from re-implementing everything, to building a calendaring exporter/importer....you might even be able to use the exchange tools to do this.
(MS did the same thing to get people off of CCmail, they used the ccmail import/export tools against them).

Public folders could also be tricky, but they do offer replication, and their is a built in replication method for them....but depending on how often you access this, maybe you can do some sort of web interface?!?! or have this be NFS'd in some way?

you will have a problem of maintaining 2 address lists...unless you do something like set the exchange server up as the ldap server....or write some way to keep them in sync.

-- C

My father got 3 virii in just 10 hours

[Billly Gates]

My parents computer crashed about 3 weeks ago and it needed a new hard drive and all the data was lost. THey previously used netscape mail. Anyway I purchased a new hard drive and re-installed the system. My father needed a new more modern email client and he had MS-Office pro2000 which came with Outlook. I decided to implement Outlook because it worked great with his palm pilot and have all his contact with the adress book for emailing and would update it the next day because it was late when I finished. .exe files and his pc was unscanable from the net. I went to www.grc.com and not one port was open. Secure right?

Well the next day I was going to update both outlook and Windows to the most secure patches and I noticed performance was awefull. I even recieved error messages saying that no dns server could be found yet the lights on the cable modem was blinking like crazy. I opened the command prompt and typed the infamous netstat -an and found open ports all over the place including 113 and 6667 which irc zombies were using and literally satuarating the whole line. I found 3 worms total and one being the infamouns verison 2 litmus virii in the Windows directory and that nasty modified worm even spread to my mother computer using client for Micrsoft networks even though she had file sharing off. Yuck

Anyway I downloaded a software firewall to monitor traffic since his hardware firewall sucked and I found all 3 worms sending DDOS attacks to who knows where! Litmus opens more backdoors in an infected system so my guess is the other worms found there ways after the system was comprimissed or it was the same hacker. I just gave up and reformated his whole drive again and this time installed the more primptive peagus emailer.

Folks it only took 9 or 10 hours for this wreck to occur behind a firewall that was configured to not allow traffic from the internet on his lan. After this I configured the firewall to block outlooks ports from both sides just to make sure it hides everything this time around. Outlook is a piece of sh*t and deserves its reputation.

Re:My father got 3 virii in just 10 hours

[Anonymous Coward]

We will never learn, will we? GRC does not scan all your ports. And all he had to do was open a bad piece of mail, save the attachment, and execute it and away you go. Firewalls will not protect you from email bourn viruses. You were running anti virus, right? Or better yet, you were not letting him run as administrator, right, or you applied a good security policy, right. Learn before you throw stones. Stupid moron mode is not outlook, it is selflook.

Re:My father got 3 virii in just 10 hours

[Gooba42]

I think it highlights a weakness of the system that he could spend all that time setting things up and installing and the system is by default *that* insecure.
Perhaps he didn't use a full-featured port scanner, etc. but how many people *are* doing everything possible to secure their home machines in this manner? Especially in a "not quite ready" stage of the install?
I don't think you get to call him a moron for the little trust it takes to believe a vendor isn't going to leave you *completely* open to attack. Even if the vendor is Microsoft, I think most of us still have expectations of not being cracked and infected in the first 10 hours of an install behind a firewall.

Re:My father got 3 virii in just 10 hours

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you obviously don't know a hell of a lot about firewalls. Nor did you prove that Outlook was the cause. It could just as easily have been an exploit in IE. Does your software firewall which is apparently much better than your hardware firewall block port 80?

I even recieved error messages saying that no dns server could be found yet the lights on the cable modem was blinking like crazy.

BTW, DNS cannot be found doesn't mean anything, regarding whether or not a virus/trojan piece of code will work. Simple enough just to disable DNS (so virus scanners can't auto-update) then use built-in resolution in the malicious code.

Exchane/Outlook replacement

[Matveevich]

Right now there is no alternative to exchange/outlook. and corporate and small-mid business can not really function well without it. It is a HUGE problem for Linux, BSD, *nix and Mac communities and even for wintel world. But there is a way out. It could be and should be done by several different ways:
1. A company with resources (redhat, sun, oracle, apple, ibm etc) should create a server framework similar to hotmail or .mac, but with calendar, appointment, mail and other group mail capabilities. And allow its clients create and administer groups, add users, use their own domain names and get enough disk space for all that. It will be a good competitor to a remote exchange. It should not be free, but should not cost a fortune, small business should be able to easily afford it.
2. Exchange is just a database, customized for corp. groupware and outlook just a front end to it. micro$oft does not make the bast database. there two alternative lines. Oracle which is better, faster and more popular on one hand and mysql and other oss databases on the other hand.
thus it gives way for two+ customized databases combined with a customized mail program, evolution is one of them. this way oracle can make money and provide real-fighting alternative and free world would get their mysql kind of free solution. i am sure that clients will pop up like mushrooms after rain. oracle even made some noise about it already.
3. combination of first two solutions - more like the first one but portable, so people can start using it as a service, but at certain moment move it to internal server.
4. and of course just old fashion way, bunch of people get together and write an open source free full-featured alternative. it's a great thing, but it will take years and will be weak and will not be a m$ competitor for a long time.
In any case, I think all four should be done and that's the way to stop the monopoly.
I believe that if Apple, Sun, IBM and Redhat would just get together on this we can pull it off in 18 month.

