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SUSE Openexchange Under GPL
Gustavo writes "'Netline Internet Service announced today that it would contribute its OPEN-XCHANGE Server, the core technology underlying the industry's top-selling Linux-based groupware, collaboration, and messaging application, under the GNU General Public License (GPL).' How does it compare to OpenGroupware.org which was open sourced a year ago?"
What is this, a linux site?
Is there something special about Aug 3?? First it was Real with Helix going GPL, and now this! :-D.
#diff -r opengroupware openexchange
It looks like everything SuSE had closed off before is now GPL'ed. Now, if only Doom 3 was GPL'ed... ;)
IBMs Java Database and now this . . . if I didnt know better, Id say that theres something of an open source release conspiracy going on. . .
Now Sun won't have to buy them, they can just fork them :)
Open Source Java DAO Generator
They dont give browser specifics, I wonder what they actually consider 'a major browser'.
That's Provisional Governing Authority, you insensitive clod!
What are they doing?
Sweetening the pot by offering an alternative to those sky high Exchange2003 licesning fees?
or
Giving away the store before Sun buys them out?
Can these open-sourced alternatives be a reasonable solution?
I like the screen shots. For those who have used it, can I use an alternative browser other than Mozilla? I still find the Lotus Notes interface more intuitive and simple because it uses tabs as in tabbed browsing. In a case, the browser is implemented as another tab.
I cant wait to get this going in-house & have both the geeks (Ximian on FreeBSD) & everyone else (Outlook) using same db. Wow.
Novell sounds like they actually "get it". They are doing all the right things to effictivly compete with Red Hat. I still prefer RHES for various reasons; mainly out of loyalty cause they "got it" for the last decade and are a big reason why linux is respectable today. Novell is paying its dues and should soon earn credibility linux distro's can't survive without.
Now that the entry costs aren't the same as Exchange, I think it will end up being a little more competitive. I settled on Horde because Openexchange was just as much as MS Exchange for our small office.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
Any real life experiences with Scalix? It looks good on paper.
OpenX is, at its core, a set of standard Unix/Linux tools like sendmail, but it presents an exchange-compatible interface to the world. This has many positive results including mailing list management that doesn't require duplication of messages, slick calendar integration, etc.
The bad side? The Web interface, I find klunky as heck. Hopefully this move will result in improvement on that front.
I need a replacement for an Exchange 200 server. I still need calendaring/task functionality for Outlook clients. Currently I'm looking at Mailserver from Kerio. Anybody here have any experience/thoughts/advice to share? Help me make the case for an Open Source replacement for my hated Exchange box! I'd also appreciate any offline discussion as well.
This guy is way out there
And I'll be making my kids understand that communication is their inalienable right, and that no one should stop them downloading and uploading songs, movies, anything digital.
I'll also be training them in weapons usage, to defend themselves against the tyrants who presume to claim ownership over information.
It's still a rollup and/or a partial solution. OGo doesn't even have an email system in it. OpenXchange rolls in a bunch of existing packages and puts a custom Web front end on it, just like Kolab and Bynari do.
Those interested in a true ground-up implementation of an open source groupware server might want to check out the Citadel project. It's got all the usual email stuff (IMAP, POP, ESMTP), a web front-end written specifically for it, shared calendaring/scheduling, instant messaging, and a database-driven message store (which unlike Exchange, can be backed up hot).
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
link me up!
I'd love alternatives to MS Exchange, but does anyone know of a solution that would let me integrate the Blackberry Ent Server with something like OpenExchange?
-Shane
I love teh int4rw3b!!!!!111one1
Uh... openexchange can act as a server for Outlook? Many /. geeks just don't get that people use exchange not for email, but for all the other stuff it does - group calendars+meeting appointments, resource reservations, shared address book etc.
Yes, packages exist for every individual exchange+outlook does in the open source world. No, they don't work together.
Downloading pirated games is not any 'communication'.
I can't understand people who can't afford to buy a game and yet can afford the hardware to run the game on.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
OPEN-XCHANGE(TM) is a collaboration platform that integrates open source and proprietary servers and clients. Accessible through a common web browser, OPEN-XCHANGE(TM) allows users to share e-mail, calendar, tasks, threaded discussions and documents originating from both proprietary and open source systems. For customers who need seamless integration with a Windows client, commercially available connectors will be released later in 2004.
Same problem as always, move along. Like the Bynari Insight connector, the magic bit is still closed. Interestingly SUSE have a connector called iSLOX for their OpenExchange product, which is a free download; perhaps these two added together will finally be the CAL-free-groupware-with-Outlook-as-the-client we've been looking for?
As it stands Doom III will be an interesting platform to make mods with... it's like an uber-gaming library or JVM you can target, if you will. So for the time being you can just try to wring the most out of what's just being provided as is.
