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Oracle and Mozilla Foundation Work Quietly Together
KenDaMan writes "CNet is running a story about the ties between Oracle and the Mozilla Foundation. Oracle hired three people to work on Mozilla Lightning. This project, which aims to integrate Mozilla's calendar application, Sunbird, with its e-mail application, Thunderbird, is believed to be key to cracking the market dominance of Microsoft Outlook. Is Oracle getting set make an Open Source offering?"
"CNet is running a story about the ties between Oracle and the Mozilla Foundation..."
Yeah. A running news story on at least two large news sites. Pretty good job keeping the lid on this one, Oracle and Moz!
evolution is already there
Its good to see big companies like Oracle working on alternatives to Microsoft's exchange server software, Sunbird will be the better for this collaboration
Business Voyeur
Oracle is probably just testing the waters before trying to dominate a field that it can't just buy. I don't see them as pro-open source, more like use open-source just until we come out on top.
But they are probably wanting you to use an oracle back end.
Is Oracle getting set make an Open Source offering?
I dunno. Is Slashdot getting set make good English on the Editor?
At least they're doing something that could benefit the public that doesn't include 'an exciting new offer and great deal!'
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Please don't make Thunderbird any more bloated than it alread is. Why must a calendar be integrated with e-mail anyways?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
MozillaZine is running a story, too, and it's probably a little more truthful...
ZDNet Tries to Get to the Bottom of the Oracle-Mozilla Relationship
R.Mo
Oracle works quietly with Mozilla
Apparently not anymore.. Slashdot knows!!!
Outlook is not the real key to beat Microsoft on the Office front - but Exchange.
As soon as you can free companies from the Exchange lock in and offer a better alternative then you have a chance.
Most people for example love OpenOffice, but won't switch, since they also need Outlook which is connected to the data on the Exchange server.
No Exchange server - no underlaying windows server. No Outlook - no Microsoft Office.
So what's needed is a strong Thunderbird for Office slaves and an Exchange replacement - plus total data import.
Most redundant link ever :). Still, with any luck, we'll slashdot BG's website ... so not all bad ...
Oracle has been trying since forever for enterprises to take up its Enterprise email offering (which works with Outlook AFAIK. I'm pretty sure they'd love to give a free rich client to their customers, which could explain their love for Mozilla Calendar. And yeah, if open standards-based Calendaring catches on, one of the biggest reasons to use proprietary software (Notes/Exchange) goes away.
If Open-Sourcers had a strategy department, they'd make Mozilla Calendar the most important product they have to ship, far more important than Firefox. Unfortunately (or fortunately for IBM/MS) things don't quite work that way.
Go somewhere random
Is Oracle getting set make an Open Source offering?
No.
Oracle offers a product that aims to compete head to head with Microsoft's suite of collaboration products.
One of my former clients was looking to use this software in their enterprise, which, at the time, was using mostly Microsoft products on this front. My impression of the matter was the that the only reason that they were even considering this was because they had a site license for Oracle's database, development, and web services products, and had on-site consultants offering solutions to them.
IE, Oracle certainly had their ear already.
Oracle probably views Thunderbird as a way to break Microsoft's hold on this sector of the market. By restoring some competition on this front, they could market their products more effectively.
As far as the collaboration suite goes, there is a work on a plugin for Thunderbird to integrate the Oracle Calendar system and I am sure there are other efforts I am not aware of.
This level of involvement is nothing unusual. Oracle has always had projects aimed at improvement of software that we use or that runs together with our systems. Its just that with FOSS projects its much easier to get access to the source code and do these changes without a horde of lawyers having to sort things out first with the other company or vendor.
Here's a thought.....
Its not secret anymore. With the release of Solaris 10 as free, is it any wonder that Oracle would look at opening its market share a bit with a similar move.
I think the real news here is that F/OSS is having an effect on the software industry. I believe that effect is a good one. Solaris 10 might not be the best thing I've ever seen, its a start. Oracle working in their domain space to open up things like CRM, SAP, and other areas is a damn good thing. If they can produce something that opens these and other markets to F/OSS then the competition gets tougher and more wide spread.
The opening of Microsoft dominated markets is nothing but good news. Any weakening of their grip on the software industry in any domain opens up that market so even proprietary vendors have a shot at it.
This move doesn't surprise me at all, in fact, I believe that we will see much more of this. It costs very little in terms of lock-in and other long term financial factors to work with F/OSS to open up a market that is practically locked down by a single vendor, whether that vendor is Microsoft or not.
A long time ago, it was said that you could never get fired for buying big blue. That kind of reputation is one that Microsoft never achieved. The software industry began changing so fast that it never could get that reputation, but the fallout of the fast paced changes is that if you have a reputation of great support and super value for money you will end up with market share. This is still in the process of becomming a defacto standard.
As F/OSS products become more technically and financially strong, it is in the best interests of any software vendor to work with those products, even promote and support them.
A product or two that runs on an Oracle backend product and directly competes with Microsoft etc. is a good thing... it opens up the market to more competition. If it will run on Oracle, it can probably run on mySQL etc. What options it ends up with is of little concern if it takes market share from the dominant player in that market.