Re:Exchane/Outlook replacement

[Anonymous Coward]

Once a server like that is available there will be no need for new mail app. All good mail apps will just have a special add-on that would anable it to work with the server

J

OpenMail Killer Weaknesses

[Leghkster]

At work I run an OpenMail/RedHat server in an Outlook-only environment, and what you'll find is your executives and management LOVE the group by/categorize features of Outlook, which are not supported in any HP releases of the MAPI driver. A while back I looked at Samsung Connect (the new name for OM) and it still didn't have these functions - but at least they acknowledged that there were a lot of requests for it! In addition, we've encountered some peculiar behavior with attachments, especially forwarding a link to a network file (IIRC, we've learned to do without the feature as an organization...)

Re:No, and to the Wannabe's, Put up or Shut up

[thingy]

Practice what you preach. TCP/IP is open and well documented your fucking company had the balls to copy the code from bsd.

Also you damn well know that if the protocols aren't working right that lookout won't work and no one will use the open source product because they will miss all their fucking viruses! If there is any chance to replace the server it will have to work with existing clients first or no manager will pick it because it won't be 100% transparent switch.

Re:Oh come on! Exchange scaling?

[Allador]

A couple hundred users on one low-end server box is the lower-end of Exchange scaling.

My local department supports a bit over 300 users on Exchange 5.5 running on NT4sp6. The only reason this box ever gets shut down is to apply security related patches. Most of the time it runs at 25% or less processing power (4+ years old hardware), and it could certainly do with more memory (old hardware only supports 512MB) so that the entire store could fit in memory.

This is one of the servers that basically just runs and runs and runs, and you never have to touch it, and it never crashes, over 4+ years (gives you an idea how old the hardware is).

Most months, we have zero (as in not even a minute) downtime.

What most people seem to not understand is that Exchange is a simply gargantuan product, and does have a significant learning curve. But once you set it up and configure it correctly, you can largely just forget it.

As someone posted elsewhere in this thread, you've got to watch out for some of these second rate companies that host Exchange very poorly, or corps thats put some paper-MCSE as the Exchange admin who couldnt even calculate a subnet mask, and they wonder why their box is flaky.

Bottom line, as far as I see it: Its not the software, its the people.

Re:Ahem

[duckygator]

Lotus Notes design may not be winning any awards, but guess what? As a designer you have FULL CONTROL to modify the UI however you like! While the backend code of Lotus Notes/Domino may be closed, the front end is fully customizable. It supports POP, IMAP, HTTP, SSL, NNTP, LDAP, SOAP, XML, COM, CORBA and more. You can write code against it in scripting languages like Lotus' Function language and JavaScript, a VB like language (LotusScript) that is more OO than VB6 (supports classes and inheritance for example), or write code against it with Java or C. You've got API's into just about everything in Notes as well so you can change whatever it is you dislike.

If you can't give up the Outlook client, Domino supports using the Outlook client against a Domino backend. Granted, native Notes features such as document links do not work in Outlook (because it has no equivalent functionality), but the majority of the features work seamlessly and some are also improved by running against Domino instead of Exchange (security and better support for remote users are two that immediately come to mind).

If you don't want to run an Exchange server or a cluster of NT boxes for messaging, run Domino on practically whatever you want, from big iron to Linux. Let everyone keep the Outlook clients they're used to if it meets everyone's needs, or customize the Notes UI to look and act like Outlook, like the OS Notes developers at www.openntf.org did with Lookout Express.

If you don't like the UI, change it. If a button doesn't work the way you think it should, or you wish it had a different feature, change it. You can.

ducky

OS X is NOT an MS platform in any way

[Anonymous Coward]

(1) Microsoft dumped that stock as soon as they could. which was 5 years ago

(2) Microsoft is the only company that has a decent browser for Mac OS X. Theres more to running Mozilla decently on OS X than recompiling.

Read up before posting.

This looks good

[FLoWCTRL]

SuSE's eMail Server product looks like a viable alternative to Exchange. Unfortunately, their present offer requires installing SuSE (our infrastructure is based on Solaris and FreeBSD, and changing that would be quite painful). If enough people request a stand-alone version, then they will probably ship one.

Oracle Collaboration Server, anyone?

[Blahbbs]

Oracle recently bought a company called Steltor and absorbed their CorporateTime plugin for Outlook, which supposedly seamlessly integrates Outlook with Oracle's mail server/calendaring/file sharing products. It's fairly inexpensive, too. It's supposed to be $60 per named user for licensing. That's it. That includes the licensing for all the Oracle backend database stuff, too.

I don't think it's scheduled for release until later in the year, but it looks like it could be the standards-based, robust solution that just might get people to migrate away from Win2K/Exchange on the messaging side.

Go to Oracle's site and check it out. It looks promising.

But Photoshop is still a Monopolysoft product

[yerricde]

OS X is NOT an MS platform in any way

Maybe not. But Adobe publishing software does happen to be available only for platforms where Microsoft Office is available.

And to the original question: "Since when was Photoshop a Microsoft product?"

