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Open Source Microsoft Exchange Replacements?
Carl Farrington asks: "Do you think you could try to raise public awareness of the importance for an open source replacement for Microsoft Exchange (Outlook/MAPI compatible for shared/public folders). Current offerings are SuSE Linux Groupware Server, Communigate Pro (Stalker Software), Samsung Contact (ex. HP OpenMail) all of which are not open source / free. Kroupware is in development, but there will be no Outlook Connector for it. otlkcon is in slow development as a possible connector for Kroupware. There is also OSER (Open Source Exchange Replacement) which again looks like it needs more help. Is there any chance of getting some people to back this stuff? It's so important and is probably the major problem facing Linux as viable replacements for Win2000 servers." While this seems to be a question that
keeps
popping up in one form or another, it's always worthwhile to come back and point out alternatives, in development, that might need your help to get off the ground and running. So, if you're looking for an alternative to Exchange, would you be willing to contribute some time to one of the projects listed above? If you've been using Unix as an Exchange replacement, what did you do and how well has it been working?
Slashdot has no collective memory. This story run constantly.. Look at www.bynari.net for a good solution available NOW.
I am using Cyrus IMAP as an IMAP server, with the Bynari Connector to do Contacts and Calendars for outlook. This is less than ideal because storing contacts and calenders in a mail system encoded with tnef is plain ugly, but it works. For the windows desktops at least. We don't plan on Linux desktops just yet, but servers, almost totally converted. Samba + OpenLDAP + Cyrus IMAP + Postfix. It's working amazingly. Nothing to patch, no crashes, fast, secure. It's a match made in heaven. Outlook works 100%. I'd like to find a calendaring/contact system that didn't use Outlook though... perhaps something that stored in LDAP, and was very flexible. I dont know what to do with Calendars though.
There's something called BILL workgroup server, and it acts as an exchange replacement.
Here is the url www.billworkgroup.org
I think they forgot one: www.bynari.net. Their blurb from the front page:
and...Anyone using this?
Here's a project worth checking out: Citadel/UX. Admittedly it's only about 80 percent of the way there, but the thing that makes Citadel stand out from its open source brethren is that it's not just another Cyrus/Postfix/OpenLDAP/etc. rollup with some loose stiches put in to make them act like a single system.
/etc/mail/complicated.cf and /etc/init.d/S90scary.sh, but they don't mind running a "setup" program and then customizing with a web browser.
We're actually taking the time to build something good from scratch. We've got a true journalling database oriented message store (thanks to Berkeley DB) including single-instance store (a message sent to 100 users doesn't get saved 100 times). Built-in IMAP, POP, SMTP protocols. A nice calendar service, and a Web interface. It's even got its own instant messenger.
The thing that's important, though, is that it's designed to be easy to install. One of the very few things that Exchange 5.5 had going in its favor was that it was relatively easy to install. Citadel aims for that as well -- plug in the RPM's or tarball, run the setup program, and you've got a basic server up and running. Inexperienced admins might be scared by editing
Where we really need the extra development work right now is to start writing some connectors for popular client software. Currently we are aiming for 100 percent compatibility with the Kroupware project (so you can use the Kontact client without having to install the clunky Kolab server) and eventually Evolution (which has a 'connector' architecture). Eventually we'd prefer to do everything in Mozilla (using Mozilla Mail and Mozilla Calendar), since it's cross-platform.
Again, it's not a drop-in Exchange replacement today, but it's a project worth watching, or better yet, helping out on.
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Been done.
It's called Outlook Web Access; it's got all of Outlook's features in a web client connecting to Exchange Servers.
Stalker Communigate Pro is awesome...very cheap..maybe 100 times cheaper than MS Exchange. We don't have the mapi connector because I'm trying not to become dependent on MS Office at my corporation. Definitely give CommuniGate Pro a test out. The trial never expires and is free to use with a limited amount of accounts. Also you can use 5 MAPI accounts to test it out. Runs great on linux too. Wait another day or so till 4.1 final is released though. Calendaring, group lists.
EudoraLook Skin is awesome with Yahoo element pack. Looks just like Yahoo webmail.
Outlook Express does little more than email.
Email is the least of the features of its big brother, Outlook, however. Outlook handles: task lists (very important...our comapny uses hierarchies of these task lists for all bug tracking in development , because it's stupid enough to be flexible with regards to input), global contacts (as in, for an entire organization), group management, Sticky notes, alerts, a "journal" which tracks changes on all your office docs (fucking awesome), syncing with pocketpc and I THINK palm, publishable schedules, and this is jsut the stuff I actually USE.