Since people with little budgets are not Oracles main revenue stream, these new products would directly mangle revenue streams of Microsoft and make Oracle the version that you would use if you had to scale to large size operations.
It just makes sense.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I will not be able to entirely wean myself off outlook until an alternative can support mobile calendars on pocketpc and palmos.
My boss sends me an invite to an annoying meeting. I click "accept" (unfortunately). It gets copied to my agenda and synchronised to my phone. 15 minutes before the meeting, my phone starts beeping and sais "QM meeting, room AX5". All with ONE mouseclick. Do this in open source and I will WALK all the way to Redmond to tell Billy he should stick a fork in it.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
My favorite way to break the MS control of corporate groupware is the OSS project Open-Xchange. It's a Linux server that replaces MS-Exchange (without users even needing to know), with an Outlook plugin, and Evolution compatibility (through open standards). It is a hub server that uses standard interop with other server types, like Samba, SMTP, LDAP, HTTP, and SQL, so the services it bundles to the client can be delivered by existing servers, or the installer's choice of (standards) compatible ones. The source is open, and it's got a documented plugin API, as well as an open, documented data schema available to any additional apps. And it's the core of Novell's GroupWise suite, so it can be upgraded to a version supported by Novell's global staff. It runs on Linux, so its uptime and scalability are reliable. With O-X working, it's no longer necessary to rely on MS Exchange to get MS Exchange features.
FWIW, I'd love to see people take the Mozilla/Oracle code for improving Fire/Thunderbird, and improve their integration with O-X. That kind of cross-pollination is perfect for OSS, and leaves proprietary competition, like MS Exchange, standing behind like a stick in the mud.
--
make install -not war
I believe that Bill Murray and his crowd dealt with XUL in the original GhostBusters film.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
On the surface, it looks to me like the Mozilla boys want to bring down Bill and Microsoft so bad, that they are perfectly willing to dance with The Devil themselves. Reminds me of an old Twilight Zone episode...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Which phone do you use?
Seriously.. I have been having a hard time getting different cell phones to sync to calendars.. I have a Nokia 3300 which has a option for calendar sync. It can sync over the internet. I just have to type in the url of the server and it will do it.. Problem is there is no documentation and I have no idea what type of server etc to point it to.. or what type of server I must buy in order to set one up...
any help?
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
I doubt that. What makes Microsoft LookOut so appealing to big business, or even small business for that matter, is not that it's a great email client - it's the intergration with MS Exchange. Shared contact list, scheduling, folders, all from a central location. Is there a Mozilla server in the works?
You can have shared address books using LDAP but can you modify those contacts directly from the email client? Until that can happen lets not get too excited.
Amazing that the addition of only three full-time employees is expected to create a product that might challenge the largest company on the planet.
You'll find out.
a treo.
Oracle already bought out Steltor's CorporateTime, which was an Exchange Killer, and then buried it in proprietary bullshit. I've since moved over to Exchange4Linux, which, barring the poor name, I feel really is an Exchange Killer.
Basically the entire thing runs inside of Postfix and PostgreSQL. It's written in Python, and the server software is 100% open source. The Outlook Connector is not (it too is written in Python). So far it's been working great (huge datastore, calendaring, delegation, it all works). Basically N-H went about it differently than all the others: instead of making Outlook wrap around open services, they made the open services conform to Microsoft's bastardized MAPI. I have to say this has owrked better than anything else I've found.
- If competitor has product that is clear market leader, make your product open source. That hurts competitors. Just giving up helps them.
- If competitor has another product that is not directly competing with your product, cut their money flow by developing free alternative.
I think Oracle using number 2 against microsoft.Dyslexics have more fnu.
Interestingly, Oracle already owns (and occasionally half-heartedly markets) a full-blown Exchange competitor: Corporate Time Server, which they acquired along with its developer, a Canadian company called Steltor.
Circa 1999-2001, CTS was really the only full-blown UNIX-based replacement for Exchange available: you installed a client-side plugin in Outlook 2000, and it made the CTS calendar server plus any conforming IMAP server look like an Exchange server to Outlook. It was neat, but a little flaky on the client end. I had great hopes for it when Oracle acquired them, but the net result ended up being that the price tripled and the product went nowhere. I'd be completely psyched to see Oracle either re-launch CTS or open source it in conjunction with Lightning.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
I have an old 6030i (or something), I use the windows synching software from Nokia (which sucks like a jet engine). This would be one area where open source/open standards could REALLY make progress. Imagine I come within Bluetooth range of a colleages laptop. The laptop sais "I don't know this dude so I'm not giving him access to my Calender, but if he wants to talk to that Exchange/Oracle server on the network, hey what the heck! My phone could then ID itself to the server and access my inbox/calender. It shouldn't be that difficult to make a hardware-independent PDA synching protocol. Just turn the phone into a IMAP client for example, or stream vCal/vCard files. As far as PDA synching is concerned we are really still in the days of setting up your printer in Wordperfect 3 and then doing it again in Lotus123. If OS could come up with a decent proposal/RFC for hardware abstraction, maybe the hardware boys would listen?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Keeping on topic, for Thunderbird to beat out outlook, it'll take a LOT more than calendar functionality.