By the time Doom III is opensourced, Sun boxes will be fast enough to run it without a $5000 accelerator card, so you won't really need the source to attempt the bored-Solaris-admin port until such time.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Of course it is you idiot. Bits were transferred. The problem is people like you who don't understand physical laws. Information is infinitely copyable. You are not deprived if I take a COPY of your information.
qmail is a very nice, very secure MTA. But "He swears his mind is not made up already!" so what's the point?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I'd have to migrate all my Fortune 500 client companies off Mosaic to one of the supported browsers!
Your help-fu is strong today!
Ive been searching for a CMS/Groupware software for a long time.
Dabbled in a lot of wiki's, finally went on to tikiwiki.
Now that this professional server is released cant wait to try it out.
User management, access control, calendars etc. - a great thing for
web based content management - truly makes my personal data
management needs easier!
Opengroupware actually was a big hype, but they failed to deliver what everyone was hoping for: a complete open-source and free groupware server and client, with all popular features such as folder sharing, ACLs, free/busy, etc...
The problem with OpenGroupware, is that except for the web interface, there is no client. You can pay for an Outlook connector, yes, but it is rather expensive (no trial version available), and, more importantly, it did not prove very reliable in my testing. The web client, is not very impressive either. The community around OpenGroupware seems rather limited, I have the impression that all work is still done by one developer of Skyrix.
SuSE OpenExchange on the other hand, does have a very nice user interface. The Outlook connector works fine, and with KDE 3.3 coming out in a few weeks, we will have a free client under Linux. I have heard a connector for Evolution is currently in development. AFAIK Suse OpenExchange lacks ACL based folder sharing, hopefully this feature will be added soon.
And then there's Kolab, another competitor for this market. Currently, Kolab 2 is in development. It seems that it will offer a lot of features that people missed in Kolab 1, such as ACL based folder sharing, and server side generated free/busy. Problem with Kolab is currently also the lack of a native Linux client. Kontact 3.3 will finally have support for Kolab 1, but that's not very impressive, knowing that Kolab 2 will already be out at the end of this year.
Anyway, interesting times are coming!
You are the idiot that doesn't have ANY compassion for the work that these people put into the game.
"I didn't 'steal' it, it's a copy they didn't lose anything"
Bullshit, YOU gained the entertainment value of the game without compensation. Think of it in terms of a service. Nothing physical was taken or left, but the effect of it's presence is still felt.
Pirating games IS stealing. You probably think that paying for a movie and then hoping theaters all day I good also...
IBM didn't 'get' Novell to buy SuSE. Novell bought SuSE because it was good business. And IBM has supported Novell.. because it was good business. (IBM backs RedHat too)
Now sure, both companies are probably real happy about the added bonus of stickin' it to SCO with regards to their Linux 'licensing' program, but if you think that that was the main reason behind those deals, then you're seriously over-estimating the importance of SCO.
It's always going to be the fucking same story with Windows.
You have to know how the apps work in order to make connectors for it. This requires access to confidental stuff and liscence different software technologies. This costs money, liscences says you can't get it for free or Free.
The solution?
GET FUCKING RID OF WINDOWS DESKTOPS.
Then you don't have to worry about it, but this sort of thing is always going to be a problem with Windows, there is no free lunch whenever MS is involved.
I finally have ammunition to ditch our exchange servers! Now, if only somebody can make something equivalent to iManage that plugs into both OpenOffice and MS Office, I can ditch Windows entirely at the office...oh, happy days!
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
I just finally got squirrelmail to work with my home directory maildir delivery. Anyone know if OpenExchange will allow user data tobe stored in the user's home directory (icalendar files, maildirs, etc.. within ~harlq516/planner)
-SR
The challenge faced when trying to move from Exchange is the tight integration between Outlook, Exchange and Active Directory. As the user authenticates to AD when accessing Exchange over RPC(enc. in HTTPS if desired), defined in the Outlook MAPI profile it is a single user instance. The competitive products do not this ability for obvious reasons, and for anyone looking at large scale Exchange support environments that is daunting. If the site does not have Exchange/AD then over alternatives are more attractive, but when faced with AD/Exchange 2003/Outlook 2003 and throw in Sharepoint Services (free Win2K3 service) then it's an interesting beast to try and tackle. Competing on a FOSS vs $$$ argument becomes very hard when the support/value proposition is in favour of the $$$ solution.
http://www.billworkgroup.org/billworkgroup/home
-- This place for rent --
-- Füllhöhe technisch bedingt --
Our new CTO is making noises about us possibly ditching sendmail/linux and moving to Exchange. I'd really like to hear opinions about alternatives.
What do you need? sendmail is a mta, linux a operating system, Exchange tends more to groupware.
Is it only about email? Which clients are supposed to connect? Which way? What happens at the moment behind sendmail? imap, pop? I see no reason to switch from sendmail (or an other open source mta) to Exchange if it is only about mail delivery. What does your boss got in mind? It's hard to guess a alternative without the needed specs.
Praise God! That was the flea that kept me from using OpenExchange. Now I have a shot in hell of using this instead of MS Exchange.
Thank you!