Best of all, Outlook is pretty stable, unobtrusive, and surprisingly easy to use. And since our smtp server cleans viruses before they even GET to Outlook, the second biggest downfall is eliminated for us. The biggest, of course, is price, and our license came "free" with the MSDE subscription we get anyway to do our work.
I prefer Squirrelmail for email, and use iCal at home for the killer rendezvous support. But for doing all the sundry business crap I gotta do on Windows, Outlook is second only to a personal assistant (insert secretary shagging joke here).
Hey freaks: now you're ju
On email? never. Its the lifeblood of our orginization, and there's absolutely no way I'd be willing to put in place an inferior product. And the managemnt knows this. Our IT department can comprimise on plenty of things, but email can't be one of them.
Mod point free since 2001
Part of the problem is that people are looking at writing this from scratch, which is a lot of work.
However, in April 2003 the OOo Groupware team and a few Apache James developers discussed building groupware functionality into AJ.
Apache James is already a production ready POP, NNTP and SMTP server, and has partial IMAP support. It is highly componentised, being based upon the Avalon Framework.
Basically, it was determined by OOogw and a few Apache James developers that it was more than pheasible to complete the IMAP support and add iCal and iCAP, plus the necessary authentication modules (LDAP is partly there iirc, and others). This is not a difficult task because most of the foundation work is already done. It's just a matter of implementing the few protocols that are missing.
Sadly it has not been followed up by the OOogw or AJ developers because nobody really has the time - ever the problem with OSS and volunteers. If I were a Java programmer, I would make an attempt, but I'm not.
I guess this post is a feeble attempt to lure some actual Java developers to the cause.
Free Gamer - Free games list and commentary
In my office we completely remove exchange and put up a complete system without shedding any money (FREE) except for the hardware of course. We used it for both local and internet mails.
FREE software:
qmail - mail
vpopmail - pop3/multidomain
courier-imap - imap3
qmail-scanner - email filter
spamassassin - spam filter
squirrelmail - web-based mail
openldap - email directory
clamav - antivirus
ezmlm-idx - mailist
apache - webserver
qmailadmin - email administration
With this u can use clients eg outlook, mozilla mail, evolution, eudora, etc
Features
SMTP Mail Server with SMTP-AUTH (Plain, CRAM-MD5), TLS (SSL) support, and SPAM/Virus Scanner.
POP3 Server with APOP and SSL support
IMAP Server with TLS (SSL) support
WebMail Server
Quota Support (usage viewable by webmail)
Autoresponder
Mailing Lists
Web-Based Email Administration
It can be a real timesaver when I need to create a meeting for all the people on an e-mail string, even those on outside e-mail systems (iCal), or have to look up someone in the Global Address List (works much better in Exchange than LDAP mode).
Granted, to use most of these really cool features you have to be running Exchange, However, most features are functional on IMAP and LDAP servers. It just doesn't look and work as pretty as a native exchange install. Once you start pulling these functions apart into different programs, you really start losing functionality. I am not saying everything on your computer should be in one huge mega-application, but these are all related functions that give you a one-stop shop with a clean consistent interface.
Like most people here, if there was an OSS replacement, I would consider it, but we are part of a HUGE Exchange site (US Navy), and we have to have replication and so on. Interoperability is a must, and to be honest, there isn't a package out there that even comes close to matching the feature set and manageability of Exchange/Outlook.
Other side notes..... changing permissions on folders you own (such as calendars and what not) is really easy for users. They just right click, choose Properties, and choose who can see, change, add, etc. I haven't seen anything like that in the OSS world, and is a MAJOR thing, at least in my corner of the world.
Excryption, using PKI certs is a piece of cake, public keys are stored in the GAL, so I don't even need to get it ahead of time. Outlook checks every message, warns of bad certs and sigs, the whole deal. User can be brain-dead, but still send mostly secure e-mail.
I can choose the format of my e-mails (plain, RTF, HTML) and base that on the destination, so that I send plain out on the internet, RTF within the exchange site, and HTML to local addressees, etc.
Ties in with Windows messenger and NetMeeting, so I can click the name on en e-mail and talk to and see someone, using all internal servers, no MSN or any of that crap. Shared whiteboard? No problem. Shared Desktop? Ditto.
Exchange hosts IRC conferences, that can be scheduled via Outlook, and accessed by any IRC client out there.