I replied: "Adobe is the Microsoft of publishing software." Does Adobe have competitors that can match its market share? Or does it have Market Power(tm) in one or more of its markets, such as high-end photo editing software?

open source exchange

[zz2002]

There does exist an open source project by this name at sourceforge.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/osex change

Replacing exchange is a very difficult problem.
There have definitely been folks working on it in the past. But for osexchange, it looks like progress has been slow, if not futile.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[mikestro]

Have you tried the "License Logging Service"? That would be the only service I know of that controls licensing in NT...

Anyone willing to fund a grant ?

[Proudrooster]

I too am gluing together an Open Source solution for email/webmail and the Calendaring is always the biggest pain....

Why?

The majority (not all) of geeks look at calendars, project plans, palm pilots as useless. In my case, I don't even wear a watch.

The only way to get this done is for someone to write a check and/or fund a grant. Once the project gets rolling, it will quickly catch up to Outlook and perhaps even merge a few OSS projects like Mozilla and Squirrelmail.

I hate to agree with the previous posters, but this is BORING, non-challenging work. Many have gone down this path, only to fall asleep and find something better to hack on.

Unfortunately, this is one case where Microsoft actually excels over Opensource. They have enough money to pay programmers to do mundane work and complete bloatware with a pretty front ends.

Has the Open Source Community mets it's match?
Is creating calendaring code that interoperates with Outlook beyond our reach?

Re:No, and to the Wannabe's, Put up or Shut up

[BleedTheFreak]

Nobody who worked for a company that came up with NT should call anyone else a "wannabe coder". Sleep through our OS design and implementation courses, did we?

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[Anonymous Coward]

ever heard of windows scripting? Just like (better) writing a bash shell script.

Lotus over Exchange

[Nick Driver]

I've been running Exchnage for a small, ~500 user network for 6 years and we're fed up with the expense and security hazards. We just bought Notes/Domino to switch away from Exchange and the licensing cost for this migration is less than half of what it would cost for all the MS licenses needed to upgrade all our servers and cals to go to Exchange 2000.

Yes Lotus has a very steep learning curve for the administrator, but it is extrordinarily powerful in how you can customize the inner workings of the system. All those folks who belly-ache about how Lotus is such an arcane and difficult product are exactly the same kind of folks who complain that Unix and C and C++ are too hard to learn and use because they'd rather write Visual Basic progs for Windows. It takes a intense commitment and willingness to learn a sophisticated and complex system to succeed in the Lotus world, and a sysadmin needs to have "The Right Stuff" to become proficient at this. A Lotus messaging system definitely ain't for point-n-click monkeys to administer.

I do have to admit that the current client (R5) user interface does suck somewhat, but it certainly is plenty useable if you're willing to invest in a bit of end-user training. The new R6 version is going to be a step in the right direction, and if will only improve from there. The calendering functionality does blow away Outlook/Exchange IMHO, once you learn how to use it.

The best part of this project is being able to finally get rid of a major MS server system in our organization and I'm very glad for this.

Oh and BTW, we're running our Domino servers on Linux and AIX boxes :-)

Uh...well it isn't free, but....

[zorander]

According to This Site, Ximian Connector allows Evolution to be a client to an MS exchange server...there's half the battle....Evolution is great IMHO. I use it as my primary business email/contact/calander/palm sync program and it does it all very well...

Connector is $69 a seat, which is considerably cheaper than Outlook (Office)...so Evolution+Openoffice+$69 could actually mean Office/Exchange Capability and lower costs.

Granted it's not free, but at least it's cheap(er). and it supports Gnome development (which is a good thing, even though I'm a KDEer myself)...

Brian

is it just me, or...

[Artifex]

(Doesn't it seem a bit demanding for someone making money off consulting to ask why open source authors haven't solved his problem for him?)

Have you tried coding it yourself? If you're not a coder, have you thrown real money at any of the dev teams? If not, well, why not? They're subject to market forces too, you know.

How to lose your job - not

[bromoseltzer]

In olden days PHB's would not consider minicomputers, like DEC's. They said nobody ever lost their job because they bought IBM mainframes. (It may still be true!)

It's probably also true that nobody loses their job for choosing Microsoft, alas.

Re:Oh come on! Exchange scaling?

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps you should get new admins, not new software.

Bynari Insight Server is free

[Anonymous Coward]

You can pay for support, but you can get it for free on Intel. If you use 100% Linux, all of it is free, the Server, connector for Evolution, and Evolution.

All you need to purchase for Windows is the Connector for Outlook, and of course, Outlook :-(

Another option?

[Anthony Stuckey]

While people seem to be proposing and shooting holes in various products, what are the issues with Synchronize?
http://envicon.com/e/synchronize/ind ex.html

Our issue

[omega9]

I work for an .edu on the east coast. We're a technical school with >10 campuses. Currently we're using a single Exchange 5.5 server at a central location for staff/faculty mailboxes, and an Exchange 2k server at each location to handle student mailboxes per/campus. In order to make email as easy and uniform as possible, students are only using OWA, not Outlook or Outlook Express (in fact we block 110 and 143). Yes, this means we've paid the cost of >10 Exchange 2k servers for mere webmail. I was not invloved in that purchase decision.