"CAL-free-groupware-with-Outlook-as-the-client"
There's exactly the issue...CAL-free. Paying per-user for email is the big issue for me...paying is not the problem, I'd gladly pay (a reasonable price) for the software...as long as I don't have to guess how many users I'm going to need now or in 6 months, or pay only for Outlook users, etc...
What is really needed is a GPL'd Outlook MAPI connector that can talk to one of these servers, which provides seamless and interoperable calendaring as well as email. For example, with Samsung Contact, the web access and the Outlook client see different calendars, last time I checked. It's somewhat similar for Kolab+Toltec, or nearly all of the others...the point of the web-access should be to allow remote access to Outlook - both email and calendar. That's basic. If it doesn't, it's not a true "Exchange Replacement".
Qmail is not open-source nor free software.
Depends what he wants it for. Sendmail isn't going to provide you group calendaring and scheduling. It also won't provide you centralized email management and storage if what you use now is POP3 -- something a lot of companies need now with the new corporate governance regulations. You'll have to provide a little more information on your current setup and future requirements if you want a useful answer.
Breakfast served all day!
That being said, I think the problems with Kerio include lack of good collaboration tools (but again, that's not the product they are selling), and the inability to support any linux except enterprise red hat or RH9. Although with their latest release they now support Fedora core. Would love to see SuSE support or Debian support (hey, it doesn't change that often!)
Go with Postix/amavisd-new/clamd/spamassassin/Maia Mailgaurd. Can integrate with sql or ldap for account maintenance. Can scale across multiple computers. Very slick.
:0 Wh: msgid.lock
| formail -D 16384 msgid.cache
maildrop:
`reformail -D 8192 duplicate.cache`
if ( $RETURNCODE == 0 )
exit
No more duplicated e-mails.
- James
Don't know about OSS, but to avoid Exchange, find out all serious competitors, OSS or not, search for facts about them, and tell your CTO to analyze them closely and carefully. Try to stress him as much as possible that as you currently do not have any groupware (assuming this as you only mentioned Sendmail), the cost moving to Exchange would include mostly licensing and HW costs -- but, if you ever want to move off from Exchange, it will be very expensive, as Exchange's data format is neither open nor standards-based.
Try to convince him that whatever your solution will be, it's source code must either be available for competitors, or there must be an otherwise standardised way to convert data off if necessary. Otherwise you will just have yet another MS Office-like situation, where you're firmly locked into a single vendor and are forced to pay whatever MS wants you to pay -- even if the competitors' products would be able to handle your basic documents, you'd still have to rewrite all your existing VBA stuff (for example), causing huge migration costs.
In short: one of your primary criterias when choosing software vendors should be making sure, that you're never migrating to something, from which you can't cheaply and easily enough migrate off later, if that would ever became necessary. Try to make this fact clear for him and forget all unnecessary OSS advocating, and you're much more likely not to end up being an Exchange administrator.
Of course, if that CTO of yours is a PHB and already lured by MS marketing sirens, he'll probably not listen anyway... but then, that's life.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
Why not just run the thing in a web browser? Is there anything more you would get by using Outlook?
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Not to echo half of your previous replies, but it depends on what your CTO wants. Most manager-types I've consulted for have this idea that there's this magical technology somewhere that makes them suddenly understand their business like they did when it had 20 employees. And for whatever reasons they think that software is a groupware suite.
In my experience, Exchange commits some design sins that are so grevious that there are almost no good situations in which to use it:
I've consulted for quite a few managers who really really wanted Exchange. In each case I told them they didn't need it. It can be a real blow to a manager's ego to have to accept that he doesn't run an "enterprise", but in 99% of the cases that's true.
Exchange is a mediocre MTA, a slightly sub-mediocre contact manager, and a slightly better-than-mediocre calendaring system with some glue scripting that sometimes works to tie them all together but often doesn't. Its sweet spot performance-wise is from about 100 to about 300 users broken into 10-15 organizational groups, working on a single VLAN, transporting no more than about 20,000 messages a day total. If your organization fits those criteria, Exchange may well be a good solution for you. If not, I can tell you from my clients' bitter experience and my very expensive overtime cleaning up after it that Exchange WILL end up costing you a lot more money than almost any other solution.
Most managers who want to use Exchange want a public calendar, a big contact database, and IMAP email. That's not rocket science. There are outstanding mail transport agents, contact databases, and public calendars; if you can't get a developer to pipe them together for *much* less than an exchange license, you're looking in the wrong places for developers. Plus, your support costs will be much less with that solution since you don't have the single, concentrated point of frequent failure that Exchange becomes.
All's true that is mistrusted
I had a look at it earlier in the year. All it looked like was something that was cobbled together out of tested core software with the SUSE people providing an installer and integrated admin tools.
:-(
There was no support for any kind of anti-virus or SPAM or other content management tools - it all looked fairly mediocre.
I suspect that it's being open sourced because nobody could see any value in paying for it
That's fine for SMTP, but you've left out the rest of the picture.