Those are just off the top of my head. IMO Outlook/Exchange is the best software MS has, especially the latest versions. We haven't had a server crash or DB corruption (with 7,000 users and 2 TB info store) in over a year and a half, and when we did, it was because the SAN died, not exchange. If you have people that know what they are doing running exchange on good non-bargain-basement hardware, it works well and just runs. It's managed by *one* MMC snap-in tool to control all the protocols, stores, folders, etc. That's my $.02......
You're missing the value-add of Exchange (and therefore the hard part of replacing it) entirely.
:-)
The complete integration of calendar, contacts, public folders, and email in Outlook (well copied in Evolution) is not client-side only -- it extends into the server. The two most useful and hard to replace parts are:
free/busy scheduler. Calendar, new appointment, select a few co-workers, pick a time. You can see if they're busy at that time or not. Timezone synchronization is automatic. Select some resources as well, like a conference bridge or a video projector -- you can see if it's in use at that time. This is the killer app of Exchange.
global address book. LDAP is great, but few Unixy solutions let you use it from the email composer address field, the calendar address field, and the contact editor. Evolution is pretty close, Mozilla does better but lacks the calendar part.
Public folders which include non-file content. Shared filesystem is okay if I want to share a spreadsheet, but a public folder can include an addressbook of people that you don't need in your everyday book, a calendar showing training schedules and the resources committed, all sorts of goodies like that. VB macros too -- workflow and virii to your heart's content
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
Listen. I moved to this system from TestDirector, and I must say it kicks the SHIT out of the latter. I've also used a couple other solutions I won't mention because even though they suck, I'm friends with their developers.
1) Outlook's native, not activex/java-inna-window, so it never crashes. TD (and one of the other apps) has the tendency to do that unless you use their client, and they make you pay per license. Outlook's client is basically "free," since it comes with MS Word, Excel, and all the other crap you "have to have" at a business.
2) Most of them FORCE you to enter information. This can take a long time. Sometimes, I just want to add a task to remind me to find a faster way to execute an algorithm. It is much quicker and much easier to use Outlook.
3) Generally (at least 90% of the time), even WITH all the extended information, I needed to meet with the tester who found a problem to watch them replicate it. It's nearly impossible to codify some of the more complicated activities we perform, and many testers, sadly, aren't technical writers. They're clever sadistic people who get their jollys off in proving you wrong (j/k guys, I love you all! Beta Forever!)
4) There's nothing by way of completeness or exactness that you get in a bug tracking system that you CAN'T get with Tasks. Need to know what version they're running? Say, "hey guys, when you enter a task, include the version." Done. Need to include a screen shot, patch file, etc? Done. Need to SEARCH on these things? Done. Maybe not as nicely as you'd like, but you can do it...and it's already here.
But then again, I *like* post-it notes on a whiteboard. And I used to work with this guy.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Does your company IT bureaucracy disable POP/IMAP access to the exchange server?
Cutsomized munpack
This special version of munpack adds a "-m" flag to extract "message/rfc822"'s to a named file. This can be useful if your company has annoying policies (must have exchange account; no POP or IMAP access; etc) designed to force you to use Microsoft Outlook and Exchange.
Instead, you can set up a rule to "forward as attachment", and then use a combination of this tool, some procmail rules, and a shell script (included) to read your mail on any UNIX system with any standard mail reader.
They discussed and tested the following
Only Easygate and Samsung had full Outlook MAPI support, whilst Communigate and Bynari Insight Groupware had partial support.
The April archive is online and link is here. There are a number of PDF files with the article details in them.
Exchange 2003 went RTM Today:
0 3/06-30Exchange2003RTMPR.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/Jun
LQT Systems has been selling Chronos, a system I developed when I was working there, to many clients. Numerous enterprises have replaced the calendaring part of Exchange with Chronos successfuly. The tools are out there. You just have to find them.
MS Exchange Server (server end; NT only), MS Outlook (client end; Win32, MacOS). Very limited support of open-protocol clients (IMAP, webmail?). Microsoft Corp. wants to sell you Exchange 2000, these days, but Exchange 5.5 is still very common.
Lotus Notes / Domino (server end, Linux supported), Lotus Notes (client end; Win32, MacOS). Limited webmail access (iNotes).
Novell Groupwise. http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise/ Server end runs on either Novell NetWare 5/6 or WinNT. Client end is proprietary Win32 client or webmail. A native Linux client is under development.