My issue is this: I am ITCHING to kill our Exchange box. I would do it yesterday if I could. However, as much as a Linux advocate as I am, I'm still a believer in making changes for the better, not based soley on principle. ATM, it is simply to easy to have new user creation in Active Directory create Exchange mailboxes as well. I've done some testing with winbind, Postfix, Courier, and PAM to have IMAP authenticate to AD. I admit I was shocked to see it work as good as it did, but it just doesn't seem stable enough at this time.

I would change in an instant if I had:

• A decent webmail client that wasn't "branded". It's painful to find good apps that are tainted by egotistical authors that splay their name or some silly logo all over the place. It has to look professional. I've looked at Squirelmail and IMP, either of which I would be willing to use if everything fell into place.
  
• Without a major uproar, we're effectively forced to use a domain model for our network. With Exchange, users need only remember their single domain password to logon or to check email. I need this same functionality in a new mail system. Winbind is a nice tool, and does a good job of authenticating to AD, but it has a tendancy to lose it's mapings after a reboot or process restart. We have greater then 300 machines in our building, all authenticating to AD. If I could easily switch ALL clients over to LDAP authentication I would consider removing AD.
  

That's it. The first is obviously trivial, so the real hangup for me is authentication. Protocol is trivial, it can be IMAP, POP3, whatever. I know authentication to AD from linux is somewhat of a large task, but show me the answer and I'll switch in a heartbeat.

Re:Our issue

[xiox]

The webmail service the University of Cambridge uses is pretty good, but it doesn't seem to have any identification. Maybe it was developed in-house or is a highly customised code. Perhaps one of the guys there would let you know what they're using (look around for contacts).

See this

Re:Ahem

[Doktor Memory]

Lotus Notes design may not be winning any awards, but guess what? As a designer you have FULL CONTROL to modify the UI however you like!

Translated: "Sure, the default set of user-facing interfaces that ship with your multi-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars Notes installation may be not only completely worthless but an active impediment to getting work done, but hey, you can always turn around and spend another several hundred thousand dollars paying full-time developers to attempt to graft actual functionality onto it!"

This is, sadly, pretty much par for the course. Any time someone points out just how badly Notes performs any of its alleged real-world functions (ie: email, scheduling, document storage and collaboration), its apologists trip over themselves to remind you how customizable it is, which is sort of like Ford Motors pointing out all of the cool aftermarket exhaust pipes you could buy for the Pinto.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad Notes exists, because it's always helpful to have a perfect example of how not to implement an important idea. But I won't shed any tears when it's gone, and neither will anyone else who ever faced the horror of using or administering it.

Re:Ahem

[cygnusx]

Lotus Notes design may not be winning any awards
Actually it has won several :-)

As a designer you have FULL CONTROL to modify the UI however you like
This is like the (probably apochryphal) Henry Ford saying: "you can have your car any color, as long as it's black". In Notes, I am stuck with whatever UI controls Notes gives me (and most of them are cheesy). With Outlook, I can create new UI controls and integrate them using well specified interfaces.

And yes, I have used Lookout Express on a R6 prerelease version, and you know what, while it's a huge leap for Notes, for a person coming from an Outlook/Evolution background, it has "cheap knockoff" written all over it.

How I keep XCHG away...

[inquisitive]

Ours is a small company (30 member). We build collaboration tools. We use our own webbased product for calendaring/scheduling.
Most of the staff prefer to pop their mail to outlook from a purpose built POP/SMTP all in one device. Shared files are provided by a W2K+AD server.
Some top folks would like to migrate to Exchange but the company hates to spend several thousand dollars in these difficult times. So, I will be soon implementing a Courier+LDAP+POP3 on Linux

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[Robber Baron]

That's the one...

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[Robber Baron]

Practically, it's hard to afford giving users enough space in their inboxes. They cannot be trained well enough to delete mail or to move it to other folders....

First of all, you can set limits on your mailboxes and prohibit send (and receive) at certain predetermined levels. That usually clues them in. Also there's a mailbox manager utility that allows you to clean out old messages that are older than a certain elapsed time. I've used both successfully and 99.9% of the time they (the users) don't even notice.

After using Exchange for several years and ironing out the initial glitches, there's still instances where "messages go missing" that users were certain they had saved, maybe in one of those other folders.

I'd chalk that one up to "user error"...

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[phatman808]

Erm, I think that'll pretty much disable any connections to the server. I dunno, I'm probably wrong... today I just got to "armor" an NT box we're using for a web server. Nothing feels better than removing, oh say, the NetBIOS service, RPC and Computer Browser! Bwahahahah!

iCal Solution

[katokop1]

I would like to point out that the iCalendar spec most certainly does provide the necessary transport bindings to match all the functionality of Exchange group calendaring. Beyond rfc2445 -- the base iCal object spec -- you will quickly find rfc2446 and rfc2447, the iTIP (iCalendar Transport-Independent Interoperability Protocol) specification for "Scheduling Events, BusyTime, To-dos and Journal Entries," and its email-transport binding, iMIP (iCalendar Message-Based Interoperability Protocol), respectively.