A decent IMAP server (like cyrus) does a good job of completing email support, but you'll still be missing shared contacts and calendaring.
We do the above (postfix+ & cyrus IMAP) and then use Oracle's Collaboration Suite to handle the calendaring, but I still need to find a good way to bring in shared contact management.
It's even worse now that the sales guys picked up Blackberries... that they also want to sync instantly to their email/calendar/contacts.
I've been tracking the availible options pretty closely, and still haven't found one that really hits the right spot.
The fact that everyone is currently running Outlook, and wants it.
Besides, Microsoft have a complete reimplementation of Outlook in ASP; the OSS community doesn't. It would be nice if there was a replacement for Outlook on Windows for groupware (apparently Novell are doing it with an Evolution port), but there isn't one that does the same thing - yet.
A couple of days hacking and the recently released connector from ximian and bingo a connector will be born.
Got Code?
I know this is kinda offtopic, but at one stage i was looking at making a p2p groupware solution using rendevouz for peer discovery all from my browser.
At this time, apple had not released a java version of rendevouz.
Anyone had any success in hooking into the java version of rendevouz from javascript (liveconnect) from within firefox/mozilla?
It would be a pretty good solution if we didn't need a server for anything except email.
Web-only services don't let you sync up at the office/hotel then carry your email/calendar/contacts with you to the plane/bus/meeting, work on them there, then sync your changes back to the server when you get backto the hotel/office.
That's one of the main (valid) reasons why business people don't want to 'just run in a web browser'...
Sooo -
what about Safari then. Does it count included with Konqueror?
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
My employer is looking at replacing Novell Groupwise with Microsoft Exchange. Your comments about scalability and performance sweet spot is interesting, but how do larger companies with about 5000 staff implement Exchange?
How many users can you run of a dual processor Pentium 4 Xeon server?
Microsoft is recommending to us that about 2 mail servers are need + 2 more for Active Directory.
Indeed. And don't forget:
5. The single file mentioned in 1. can't grow above 16 Gb with the standard edition of Microsoft Exchange. (See also 2.)
Of course, I haven't used OpenExchange yet so I can't really comment on that. I tried hunting round for a few reviews, but didn't come up with much. Here they are anyway:
eweek
pcmag
OpenMag
There is a mention of a "downside" being "lack of a spellchecker in the web client", but of course modern browsers like Konqueror have this built-in anyway.
There is also mention of the web client not being as "feature rich" or "refined" as Microsoft Exchange's, but without any actual qualifications.
Basically, from the reviews everything seems great apart from the backup aspect. This is only a downside because their is apparently little guidance given.
Anyone here tried DBMail? I know it doesn't have the features of a full groupware server, but it looks promising, in that everything-- addresses, email content, etc... is stored in a PostgreSQL or MySQL database, and it supports Imap. Apparently for version 2.x, they are planning shared folders, etc... Also, it seems to be much simpler to install than these other behemoths. Worth trying?
???? Bullshit. It is not GPL'd, it has a BSD lic. But it's source is freely avail. And it is FREE.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
"Because the web-based interface of OPEN-XCHANGE? runs on all major browsers".
For those of you who don't want to wait for each and every mouse click check out ScheduleWorld.
Schedule your world with ScheduleWorld.com http://www.ScheduleWorld.com/ (Java Web Startable)
Actually, the lastest patch adds spell checking in the web email client.
It's lovely and intuitive software with a few odd bits here and there, mostly related to the fact that non-native English speakers designed the interface. I even heard a Novell exec refer to it as "Germanglish," which is about right.
Then again, with it open sourced, we can all get in and fix that little stuff, right?
I'm rolling two slox servers out right now, and most users have been very impressed.
GPL'ing it should accelerate the development cycle, which you can see here:
http://devel.slox.info/
We currently run Horde and it lacks group calendaring and drag and drop (sigh).
Yes with basic exchange but that was with Exchange 5.0.
I run Exchange 5.5 and my MDB is way over 16GB more like 30GB
I love all the djb "non-license" bashing, it reduces to the same arguments that closed/non-free source people had/have when they first heard/hear about foss:
"I don't understand the thinking behind this... He/They can't do that, it breaks the rules"
The idea that everyone should stay within the lines drawn by the licenses that the majority likes is the same as people who say you should only work on existing FOSS projects, why duplicate effort, why start a new language/distro/Operating System.
2?
We had a company with 3000 (max) people and had more servers than that for exchange and I think we had two on top of that that just talked to the "real" UNIX based MTA's that talked to the outside world and our internal UNIX systems.
I think they are lowballing you and you will be fucked if you try to run a 5000 monkey org that is email intensive on 2 boxes. YMMV and IANAMSG (MS Guy), I just had to try to get them to make exchange work with SMTP.