SuSE Linux Openexchange Server (formerly SuSE Linux eMail Server). Standard, good open-source components (Postfix, Apache, Cyrus IMAP, OpenLDAP, OpenSSL) preconfigured to work well with one another, plus a couple of proprietary components: YaST2 for graphical administration, and SkyrixGreen for integrated scheduling and group discussions (shared folders). Client access from any OS, including but not limited to webmail. A full-functional trial version (lacking only "maintenance") is available for US $20 at http://www.suse.com/openexchange/slox_eval_form.ht ml . Sites are known to scale well to at least 1,000 users per site. The largest deployment yet known (March 2003) is 1,900 users.
Bynari Insight Server, http://www.bynari.net/ . Server end is Linux-based. Intended as a plug-compatible replacement for MS-Exchange Server, based on POP3, IMPA, SMTP, and LDAP, but also with full support for all the special, proprietary MS-Exchange Server RPC-based protocols for group discussion, scheduling, contact management, task lists, etc., when used with MS-Outlook clients. Review: http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6734
Bynari InsightConnector, http://www.bynari.net/ . Extensions that load into MS-Outlook clients to let them perform MS-Exchange-type functions (scheduling, contact-management, public folders) without needing an MS-Exchange server, using only open-standard IMAP, SMTP, and LDAP servers, instead.
Samsung Contact (formerly HP Openmail), http://samsungcontact.com/en/ . Server end can be Linux-based (or Solaris/AIX). Based on SMTP, IMAP, POP3, LDAP. Supports proprietary protocols for e-mail, scheduling, etc. native to Samsung's Contact client (which is available on Linux and Win32). Webmail access. Implements Microsoft's (documented, for a change) MAPI protocol for scheduling, public folders, offline folders.
Oracle Collaboration Suite, http://www.oracle.com/ip/deploy/cs/ . Formerly Steltor CorporateTime, http://www.steltor.com/, until that firm's recent acquisition by Oracle. (That product is said to have emerged from Netscape Calendar.) Does IMAP, POP3, SMTP, E-mail, real-time conferences, voicemail, scheduling. Apparently implements all of the special, proprietary MS-Exchange Server RPC-based protocols for group discussion, scheduling, contact management,
I am not advocating a particular position...yet. Just stating what people see in Exchange.
Why do people use exchange at all? It includes most if not all the groupware functionality that a lot of companies are interested in, in a single managed package, and exposes an API for additional functionality.
These functions include:
EMAIL (pick your favorite connector)
DIRECTORY (The exchange metabase is what Active Directory is derived from, that seems to have a better DS interface)
NEWS (or a simple pre-IM method for collabaration)
GROUPWARE API (extend functionality, also using shared NT domain security)
CENTRALIZED MANAGEMENT WITH ROLES (I have deployed the entire iPlanet base package. I like the standards based cross platform method, but manageing the functions seperately out of a Java browser ran like mud on our high-end R&D boxes, not to mention the what-manager-goes-to-what-service confusion.)
A comment was made about OpenLDAP-OpenSSH-IMAP-INN-Whatist patched together with mod_webdav for calendars, or posting them on a Samba share.
That may be nice and all WORKING I admit, but what about deployment and migration and administration? Yes it's stable, yes its secure, yes you don't dumb w32_klez krap if you stick with Mozilla, but what bean-counter on the board is going to be interested in lots of hires in IT to fight the hydra? (I'm currently looking myself) Better pay protection money to the MS racket and more to PSS, rather than the revolving door of headcount from HR.
The big sticky spot with exchanging Exchange seems to be calendering. There are basicly three ways to do it: 1) Outlook, 2) iCS (iPlanet, etc.), 3) mod_webdav. Now the reason END-USERS (like your boss who you have to sell this to) hate web-clients (#3) is that they run like the mud they suck, and they never look the same way twice. Security wise you are doing file i/o (I think) through a web server, a very sensitive topic. Good luck making a OSS outlookish API connecter. iCS is out there, I have my druthers, but it's worth looking into.
The most insightful comments here have been made from the NON-TECHNICAL management perspective. Also, go take a look at the recent article from down under about the future of Debian. Down near the bottom is some very insightful comments about the big gap between developers and marketing, and how that can be very detrimental to superior products.
hfnetchk / MS BaseLine Security Analyzer + individual updates + manual download (and file verification) + qchains is the only way I update now. There may be a better way, but WindowsUpdate is death.
/var/spool/mail. Too bad there isn't a transaction log for that...
