Yet Another Exchange Killer?

jmertic writes "SuSE Linux now has the latest Exchange killer, but this time for Exchange Server. Openexchange Server is designed to be a drop in replacement for Exchange 5.5 users who don't want to pay the MS tax of going to Exchange 2000. They say it will be available mid November."

Comments

Will It Work As A Drop-in For 5.0?

[The Turd Report]

I get customers who have '5.0', it is an open relay by default and can not be secured, who get hijacked by spammers. The only way for them to secure their server is to buy '5.5'. The subject line has my question. Anyone know?

Source code license?

[pope nihil]

I notice that you can get the source code, but under what license?

SuSE Linux Openexchange Server 4

Base license with ten groupware clients and an unlimited number of external e-mail clients (POP3/IMAP)

Order no.: 2118-1INT

US $ 1,249.00

Software
SuSE Linux Openexchange Server 4 (based on SLES 8), source code (4 CDs)

Re:Source code license?

[bogie]

Interesting question, but I'd rather see them do something about Yast. That one piece of software spoils the distro for me. I mean most of the other distros GPL their tools, why can't Suse?

Because of Yast I don't support Suse and never will.

I know I be modded as Troll for this, but I know many other people feel the same way I do. I mean for a company that claims to be so into opensource why have this "gotcha" built into their distro? Could you imagine if Redhat had done the same thing with RPM? Or Debian had did this with Apt?

Suse did invent the tool so they do get to pick the license, but what would happen if the 99% of software written by others which they are repackaging all did the same thing?

yo

[hfastedge]

Interesting phenomena at work here: let the company with the $$ develop the product first. Then the open sourceres write it for free in their leisure time and the people that paid for the $$ eventually switch to free. This makes the writers of $$ want to change their product enough so that its either:
a) 100% as difficult to rewrite, but transparent to the users OR
b) defend their licensing in court.

Anyway, this is a very weird cycle. I'd be enlightened if some other enightened minds could suggest some alternative cycles. Maybe there arent any.

-skimpIzu!

Re:yo

[uchian]

In my view :

You could either look at it as the consumerisation (is that a word?) of software, which occurs with pretty much any type of electronic product you could name (digital watches, cd players, VCR's), where the price of the product starts high and then drops when people figure out how to mass produce it cheaply.

Unfortunately, the main reason as to why the price starts out high - that the components are difficult to make in large numbers and become cheaper as time goes by and demand increases - doesn't apply to software because once you've made the first copy, you can mass produce it simply by putting it on the internet or on CD.

And because it is so easy to mass produce, the large companies have to artificially make it more difficult to mass produce, which is why everyone on Slashdot get's so pissed off with them.

The only way this cycle will break is if someone figures out a business model where

a) The programmers write the software and still get paid, and
b) No artificial constraints on what can be done with the software are applied.

Personally, I think that as long as big companies think that they can make a product once and sell it millions of times, (remind you of Douglas Adams' Mostly Harmless?) they are going to keep fighting this losing battle.

The solution, as companies like AOL have figured out, is that the software is a means-to-an-end. They don't try to sell you their software, they sell you their web service. Do most city database companies try and sell a generic e-commerce application, or are they selling the service to customise it to the needs of the client?

And god help the recording industry :-) The service there is to listen to the band's playing live, not in providing CD's.

Consumer software and consumer pre-recorded music are dead end industries, which is why they are fighting using every dirty trick in the book to try and stay alive at the moment.

Well, that's my view on things anyway ;-)

Re:Interesting use of "Open"

[Anonymous Coward]

Never mind that you can do it either way with Exchange, which-ever benfits your situation more... But never let it be said that facts get in the way of a good MS diss on /.!

Re:MS Tax?

[Psx29]

Microsoft doesn't come close to this.

They are actually worse then the government if you think about it since what they are doing has already been declared illegal and many things they have done have been illegal and all they get is a slap on the wrist "don't do it again" the government says. The government and microsoft probably have closer ties than most people would like to think...some kind of twisted symbiotic relaionship...parasitic to the people however...(Editors Note: Or Maybe I am just paranoid)

What's the point?

[bamf]

It's not a "drop-in" replacement for Exchange, it's a "pay us $999 plus expenses if you have an old setup, otherwise ask us for a quote" replacement for Exchange.

It's not even cheap. I know I can get good pricing from Microsoft due the area in which I work (Healthcare), but this is considerably more expensive, probably twice the cost for just the base server application.

I think I'll give it a miss :-)

Re:MS Tax?