Together, these protocols provide all of the communications functionality necessary to implement all of Exchange's non-pure-messaging features -- email meeting, rescheduling, and relocation requests, etc., etc. All that remains is a central store for the distributed calendar, itself, and Apple's confusingly-named iCal product uses a clever solution to this: using WebDAV as a central store supporting distributed editing.

Further, through simple offline folders support, such a solution can quite easily provide offline operation atop a small set of existing and well-established, straightforward and powerful standards.

Perhaps someone should look into building an just such a solution as an OSS project. The simple metaphor for the WebDAV store is simply that each directory represents a Calendar, and is populated with iCal files. This exported interface could just as easily be backed by a database as by a filesystem, using further OSS like Catacomb, and such a system could similarly offer integrated shared file storage, all running through Apache atop either a conventional filesystem or a relational database, and exported through a simple, well-understood, and well-supported filesystem abstraction (WebDAV).

-JRK

Easy to install

[EnglishTim]

Ease of install is important when you are evaluating several possible solutions to your problem.

... except the calendar

[EnglishTim]

... except the calendar. Exactly! You get a company of any size, and the caledaring, scheduling and resource management aspects of Exchange become really useful. Just because you say you don't like being on the clock doesn't mean that it's not useful for everybody else.

Calendar alternatives to Exchange

[AnotherScratchMonkey]

I'm another qpopper/sendmail admin, and there's some pressure to deploy Exchange for calendaring. At this point the middle managers who want it have not succeeded in selling calendering as necessary to upper management, who favor non-MS solutions in their relative immunity to attack.

In researching the issue, I did find a Mozilla project to create a calendar server, but it's still in its infancy.

Just because you don't find it useful...

[EnglishTim]

Just because you don't find it useful doesn't mean that nobody else does. I used to work for a software company of about 200 people, and the calendaring aspects were very useful, especially for booking meeting rooms and the like. If we hadn't had a system for handling that kind of thing, things could have got quite chaotic - it's vital that if you have in important customer visiting that you've got a meeting room avaliable to talk with them ready...

Re:Just because you don't find it useful...

[fmaxwell]

I used to work for a software company of about 200 people, and the calendaring aspects were very useful, especially for booking meeting rooms and the like. If we hadn't had a system for handling that kind of thing, things could have got quite chaotic - it's vital that if you have in important customer visiting that you've got a meeting room avaliable to talk with them ready...

Any 200-person software company that has to run an Exchange server to handle scheduling of conference rooms has got some serious problems that go beyond scheduling. How hard could it be to write a little web-based app that let you reserve conference rooms? That's like saying "if Microsoft had not provided sort.exe, our 200-person software company could never have sorted the contents of files."

Re:Just because you don't find it useful...

[EnglishTim]

My point is that it handled reserving rooms, scheduling, calendaring, meeting requests, address book etc... - all of that from a single system integrated into the email client. Sure, we could have written our own system to handle all of that, but why bother when there's one already avaliable? I don't really think it would have ended up any cheaper.

Re:No, and to the Wannabe's, Put up or Shut up

[Anonymous Coward]

Those recommendations have absolutley nothing to do with the baseline hardware that was available at the time eh?

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[Ratface]

I can understand that taking the word of a /. user at face value would seem foolhardy, however a simple Google search turns up this:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient& q= license+logging+exchange

I think you're probably OK with turning off License Logging.

See - sometimes reading /. *can* be productive!

eg

[Anonymous Coward]

http://advogato.org/proj/Exchange%20for%20Unix/

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[xtremex]

Just a question...if you know nothing about mail servers, what are you doing setting up a company's mail server?

Re:Ahem

[jbolden]

I was planning on lurking on this thread since I have no passion for any of the email server solutions but I've used a bunch of them. I think you are being way unfair to Notes. So far its the best client I've used for two reasons:

1 - The Notes databases; which are essentially really well organized file shares. The ability of everybody in the company to setup group specific file shares which support layouts making the intent clear and further which support linking in email is great. In theory this wouldn't be hard to do; but in practice I"ve only seen it with Notes. That is IMHO Notes brough easy to use, easy to configure massive email based databases to corporate America.

2 - The client is reliable as hell. I use Outlook XP version on a Windows 2000 box for a single IMAP connection. All the time Outlook loses connection but thinks it still up. Also it tends to crash when editing multiple emails at once. Never had a single crash with Lotus Notes running on an overtaxed NT box years ago.

You are free to use whatever tool you want to.

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at MS (yeah, blah blah blah- I know you hate me already and are ready to vote -1, troll). Turn off your MS hating attitude for just a minute while I describe what it is like on the other side of this coin. Perhaps you will gain some insight.

I don't work on Exchange or Outlook, but I work with both of them, and I play with the latest builds of both of them. The thing that MS has that free software doesn't is a control over the direction of the future of its software. What does that mean? Simply put, our people have managers. Our teams have visions, and our developers work full time. We pay people to test and people to market and people to read customer feedback, and we pay people to sit at their desk all day long and think (my job is development). I know that OSS has motivated people, but regardless of how many motivated people there are working on it, you will be hard pressed to find OSS with as many features as Microsoft software. It's simply a matter of the fact that Word is in its 11th verion. Microsoft's internal tools are amazing, definately better than any software development tools commercially available. That's not to say that I don't value OSS. On the contrary, I think that OSS is an excellent way to learn about the software development process, short of being a paid intern at a company working on software.