My experience with email is that people use it as an IM system when one is not available, so do yourself a favor, if you can, and add a jabber server and some nice IM clients for internal use - ejabberd is a fast, extremely scalable, low resource use server based on erlang, a high concurrency language used in phone switching systems. If introducea stand alone IM service before your new email system, it will do two things - soften the bumps during the transition between email systems (because people will still be able to communicate during down times) and people will already be sending their "where do you want to go for lunch?" and "can't make the meeting, still on conf.call" stuff via the IM system before the new system is in place and will be less likely to start using the new email system for IM type msgs; thus reducing the throw away traffic that tends to clog email systems.
A 503 Error doesn't mean the server is down. I means that /. has a server to tell you that the service isn't available at the moment. I'm willing to bet the server never went down over the past week of 503's, but rather they're still working on smaller upgrades since their major one a couple weeks ago (remember that friday night at 9pm est people went nuts over?).
Probably just that.
"The open source version of OPEN-XCHANGE(TM) will be available free by download at (www.open-xchange.org and www.openexchange.com) by the end of August and will feature most of the award-winning attributes of the commercial product - running on the major Linux operating systems (Novell's SUSE LINUX, Red Hat, Red Flag, Debian) -- but without support and maintenance, third-party applications and connectors."
any details on what are they going to dig out?
I'm sorry but SLOX is not anywhere near a decent groupware system. Nice try. My vote (and my money) has gone to Exchange4Linux. I've evaluated SLOX, Samsung Contact, OpenExchange or whatever the hell the humongous OO-branded thing is, the various web-based crap out there and probably half a dozen other's I've since forgotten. E4L's server-side is open source, actively developed and the Outlook client is reasonably priced. The backend runs entirely inside of PostgreSQL and is written in Python. MTA interface is agnostic but documented with Postfix. non-outlook people can access the entire system through IMAP, although that is still not quite there.
As I said everything is stored in a PG database -- I can access any part of the system through SQL and it's stored to make Outlook happy which means no weird-ass compatibility problems that I've seen in every other client. The weird-ass issues I encounter with E4L and Outlook revolve around parts that are still in development. :-)
SLOX is top-selling groupware? Forget it.
Your experiences do not match mine.
There are plenty of huge, multi-national Exchange enterprises out there. Some have hundreds of thousands of users, and 5000 or more per server. They're not all having the same trouble with the product you claim to have experienced. Maybe you just don't know as much about Exchange as you think you do.
Oracle collaboration suite. It kicks ass and is cheaper then exchange. You can use it with outlook if you want but you need outlook.
evil is as evil does
The OSS solutions are fine for companies that have a few hundred employees. If you have more then that the oracle collaboration suite is cheaper then exchange and has lots more features. There are software like kerio, communigate and merak which cost thousands of dollars less then exchange and do more or less the same thing.
You'd pretty much have to be an idiot to pay for exchange today.
evil is as evil does
Thats an interesting observation. I too have seen stuff happen that was like stated in both posts. It seems that the average msce flunky can't really admin exchange right and some shops try to not have an admin there for it at all.
exchange needs to be played with from time to time. In my experience an exchange system just left there to do its job will have all sorts of isues. You can't treat it like a postfix or sendmail system and set it up and be done with it untill your change users. (well maybe if you not using any of the features it has outside mail) the funny thing is that an organization big enough to use it should have someone on staff running it. I just saw a law firm get toasrted out of 150+ thousand to install an exchange server and upgrade all thier workstations (about 30). To date knowbody is using the shared contacts, calendering or anythign. I stongly feel they would have had a better return on investment if they would have scaped thinking about productivity and bought some rental property somewere. This doesn't count for the now 7 times in 3 motnhs the system has went down for no explainable reason with at least 3 different consulting firms looking into it while a samba box with postfix running jumps to the rescue durring downtimes (that was in place before the upgrade).
unlike that place i have seen exchange run without hickups at other sites too. it seems to be about a 60-40 split in who will have problems.
you consider this a professional page? regardless of /. being a part of OSDN, it's hardly professional. Compare NYTimes/Washington Post etc. Article blurbs/intros to /.'s and you'll see a difference. If you can't, you've no clue how journalism works.
Whatever you do, DON'T LET HIM CHOOSE LOTUS!
Bitter Experience! Still haven't recovered...
Try www.xcnetwork.com
Not open-source but runs on Linux with you current mail server.
ALL Exchange functions
It is not GPL'd, it has a BSD lic. But it's source is freely avail. And it is FREE.
Have you actually read the qmail licence? Indeed, can you even find the licence for qmail? The closest thing I can find for a qmail licence is:
http://cr.yp.to/qmail/dist.html
Very restrictive licence. Noone is allowed to distribute qmail modified in *any* way, you cant even change the install paths, you *must* accept DJB's unrelated-to-SMTP ideas on where software should be installed. You cant add patches, etc..
Qmail is not Free Software, and a maintainance nightmare because of the licence.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
agreed
The only good alternative I've found, though not open source, is communigate pro from stalker software. I've used it for some years now in my company. It includes an outlook-connector with all groupware and calendaring-features Outlook/Exchange offers with a price which is affordable. Moreover it runs on 19 different OS's.