[caspper69]

You are mostly wrong. I use OfficeXP and my father runs '97. Never have a problem moving one doc to another*, and I don't save as another format. The last real change was with Office '95.

*I can't say it's entirely perfect because when I do a flowchart (graphics in word) he can't see it in editing mode, but he can in Print Preview and he can print it. Not a big deal since I do all of that and he doesn't ever use the feature, but I guess it could be a problem elsewhere.

Good, now where can I get the source..

[dameron]

for "Open"Exchange...?

Re:Wait a minute.

[ProfDumb]

This is being touted as an Exchange killer, yet it costs $1249 for 10 licenses?

You are comparing, I think, a discounted web price for an Exchange upgrade with a list price for Suse. Suse will also discount, everybody does. Also, others have posted that Suse is charging per connected user, rather than the total number of users who ever connect (if I understand the other posts.) This will make a difference. Further, if you need to upgrade other software (MS OS, Office) and the only thing holding you up from going to Linux / OpenOffice is Exchange, then Suse's OpenExchange prices might not have to be far below the MS price.

However, if Suse really undercuts pricing, MS could always increase its discounts until SuSe's commercial offering goes away. This is a big advantage of true open source -- it can't be priced out of the market.

Re:Wow

[vranash]

If it was actually Open Source, maybe it would.

Open does not Open Source make.

Micro does not Microscopic make (see M$ exe's for demo)

As I've been noticing a lot of recently, many of the new 'Open' products are just that, products with a name made to fool the 'casual' open sourcer into thinking they're getting something that's not proprietary, like M$'s stuff.

Re:Prediction: It will be available in november..

[Anonymous Coward]

Will SuSE release this as an Open Source package that can be built on other platforms than their Linux? This YaST tool of which you speak is not Open Source.

If it won't be Open Source, all I have to say is OpenMail, or Samsung Contact as it is referred to now.

Re:Obvioulsy you've never used Exchange

[Robber Baron]

I was going to slag you again with another "check out the big brain on Crispin" type comment but this time you're absolutely right. Sure I'd love to see a drop-in for Exchange as well but for me "drop-in" also means "will work with Outlook as a front end". The same goes for a drop-in for Outlook...drop-in means users can switch over with a minimum of training and squeamishness.

Also all these comments about lisa and melissa and code red etc have me scratching my head as well, I mean hasn't anybody heard of virus scanners? I've got Norton Corporate Edition with the Exchange/Outlook plugin and ain't NOTHING getting past it! Shit, you can even configure it to autoupdate itself and push the updates out to the clients when they log in!

Re:Not.

[ZoneGray]

True enough, but MAPI is just a protocol. All the Calendar functionality comes from the client and the server. And Outlook retains most of it's functionality (and gets a huge boost in perfomrance) when run in Internet mode.

There's no reason the essential Exchange functionality couldn't be duplicated. Some of the Calendar info is already available in that icalendar format, and the rest could be encapsulated in POP/IMAP. Add some server enhancvements and maybe an Outlook plugin, and you could be pretty close.

And of course, you could distribute the Outlook plugin to the whole enterprise just by sending one attachment to the VP of Marketing.

Re:Interesting use of "Open"

[anonymous loser]

Interesting point. I'm wondering why companies would bother paying $1200 for packages you can get off the shelf for free, many of which are already installed by default for server configurations on several distros.

Since they've got all that other stuff on there, they should throw in IMP as well.

I wonder if the spam filter is SpamAssassin?

Re:MS Tax?

[plus5insightful]

The historic phrase "Microsoft Tax" generally refers to the additional cost for licensing when buying a product such as a Dell: There was no way to get around this additional cost because of bundling agreements they have with Microsoft. This was compounded by the fact that virtually every other VAR had the same policies and would not resell a computer without a Windows license. Carry this same example over the laptops.

However, trying to extrapolate this out to Microsoft Exchange is incredibly weak. Exchange is not a perfect product, however it is very highly regarded; It offers a superb feature set for many organizations. Exchange is an entirely optional product, as is upgrading, and there is not "Tax like" element of it.

Re:Bynari comparison, please?

[internet-redstar]

see my other post
Wrt Outlook robust-ness, it's recommended to upgrade your Outlook to the latest 'service pack' to avoid problems there.
Also, the configuration changes to Outlook are not very straight-forward to do (unless familiar with it).

Server-side Exchange features such as document flow (which is hardly ever used) are missing.

All the traditional features such as shared folders, meeting requests, appointments, free/buzy , synchronisation with PDA, and such are there...

Check out there website at www.bynari.net or download a demo ISO image