Well, the main complaint here is that Exchange is ahead of the competition. Well, in the next version of Exchange and Outlook, you get better stuff than you do now. It is faster, better designed (MS marketing calls this "smarter"), more secure (yeah we test that too), sexier (my term for looks better), and easier to use. I know that sounds like a commercial, but it really is all of those things. We have been working on it day in, and day out, and hundreds of thousands of bugs have been created, found, and fixed over the past year or two.

That's my perspective. I find it silly that people think that MS is evil for having the largest piece of the software pie. Software is a tricky thing to do well. The work is difficult, but the things that it enables you to do are very rewarding. I work at MS because I want my work to have the most impact that it can have.

It makes me very happy that the work I do in a day will improve the experience for a few billion people, and it doesn't hurt my ego that a few billion more people who didn't even buy the software will also benefit from my work. Although I do hope that someday they will pay to support the people who give it their all all day long to make the software that they use. Software is unlike hardware in that you can't prevent people from duplicating it. I imagine that if we had star-trek like replicators, that the businesses around the world would have some serious piracy problems.

Good software takes lots of work to produce. It is something which businesses produce to provide a benefit to others and to make money. Imagine what state software would be in if there was no commercial software. Imagine that there was no copy protection or patent laws. How many choices would you have? How confusing would that be? How good would those choices be? How would our engineers be motivated? What would unify development? OSS is a grass roots organization, and it is a healthy movement, but so is commercial software. The old saying that you get what you pay for still stands. Time is money.

My ramblings at 2AM on a Saturday morning are my opinions, and do not represent my employer.
-An anonymous MS employee.

MOD. PARENT. UP.

[Anonymous Coward]

Moderators! Do it!

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[Hektor_Troy]

probably the same as me:

1) I'm the most computer knowledgable person in the company.
2) The company feels it's better to do things internally to save money on both installation and servicing.

Exchange is a great example...

[rob_from_ca]

...of how businesses will misuse software to nullify it's potential producitivity benefit. The only situation I've ever seen Exchange used where it makes sense is in a small (

Beyond that, installations tend to be incredibly expensive, somewhat unreliable, and more importantly, usually pointless. It's not that Exchange necessarily is bad software, it's that it is nearly always horribly misued in large companies. Its primary purpose always breaks down to mail. The CEO types demand it because of "calendaring", "collaboration", and "advanced email features." They spend millions on hardware, software, and deployment/maintenance costs over a simpler email server to get those features...

Then they never use them. In big companies, the public folders are a wasteland of seldom used heirarchies that quickly become totally obsolete as the the organizational structure changes. Shared calendaring is a joke, that is barely more effecient than just e-mailing people with meeting notifications. Generally I have found that people sending out meeting notifications ignore the fact that their recipients have those areas blocked off on their calendar and send the meeting anyway, leaving the conflicts to be resolved via email anyway. Some companies get this right, but it could be done just as well with a non-integrated calendaring package (like Meeting Maker or something) that supports multiple platforms and is much, much less expensive. Finally advanced email features are almost never used. Encryption is spottily deployed if at all (and is almost inevitably flawed from a securitty standpoint). The address book is useful, but tends to end up as just yet another address book, leaving people multiple options to find things which is confusing (hopefully businesses will implement AD correctly and help alleviate this problem). Again, nothing a standalone LDAP server couldn't do better, faster, and cheaper.

Anyway, the long winded point is that like all enterprise software, everything except the very core functionality (email and sometimes shared calendaring) becomes corporate abaondware very quickly. Again, this is not necessarily Exchange's fault; it is the nature of the corporate beast. CEO's buy for features, then undertrained MSCE's roll out the software to thousands of people, occasionally doing lots of customization, occasionally with millions of dollars in consultant help. Of course the project has hundreds of departments to take input from, no real requirements, and a constantly changing business structure to map to. Tough to build something really useful with those contraints.

Here's why..

[hacker]

"..but why isn't there an open source solution to this problem yet?"

The reason there isn't an Open Source solution to this problem is because.. it isn't a problem, for us.

This is a Microsoft-driven problem. We have literally dozens upon dozens of solutions for spreadsheets, word processing, typesetting, document editing, printing, formatting, conversion, storage, mail, clients, servers, and so on. Linux is Legos, you stack your bricks however you choose.

Once someone decides that they (the frustrated Microsoft camp) want to have a solution in the Open Source space, they'll give us the incentive to do so. Right now, we have all the tools we need to do our jobs, in many formats and flavors. Just because the Windows users do not, does not make this our problem.

I constantly find myself reinforcing this point.. the Open Source community isn't here to solve everyone's problems with Open Source software. We don't find all the cracks and fill them with Open Source "caulk". We are not a free development warehouse, to pick and choose what YOU want US to do for YOU, for FREE.

Over the past two years, I've seen hundreds of my close personal friends (myself included) pour their hearts and souls out to help the "Corporate Bottom Line" understand and develop solutions using Open Source software, only to get laid off, fired, and let go for no reason.. meanwhile NOTHING is given back to the Open Source community for their selfless efforts, except higher unemployment numbers by these companies exploiting Open Source software.