Very very true. As a MTA, I found the combination of postfix, courier imap, amavisd, anomy, procmail working very well. Central contacts might be done with ldap. But I still have to find a solution for central calendering, preferably one that works with a webinterface and outlook, and preferably a single app, instead of something intergrated with the mta, contacts and kitchen sink. Any suggestions? Most of the groupware solutions I have looked into were monolitic intergrated apps.
Your implication was quite clear regarding your opinion of something being professional when it's clearly not.
/."... is hardly worth the effort to even validate with an arguement considering you seem to suffer from "i have a lower UID so I must be cooler" disease. Congrats. Now check yourself into therapy
However your supposition of fiction to mean truth regarding "kids overrunning
I'd say it's time to start making printing noises with your CV on a laser printer.
You missed a few:
1. Serious problems with logging. In fact from the point of view of people spoiled by the sendmail and exim level of logging the Exchange logging sucks rocks through a thin straw
2. Joint server/client limitation (to some extent it is an Outlook problem) that one mailbox is limited to 2G. Dunno if that is still the case in 2003, but 2000 + Outlook screws your mail magestically once you hit 2G limit. F.E. My mailbox is currently around 5G. It is on courier + imap + mozilla which are quite happy trucking along with it. If it was on Exchange + Outlook it would have been corrupted long ago.
3. Loses mail with no trace if left to send versus slow senders on a congested network. No bounce is returned to the user. Basically if you are using Exchange 2000 (dunno about 2003) without a front-end relay you will have to learn to live with the fact that some mail will be lost. Probability depends on many things varying from around 0.01 to 0.5%. Combined with the wonderful logging this becomes really entertaining for the support people.
4. Similarly, loses mail with no trace when receiving it on a SMTP channel (not exchange). Once again while the probability for this to happen is not very high, it still happens often enough for it to be a business problem. I have seen it on 5.x, I have seen it on 2000 as well. As anecdotal as it may sound, I have nearly lost my residence status in the country I worked a few years ago because the company exchange server lost all the documents which HR had to use for the work permit application.
5. Basically, it is a very good groupware and SME solution for internal communcation. That is what it has been designed for and it is not going anywhere without a redesign and splitting into components (which MSFT is not willing to do for political reasons) or external systems to assist it.
Based on experience in dealing with it, on its own it is not suitable for business use if you need full record of all of your email transactions with customers and other people who do not communicate with Exchange. If you are doing any business by email I would suggest to look into something else or use it in a combination with a good mail relay (sendmail, exim, postfix) which has proper logging and audit trail of what was sent, when, where and how. Exim 4 is possibly the best as it is the easiest one to implement copying all mails in transit to a suitable audit store (besides the exellent logging).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
re 2. The 2G limit was on the client pst (or is it ost?) files and is "fixed" with Outlook 2003. There has never been a limit like that on the server (from exch5.5 and up), we got several users with 10G+ mailboxes. The only big limitation on the server is if you run standard and not enterprise version of exchange, that there's a max size on the info. stores.
Someone mentioned above that Oracle's groupware suite is among the best options for large installations -- perhaps something to consider. I understand that they have "Oracle Calendar Sync" available for PDA integration. Can't comment about their webmail.
BTW, I'm not recommending it by any means, but OpenGroupware supports drag-and-drop in the webmail client.
People wouldn't be reimplementing DJB's tools under less restrictive licensing (BSD in the case of ipsvd and runit, GPL in the case of libowfat) if he used a reasonable license in the first place, instead of giving out his software with no license to redistribute whatsoever.
I'm using runit rather than daemontools at work because we can't comply with DJB's non-license. Please be a bit more careful before calling bullshit.
I like Tclhttpd because it's a webserver implemented as a TCL package. I can hack, override, or out-in-out reimplement any chunk of the system. (For instance, I rewrote a chunk of the mime handler to deal with cases where a file is being pulled from an index and has to be renamed for the client.)
We are also a postfix shop. (I'm in the middle of migrating our Email setup from Gentoo to OS x.)
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
We're in the opposite boat. 110 user medical practice. We use Exchange 2000, which required us to upgrade our site from a Domain to Active Directory.
1) Exchange is expensive per chair. In our situation, Medicare cuts have tightened our budget enough I'd rather spend the money somewhere else.
2) Exchange is hardware intensive. While that server is also a home directory server, I really wouldn't care to run many more users on a single server, while with alternatives (postfix for example), I'd feel comfortable running a much higher user-to-server ratio.
3) There are just certain things that require mucking about with the Active Directory internals. It's unsupported by MS, but the only way to do certain things. I'll grant some of our issues here are due to having to run in a mixed domain/ADS mode for a while.
4) We'd still require running Exchange behind a mail filtering incoming/outgoing server. Take our bias with a bit of salt as you will, we also don't allow any MS product to touch the outside world without filters/firewalls/scanning in place.
