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Novell to port Evolution to Windows

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the good-for-them dept.

Gladiat0r writes "Nat Friedman blogged on Planet Gnome today that Novell has hired Tor Lillqvist (of Gimp for Windows fame) to help Fredrik Hedberg port Beagle to Windows, and after that his main task is to port Evolution to Windows."

11 of 346 comments (clear)

  1. Better get cracking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hear Kentucky has already started the port of Creationism to Windows. Lets hope the right team delivers first.

    1. Re:Better get cracking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
      I hear Kentucky has already started the port of Creationism to Windows. Lets hope the right team delivers first.

      I wish MS would stop putting those "Linux is Just a Theory" stickers on school computers!

    2. Re:Better get cracking by xigxag · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah, it just had to be called "Evolution." Proving once again that those open-source bastards are commie godless heathens bent on destroying the American Way of Life. Might as well have just gone and called it "Al Q'alendar."

      --
      There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
  2. GroupWise mail support by Lindsay+Lohan · · Score: 5, Informative
    Novell has hired Tor Lillqvist... to port Beagle to Windows, and after that.. to port Evolution to Windows
    I found Novell's Evolution Product page interesting for this line:
    Supported mail protocols include IMAP, POP, SMTP and Authenticated SMTP, as well as Microsoft Exchange 2000 and 2003. Novell GroupWise support is currently in beta
    That suprised me. You'd think before they ported Evolution to Windows they would have finalized integration with their own groupware suite.
  3. The actual announcement by Anonymous+Commando · · Score: 5, Informative

    Seeing as how the submitter neglected to link to the actual announcement, here it is: http://nat.org/2005/january/#17-January-2005

    --
    Corporate Jenga: You take a blockhead from the bottom and you put him on top...
  4. Re:Well, great. Or is it? by yetdog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think it's all about weaning off of MS. Let's face it - a cold turkey jump to OSS is damn difficult for any company. But if you start working in OSS projects into the current platform, when you start migrating the users, the transition will be that less invasive.

  5. Good news for GTK+ on Win32 by biwillia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is great news for GTK+ on Win32, which has always suffered speed and look-and-feel problems on the win32 platform. When a big application like Evolution gets ported from one platform to another, the base libraries such as libgtk, pango, and the like can only benefit. I look forward to the speed improvements and bug fixes in the win32 versions of gtk. This should really bolster the cross-platform nature of gtk.

  6. Great for Openoffice, etc by diegocgteleline.es · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One of the strongest reasons Microsoft is putting in the table when comparing Office vs Open source alternatives is the availability of Outlook. We've Openoffice, we've firefox, we've thunderbird, but we didn't have a Outlook alternative.

    That was certainly stopping many people from switching to Openoffice. With Evolution ported to windows, it's no longer the case, and having the exchange connector even more. Nice news.

  7. Why this is exciting by acg6764 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm excited because till this day I've not had an alternative to Microsoft Outlook at work. I'm hoping this move will provide me with another choice. Thunderbird is not viable for a lot of corporate users because of :
    • Exchange Server Integration
    • Calendar Integration
    • Bluetooth Integration
    I, for one, will be anxiously awaiting a release.

    http://gatewayink.com
  8. Re:How nice... by jellocat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sure, take all the nice Linux applications over to Windows...don't worry about porting the nice Windows apps over to Linux though. Nope, we're fine...We'll just run them at half speed with WINE or something...

    Actually, this is how you get Windows apps to run on Linux.

    1. Port leading OSS stuff over to Windows. If it's quality, you will likely have some adoption.

    2. After enough people are using Evolution or another opensource app, some systems will likely be converted to Linux. Maybe in some pockets here and there, maybe more later.

    Example: "Well boss, this business unit(s) only use web, office, and email. We are already using the Windows ports of these core apps, we should look into Linux during our next hardware/OS upgrade. We can run the same apps on a better OS"

    3. With enough people/businesses running Linux, Windows applications will not be able to ignore the value in porting their app to Linux.

    Example: "Well Mr. Vendor, we really like your app, but it needs to run on Linux too at our company. I can buy if you can run on both."

    So, what does the market share need to be 5%, 10%...I don't know. But this is how you get in.

  9. Re:How nice... by kenneth_martens · · Score: 5, Informative
    Sure, take all the nice Linux applications over to Windows...don't worry about porting the nice Windows apps over to Linux though. Nope, we're fine...We'll just run them at half speed with WINE or something...
    Don't complain--be happy. If enough high-quality cross-platform applications are available on Windows, eventually people will wise up. They'll think: "Hey, I'm using Evolution for email, Firefox for web browsing, Gaim for instant messaging, and OpenOffice for all my documents. I could switch from Windows to Linux and never know the difference."

    And if that person is a responsible for an IT department that is currently negotiating to buy a site license for the latest version of Windows, well, suddenly Linux will look mighty attractive. A budget goes a lot further when you're not paying for Windows.