If you want it bad enough, you'll find a way to motivate us to help you reach your goals. Complaining about a problem that doesn't even remotely affect us, doesn't help you solve your problems any faster.

has anyone tried novell groupwise?

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm evaluating alternatives to exchange and came across groupwise. does anyone have any experience with it? from the feature chart (http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise/upgrade. html) there's supposedly calendaring and outlook compatibility.

Re:has anyone tried novell groupwise?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you have a death wish, I'd recommend against it. See the earlier discussion regarding many of the GroupWise/Novell issues.

Re: Amazing translation skills

[duckygator]

Quite a broad extrapolation I must say. Even to the point of including dollar figures on costs. Amazing!

I'm not worthy

Donations

[itwerx]

I have never donated to an Open Source project. Why? Because none of them have interested me.
I would donate to this though!

- Michael

on AC, ditto

[Lewis Mettler, Esq.]

I have yet to see a AC post worth reading.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[NanoGator]

The guy that replied to you (Hektor Troy) basically hit the nail on the head. I split the sysdamin job with another person. I'm the guy who can run around and fix MS related problems, and she's the person who set up the background servers. Server related problems went her way, client problesm went my way.

Then she went on vacation. Of course, that meant the mailserver (literally) made a big bright poofy spark and died. I made the decision to build a new mailserver and got it done!

Funny thing is, that machine's still running a year later. Heh. If you saw it, you'd think that was an amazing feat!

Just to be clear, though, I never needed to set up a mailserver before. The one that blew up was running long before I became sysdamin. I got field promoted after our previous sysadmin left. So I'm a newb pretty much. :) (well, was anyway.. now I'm playing with the background servers.)

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[xtremex]

I understand, however, I'm in a position now, in which I have 12 years of experience, and I've been unemployed for 10 months, and I'm getting replies such as "We need 5 years experience with EMC, you only have 3, sorry."

Adios Exchange. Hello Steamroller.

[madmofo]

I work for a government agency in Arizona and we are ditching Exchange next weekend for a system built from open source components.

We expect other government agencies in Arizona and beyond to do the same in the near future.

FreeBSD
Courier-IMAP
OpenLDAP
qmail
Sympa
S quirrelMail
SunOne Directory/Calendar server

This can be done. The calendar was the hardest thing to find a replacement for.

Take a look at:
Replacing Exchange HOWTO and QVCS.

The first document is what inspired us over a year ago to begin this project. The second project is very similar to what we ended up with. We will be producing a HOWTO next month on how we did this.

Replacing Exchange is not that difficult if you understand how email works and how Exchange is cobbled together. We chose to separate the Exchange functions and put them in a web browser driven context.

The big task you will have is to fight the user conception, built through marketing and fud, that somehow Exchange/Outlook is synonymous with email in the same way that some people see AOL as synonymous with the Internet.

You will have to fight like hell for an Exchange replacement. A replacement has to be feature-rich, a replacement better be secure, and most importantly a replacement needs to be more reliable than Exchange.

If you can do your homework on these issues you should be able to get PHB and upper management to buy in.

The magical thing that Microsoft, and to a lesser extent Lotus and Novell, managed to do is transform the function of email into the monstrousity that Exchange/Outlook is and convince people to lay down gobs of cash money for something which fundamentally is no different than any other email system - its job is to deliver email.

We got tired of Microsoft sticking it to us for licensing. We got tired of virus after virus. We got tired of Exchange problems with no apparent reason and (worse) no apparent cure. We got tired of having our data held hostage by Exchange.

The big question, for you bofhs out there, is whether you can/will do something about Exchange. You can sit idly by while Exchange craps on you again and again or you can do something about it.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[NanoGator]

Ouch. So does my having a job with .. well.. less experience bother you?

Well, fret not: That's not my primary job there, I just absorbed it. I'm the company's artist/webmaster. I was best capable of filling the previous sysadmin's shoes, but my company couldn't afford to hire a replacement for him.

It's not the type of scenario where I walked in somewhere and said "I wanna job doing sysadmin stuff". Technically I'm a Lightwave animator/compositor. Heh.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[xtremex]

It doesnt really bother me...just hits a nerve..just like if I got a job being a lightwave compositor. I'm not even too sure what it is (besides what google can't tell me), and I don't even know enough about it to fudge my way in an interview :) After 37 interviews, I'm just getting pissed hwen the guy who interviews me knows NOTHING, and I get passed over because he thinks I'm lying or something. (I don't really know why I get passed over,..If I knew, I'd change somehow)

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[NanoGator]

I wish you luck. I honestly don't know what else to say other than im listening. I haven't been in that position (yet), but I face it. My company may or may not succeed. The worst part is, I know that if I do lose my job it'll be a minimum of 4 months for me to acquire a new one. (and that's being optimistic)

I'm not really sure how to shorten that time other than to try to network with other people in the field. I'm working that direction, but I'm scared.

I really hope the economy boosts itself soon. I think people enjoy spending money.

I have a question: Do you have any advice for me as to how to minimize the impact of unemployment? What can I do now?

Can We Finally Ditch Exchange?

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer: No.

