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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?"

17 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. What a day! by cytoman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is there something special about Aug 3?? First it was Real with Helix going GPL, and now this! :-D.

  2. Conspiracy? by StateOfTheUnion · · Score: 2, Interesting

    IBMs Java Database and now this . . . if I didnt know better, Id say that theres something of an open source release conspiracy going on. . .

    1. Re:Conspiracy? by SpaceLifeForm · · Score: 1, Interesting
      Remember IBM got Novell to buy SuSE. And IBM is battling SCO.

      A little anti-FUD never hurts.

      --
      You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
    2. Re:Conspiracy? by v1x · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Its called co-operation. It has often been argued as being a better model then competition, and especially when it involves lots of smaller entities up against a giant like MS, it would probably work out to the best for everyone in the long run. If this is a sign of things to come in the industry, we have a lot of good things to look forward to.

  3. Browser? by hypermike · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Because the web-based interface of OPEN-XCHANGE(TM) runs on all major browsers, employees can use its services regardless of the client operating. They can access the entire functionality of OPEN-XCHANGE(TM) with any computer connected to the Internet and any common platform, including Windows, Linux, Unix, MacOS, and PalmOS.

    They dont give browser specifics, I wonder what they actually consider 'a major browser'.

    --
  4. Real life reviews / experiences would be helpful by weave · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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. He swears his mind is not made up already!

    Can these open-sourced alternatives be a reasonable solution?

  5. ScreenShots...! by bogaboga · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  6. Re:Real life reviews / experiences would be helpfu by ElForesto · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  7. Experience/reviews? by LittleLebowskiUrbanA · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  8. Exchange4Linux? by pmsr · · Score: 2, Interesting
    What about Exchange4Linux? The Outlook connector is not free, but that doesn't come as a surprise.

    http://www.billworkgroup.org/billworkgroup/home

    /Pedro

  9. Re:Real life reviews / experiences would be helpfu by plj · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  10. Re:How do they compare? by Cylix · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The whole advantage to opengroupware is the web client works and is in sync with your local client (via ximian connector for evolution, or exchange connector... or one of the many other things it supports).

    You are right, it has a limited scope of functionality, but that is all some of us want.

    moregroupware does a semi-decent job of doing everything, but the project is still in the early stages.

    What I would love to see... is some collaboration between all these group ware folks. We have so much talent, going so many directions, it would be nice if they set a common frame work and expanded on that.

    Once some of these projects mature, they will have something to rival the best packages out there.

    It should be interesting to see open xchange in action.

    --
    "You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
  11. Re:Real life reviews / experiences would be helpfu by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.

  12. Re:Real life reviews / experiences would be helpfu by Paul+Jakma · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  13. Re:Real life reviews / experiences would be helpfu by pigeon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  14. Re:Real life reviews / experiences would be helpfu by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Well, our IT department is writing one using MySQL and Tclhttpd. (Some kind soul just wrote a WebDav module for the webserver.)

    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
  15. Re:Seriously folks.. by SpaceLifeForm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Maybe, maybe not. Here's a link.

    --
    You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.