Try SUSServer. It's a locally owned and configured WindowsUpdate type thing. It downloads all the patches from WU, but you decide which patches get pushed to your boxes from the SUSServer. Group Policy makes this a Very Easy Thing to do.
As for WU itself, I've never had a problem with it, although I don't let WU to a carte blanche update to whatever machine I'm working on. Some hotfixes don't play nice with our proprietary software.
I've never personally seen an Exchange server priv.edb corrupt, but it can happen. I had a collegue who had it happen to him. All he had to do was restart the server, and the rollback with the transaction log took care of the rest.
I havve seen Sendmail shit itself, and trash
You're using ClamAV on a production box?! You do realize that the OpenAntivirus definition files haven't been updated since October, 2002... For Bob's sake, spend $80 and get F-Prot or something else that gets updated more than twice a year.
That said, Exchange is a bloated, administrative nightmare. ANYTHING else is almost a complete privledge to manage by comparison. Yes, even Notes.
"Let's buy another 500 user licenses for this server!" is a good place to start bitching. I don't want to hear "$9 a user" from anyone ever again! Oh, and another $2 grand for software JUST TO BACKUP!?! This is the most basic and integral function of real server software - not an expensive, after-market opportunity.
Do you have multiple Exchange servers? Are they AD integrated? Do you need to retire the old hardware of the original box? Nightmares never end! The controls for EVERYTHING look identical, and there are eight separate plug-in control panels, each with less than 10% of the needed functionality to perform any moderately complex administrative task. "You are in a maze of twisty, little tree/pane browser widgets, all alike!" Exchange is so deeply, fundamentally flawed from an administrative perspective, that I am caused physical pain, just trying to think where to begin these descriptions! It was bad in 4/5.x, but to "Train Wreck" it's administration into the nightmare-that-never-ends of AD tools...
I'd rather be devoured by the Nameless Horror out of Time.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Why copy?
If someone requires a replacement for Exchange, then surely it is a necessity to clone the functionality of Exchange first?
You can push the merits of alternate software, and I for one will listen, but you can't, in business, drop an application like Exchange and switch to an differently-operating application and expect productivity to remain the same!
Progess, something which OSS is not a stranger to, takes time. I'd love all the machines at my place of work to use an open source desktop, but a straight switch is out of the question.
Well, that's partly correct. But it's also partly because KDE kind of forces it to be there, and GNOME which doesn't had to have a similar layout.
In fact the default GNOME layout doesn't look much like anything else. It has a vaguely Mac style panel at the top and a vaguely MS style window list thingy at the bottom. You can put the window list up at the top as well if you like, in fact I know quite a few people who do that. It tends to be a bit cramped though.
Look at StarOffice and OpenOffice. They seem familiar. And there are plenty of others, but I think you get the point.
*shrug* look at Gnumeric or AbiWord. The fact that OpenOffice looks like MS Office is because originally Star Division were trying to sell to business, and they believed they had to keep things exactly the same if they weren't to scare people off through retraining costs etc.
Another thing that M$ gets bashed on here is because they "embrace and extend". Many, many open source projects do exactly this.
Tru dat. See GNU C extensions. I'm not convinced that those are a power play though, as all too often the Microsoft extensions seem to be.
From the main page of thePHP Groupware site, two minutes ago:
Fatal Error: It appears that you have not created the database tables for phpGroupWare. Click here to run setup.
Not a very encouraging advertisement...
---- scrm
I know it's not OSS, but I think people should really checkout Novell Groupwise as a replacement for Microsoft Exchange.
It supports integration with Active Directory (if you need it), LDAP authentication, IMAP, has full collaboration calendaring support. A webaccess frontend (IE Hotmail), and starting with Netware 6.5 should have a fully functional Linux and MacOS client. Heck in Netware 6.5 (possibly 7) you can even run the server portions on top of Linux, so you don't even need the Netware Kernel (supported distros as of now are SuSe and RedHat Enterprise Edition).
We use it exclusively and never get hit with the latest virus email scare. Anyways I think it's worth a look at least.
I have customers that rely heavily on Exchange Server 2000 and I have tried to woo them over to Linux server options and their advantages, however they wont' budge because they need the ability to use Outlook/Exchange. These folks use Outlook and are opposed to free alternatives such as phpGroupware. I was hopeful that they would accept some of the options even a few others that seem as good or in some ways better than phpGroupware, but they really turned their noses down at these options. Someone please finish up an Exchange Server replacement with a connector!!!