Now shut up and download the new kernel.

nForce proves the rule

[leonbrooks]

Thankfully all software that I use is open source, and can be readily compiled (by myself or a distributor such as Mandrake).

Worked well for me too until I had to make it work on NVidia nForce-based chipsets. Sweet chipset (GeForce2, sound, LAN, etc all built in with practically zero contention on the shared RAM and literally zero on the AGP buss since the peripherals all run through AMD's interCPU buss - oh, and no less than 6 USB ports on the board I have to hand (MSI K7N420 Pro)) the LAN card driver (only) is closed-source, the closed library they ship for it (nvlanlib.o) is apparently incompatible with gcc 3.2 - sorry about Mandrake 9.0 (and Redhat `Null') distributions, it won't recompile for love nor $$$. Now, what I completely fail to understand is that the FGeForce2 and sound kernel modules are completely OSS! Like, d'uh? It's akin to shipping an all-American vehicle with metric rims...

In case you don't understand the subject line, `proves' in the sense used there means `breaks', as in `tests to destruction'.

Open Source Replacement for Exchange

[acgetchell]

If you really want to make this happen, you should check out prochange:

http://www.prochange.org

The dolphin mascot is cute.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[xtremex]

My advice would be to increase your knowledge on as much as you can. Be vendor neutral. Learn a little of a lot. Try to be familiar with as much as you can. Don't know Java? Read a book on it. then you can add it to your resume. You might not get a JOB as a java programmer, but it increases your value.
And, after being an employer for 5 years, my biggest advice is..never kiss ass. While employers/managers may suck it up, they look down on people who DO kiss ass :)

I've written a free/busy calendaring component

[aussieaussieaussie]

I'm about to release it under the LGPL. It is a partial implementation of RFC2445 and enables an Evolution user to be auto-published as far as their free-busy information.

This means that users of a pure linux/evolution install can share their group scheduling information with outlook users and other evolution users via a FBURL such as http://www.eurekait.com/sfg.ifb (mine).

So far it is written and works but requires a few performance tweaks. (Processes 15 users a second).

This is only one small piece of the puzzle but a useful one.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[NanoGator]

I appreciate the tips man, thank you. :)

You are definitely right about diverisification. That's how I've been able to survive a few rounds of layoffs.

Cheers dude

Re:Oh come on! Exchange scaling?

[pboulang]

I have to agree with your dissentor.. I've been able to many times have scalable and stable Exchange environments. I've also seen Unix boxes that crapped out. Any time you have failures (both windows and Unix worlds) it is either for faulty/underpowered hardware, or imperfect configuration.

Noone was ever fired for buying IBM

[driehuis]

The old adage in the computer industry always was "No manager was ever fired for buying IBM". Things haven't changed that much, just the name of the upper dog.

I hear the argument about sueing a lot. I even hear it from managers who had to suffer the pain of a Microsoft audit (an audit is their way of saying "thank you" to loyal customers who MS feels haven't been stripped of cash sufficiently yet).

User friendly? Bah.

[driehuis]

The hardest part of running Exchange is to find qualified administrators. I'm not talking MCSE here (I know some very capable MCSE's, but in general MCSE is not a valued qualification in my book).

A good Exchange admin can get user-visible uptimes that rival those of *NIX based solutions.

And make no mistake, top brass don't care about availability. They'll raise a stink about it and life goes on.

The "Exchange is easier" argument has been raised only anecdotally in this argument so far, which is good because it's plain untrue. It is at least as hard as setting up a *NIX solution (and chances are, Exchange will beat *NIX on functionality).

And that functionality is my pet peeve. When users look at me to prevent the next variant of Klez, I tell them that they picked the gee-whiz user friendly gooiey over my security concerns, and would they please work it out amongst themselves? It's rare that I have users who actually want all the automation nonsense, but not a single one of them has followed up on my suggestion to write to MS to get something done about the no-questions-asked automatic opening of attachments, e-mailed JavaScript and stuff.

Users don't want risk, but they can't be bothered to do something about it. So, they get what they asked for. Heaps of functionality. For their benefit, and the dubious benefits of others.

It's all down to consumer choice.

Re:I (don't) feel your pain.

[skinfitz]

Call me what you wish - it doesn't change the truth.

I'm available for consultancy if you need help with your systems...

Oracle announcement about Exchange replacement

[ziegast]

Oracle claims here to have solved this problem. They are internally replacing dozens of Exchange servers with a three-server cluster using their software for e-mail, voicemail, fax, and calendar.

It ain't open source, but it is an alternative and covers many of the bases discussed in this forum.

-ez

TUTOS

[pchown]

You may like to have a look at TUTOS. We've just implemented this. It has some rough edges still, but it is quite a comprehensive GPL groupware package.

You basically get contact management, scheduling, task and time management, and bug tracking. The server runs with Apache and PHP, and clients use it through a web interface. This means that the clients can run on (almost) any operating system.

No, I'm nothing to do with the project, I'm just a satisfied customer. :-)

Exchange scales?

[jotaeleemeese]

Ask your backup team what do they think about that.

Nothing more wasteful...

Re:No, and to the Wannabe's, Put up or Shut up

[Anonymous Coward]

Even for the time, those limitations were sad and indicative of the bloatware that Exchange is.