Very few companies use all the functionality that Exchange provides. Better to look at alternatives. Do remember that for most cases, you are also tying yourself into Outlook and all the problems that entails, so that should factor in as well.
In any case, expect a heck of a lot more handholding of the service than you have with sendmail.
Good luck!
The other problem I had was that the database kept getting corrupted as Suse crashed for some reason and when it came back up, you had to go through a procedure (I forget...some little app you run) to sort the database back out. I've never had to do this with our FreeBSD systems. They never crash and even if the power gets accidentally pulled, FreeBSD/MySql comes back up pretty much in it's right mind. The 3 times or so that Suse apparently crashed or the hardware glitched or whatever caused the reboot, I had to reinstall OpenExchange to get it working again. I wasn't impressed by that.
Of the groupware I've tried, it was by far the best in features.
The ability to schedule group meetings with reminder email to participants is a BIG deal at our company and I assume others and it's what most of the open-source groupware systems lack. OpenExchange does this.
Also a big deal here is the ability to have an easily-maintainable schedule with excellent printout for the paper copies (yes, I know...trees are dieing..but they want their paper copies). I recall that the schedule printout was not all that great.
Missing from every OS groupware I tried is a way to keep multiple notes on a contact. Say, for instance, you have a client/contact that you talk to on the phone often and he deals with a number of your employees and you all want to be able to see what has transpired in other's conversations with this person. Each person can make a new individual note on the contact. As far as I know, none of the Open Source groupware stuff does this. OpenExchange came close. (I don't remember exactly after a few months what it lacked, but it was almost there. The vendor for OpenExchange, who had the source at the time said he felt it was do-able for a few K $$$ .
I'm going to give it another go if it gets GPL'd.
I have run Exchange, Groupwise, and Lotus Notes at different large organizations, and have been involved in serveral evaluation commitees comparing mail servers. Here are the categories that, in my experience, have been turing points in decisions.
t management... and matching client software.
1.) Managers love Microsoft. They have the best marketing and easiest installation. Groupwise can be problematic to install and never works "out of the box." Notes is a nightmare to install.
2.) Server Security. Exchange has frequent security updates related directly to exchange, IIS or the NT/200X OS. The updates may or may not break your server. If you do the update you may be restoring from backup, if you don't your server, if it is on the internet, WILL be hacked. Groupwise has rarely had a security problem, are quickly patched and NEVER in my experience been hacked. Notes is a nightmare to update its rare security problems.
3.) Client security. Groupwise and Notes clients don't have the security problems that Outlook does. Half of the "features" of the Outlook client seem to be written for virus distribution/backdoor installation/denial of service hacks.
4.) Features. All three systems have enterprise level calendaring/groupware/email/collaboration/documen
5.) Administration. User administration is just another tab in the normal admin consoles for the server OS in both Exchange and Netware. Notes is a nightmare to administer. All three have feature rich configuration at the group and user level to add limitation and security. Patching/upgrades are relatively painless with Groupwise, troublesome to the point of possibly having to reinstall with Exchange, and a nightmare of features disappearing sending exponentionally increasing random emails to the entire system or just hosing everything up with Notes.
6.) Backup/restore. Arcserve and/or Backup Exec have Groupwise, Exchange and Notes backup solutions to the mailbox level. Restoring the entire mail store/post office/system is not necessary any longer, though that used to be the necessary method for each.
I am now evaluating Openexchange from Suse/Novell and am so far impressed. There are some unpolished features, and it sometimes runs home to its native German language at strange times. The web front end is very usable. The backend mail system is easy-to-configure postfix. Novell has also made Groupwise available on linux, but I haven't had the chance to give it a whirl yet.
The overall winner in my experience as an administrator of these systems has been Groupwise. Managers still love Microsoft and often buy into their marketing regardless of the other considerations. Notes is just a nightmare.
endit
qmailrocks.org. They seem to be distributing qmail...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
And yes, you are full of bull shit. Just because you don't like his lic. does not mean that it's not distributable and such. Get a life.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Note -- I am not a Microsoft apologist, but I do think that the combination of Exchange and Outlook is vastly superior to anything I have seen in the *nix world. Please allow me to address your 4 points. Please don't think of my comments as a flame, they are not meant to be. I just want to point out that Exchange is not as poorly constructed or difficult to administer as people make it out to be.
1) All the public emails are stored in a single information store file... So that's 4 files that hold all of your organization's "crucial" information. These files break easily; in my experience about once a year on a good RAID and much more often on bad hardware or more than about 500 users. At that point your options are rolling back to a backup (which, btw, requires a special expensive plugin for any backup software suite) or paying data recovery people a few hundred dollars to get it back.
If you have more than 100 users you should be running the Enterprise Edition which gives you the ability to house multiple information stores. If one store breaks, use the MS utilities (which are very good, BTW) to fix it or use the recovery store to feature in Exchange 2003. As for your "expensive" backup agent, look at the prices, not more than $1000-$3000. A drop in the bucket compared to the rest of an enterprise ready backup system.
2) Moreover, when even one of those stores go down, the other stores usually stop working. So if your contacts store gets corrupted, you can't use your calendar or send email.
Do you even know how to configure a proper Exchange org? I have to assume that any sizeable Exchange org with have more than 1 server or info store. If properly configured (it really isn't hard) the only people that will experience downtime are those on the affected store.
3)They incorporated email, calendaring and contact management into a single software package. Bad design in principle, but fine. The worse problem is there's no way to extend it to work with the rest of your particular fulfillment chain. Want to do some lead management with your contacts? Host a local NNTP server you want indexed in a public folder as though it were a thread of emails? Want all calendar entries to display in the home office's local time? Tough... pay through the nose for MS's CRM solution, because there's no way to write one yourself without having to reimpliment most of what Exchange does.
I can't argue with much of this, but keep in mind that there are plenty of Exchange API's to work with. How do you think that so many commercial products (Antivirus, Blackberry) do it? If looking for a good CRM, consider Interface Interaction (or several others). They all tie into Exchange very nicely.
4)You can't distribute its components (mail, calendaring, contacts, etc.) on your network without a lot of handwaving and paying for a lot more licenses.
Almost true, they tie users, not services, to a particular server.
Now think of some of the benefits... A first-class web interface (I can't think of much that competes with OWA 2003, even with non-IE browsers), compatibility with almost any device a corporate user can throw at it, great calendar and contact integration, a workable permissions model, and the knowledge that a real corporation will support it if something goes wrong. I support over 30 clients running everything from Exchange 5.5 - 2003. Many of those clients are well over 2000 users, yet I have NEVER had more than 12 hours downtime on a single information store (roughly 75-100 users). Personally, I would love to see a good alternative to Exchange that works on Linux. SuSE OpenExchange always looked promising, so I'll keep one eye on this release for my SMB clients and the other eye on the new Groupwise for my larger clients.
Thank god that someone else "gets it". I am tired of people talking about how much $$$ these products are. In the grand scheme of things, the price of Exchange (and the CALs) is pretty small.
Oh, really?
What license to redistribute does he grant? Where is it? What are the terms?
Can I redistribute binaries? Show me the document that says that I can -- otherwisee, it's unusable for my employer's (and thus, my) purposes.
Go on, I'm waiting.
So? Just because someone else is doing doesn't mean that it's okay for me to.
(1) They may be operating without a license, and DJB has simply not chosen to stop them.
(2) DJB may have chosen to grant them special dispensation to redistribute, without providing a general license to the public at large.
And yes, you are full of bull shit. Just because you don't like his lic. does not mean that it's not distributable and such. Get a life.
No, it's not because I don't like the license -- it's because he never grants a license at all permitting uses beyond those unregulated by copyright law. I have a life -- a good chunk of it belongs to a small startup that needs to be sure that its software redistribution practices are fully legal.
Sitting around on slashdot, trolling folks with blatant lies (ie. "it has a BSD lic") and insulting those who correct you -- that is having no life.
My experience with email is that people use it as an IM system when one is not available, so do yourself a favor, if you can, and add a jabber server and some nice IM clients for internal use
That's an important point, especially if you have users in multiple locations or floors. An internal IM system is pretty important, even if you have a fast e-mail system. IM is for simple stuff like a group discussion or quick "synchro" conversations (do you have X checked out, server Y is being rebooted, let's do lunch at Z today).
We ended up using WiredRed's e/pop software. It's not free, but it does do encryption. There is a java client that you can use on non-Windows machines. But the biggest reason we're sticking with e/pop is the remote control capability which comes in handy for remote support.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
You're an idiot.
No one here has said the guy can't use whatever license he wants. They said they don't dare use qmail because the license situation is murky.
Go ahead and use qmail and just hope it's okay. People in business, or just people who try to respect licenses, will stick to mail systems with clear licenses. What happens if the guy decides to sue anyone he doesn't like? "Um we thought you used the BSD license." Not a good defense. Better to use Exim, which is unambiguously free.
... or just use one of the groupware servers providing native client connectivity to Outlook, Mozilla or Evolution.
Like exchange4linux or OpenGroupware.org.
Thank you. Great response. I'm looking at about 3,500 users. I'm personally at a weird place because Microsoft practically gives it away to colleges and the other products I've found are in the range of like $25 per user, which adds up fast.
At the risk of sending you a shameless self promotion, what you asked for was too close to what InfoStreet offers, so I wanted to say that you may want to look at InfoStreet's solutions.
- Can handle large group of users
- All the apps can be turned on and off, so you can just offer your users webmail if you wish.
- Drag and Drop in Webmail
- Sync with Palm, Outlook, Pocket PC
- IMAP and Pop
- SMTP authentication for remote users
Exchange standard edition versions 4, 5, and 5.5 all have a database limit of 16GBs.
; EN-US;185457
.edb files not .mdb
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb
Enterprise edition is needed to surpass this limit.
Also exchange database files are
These same principles hold true for exchange 2000 and 2003.