I may be a Microsoft apologist, but even -I- know that Firefox/Mozilla blows the shit out of IE. Christ, even if IE were as secure as fort knox (which of course, it's about as secure as an open door and a sign stating what's on the inside to steal), the tabbed browsing alone blows IE out of the water. With that in mind, I figured, well, if FF/Moz is that good, perhaps Thunderbird is as good or better than Outlook... boy was I wrong... it was a nightmare to set up: maybe I'm dumb, but I had to reinstall it like 3 times to get the folder setup I liked, and even then it was not to my liking. Its message rules system is horribly broken, the interface is inconsistent, etc.. There were a lot of problems for a program that has a 1.0 version number attached. One feature of outlook I can't live without and thunderbird lacks is the archiving functionality. Don't get me wrong, it's a good start, but it has a long way to go before toppling outlook, and it'll take more than a calendar to do it.
And before you think I only installed and ran it for a day or two, you're mistaken. I used it for 4 months!!! just so I could give it a fair chance. (which is more than most of the slashdot zealots would do for anything that isn't open source or linux related.)
Yeah yeah, I know, viruses, etc.. But you know something? I haven't received an email virus in about 2 years now. Roughly the length of time I've been using Outlook 2003... hmm go figure on that. And when I had received them before that (which was far and few between), I USED COMMON SENSE, and surprise surprise, I wasn't infected by anything. It's got its flaws, but Outlook has functionality and a design layout that's still much better than anything offered today. Yeah, I'll be the first to agree there's a lot of bloat (vb scripting in an email client? That's some crack induced thinking). But I'll take ease-of-use + caution any day over security + unnecessary complexity + broken design any day. Until thunderbird = security + consistent design + ease of use, I wont be going back to it.
Linux sucks. And you're fat. Take a shower hippy.
I've had to live with outlook long enough! oh.. whats that.... I'm timing out but i'm not going to tell you..... and i'm going to freeze so you loose all your email you were just writing.. rubbish hurry up moz and oracle!
Is Oracle getting set make an Open Office suffering?"
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Both Thunderbird with Sunbird and Evolution are still lagging behind.
Evolution is a wonderfully crafted client, with great UI, but it crashes way too often to be treated seriously. Few days ago i added new account, and didn't noticed that my email provider require SMTP atuthentification. With that option unmarked Evolution crashed whenever i tried to send an email. Bad.
Thunderbird is no better - way it handles multiple accounts (and who doesn't have many accounts?) and SMTP's is unacceptable and really hard to setup.
Those problems must be resolved before we could talk about being seriously competitive.
This Is Not a Sig
How about something that will run on Mac and Windows?
Currently Moz or Thund. cannot manage contacts anywhere near like OLK.
-You can't print 20 to a page
-you don't have the same number of fields.
-phone numbers to auto re-format themselves when you type them in.
-etc.
If this was fixed, I would jump in a heart beat.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
1) Build Mozilla suite
2) Break Mozilla suite apart, creating projects like Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird
3) Merge pieces back together again
Does anyone else think this is kind of weird?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I've been looking for something that can properly replace Lotus and Outlook. Lotus is owned by IBM, and while Domino runs on Linux, Lotus the client does not. This is one of the only two reasons we're not running Linux throughout our enterprise.
If Lotus wont deliver, maybe Sunbird+Thunderbird will. Another issue are the custom apps of Domino, I guess we'll just have to do without them. I wonder how well a Sunbird+Thunderbird combination will work as clients to Domino 7 running on a Linux machine.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Another company like IBM that supports just enough OSS to give them credibility with the OSS lobby while continuing to reap enormous profits from their proprietary products.
I'm not an OSS fan, but if you believe that OSS is the future, why delay the transition by propping up the old guard because they throw you a few crumbs?
Oracle Calendar really is a nice application, both the server side and client side components. They bought it from Steltor a few years back and have put a lot of effort behind it.
I'm now very interested to see what they're going to come out with. This could make huge inroads in the small business community, where sadly Exchange (thanks to Windows Small Business Server 2003) has been gaining ground..
I had the exact opposite experience. When I began grad school, I decided to try Outlook as my primary email client for an IMAP mail system. It was *okay*.
What didn't I like: 1) frequent crashes and freeze-ups; 2) stored Sent and Draft messages locally, instead of in the IMAP folders; 3) frustrating to arrange emails - I would delete or drag an email to another folder and the message would stay there! It would just be grey and crossed-out until I hit "Purge." That last one may be minor, but it really annoyed me.
Thunderbird has not had any of these issues.
From my weblog
Oracle's current work on Mozilla Lightning (Thunderbird Mail + Sunbird Calendar ++) should be interesting. Thunderbird is already a fairly decent mail client. Its main flaws from a large company perspective are its lack of calendaring and administration tools (pushing updates, profiles etc). If Oracle can fix these flaws and tie it to the Oracle database backend they should have a product they can sell.
What Oracle will need to do:
1) Fix the flaws and make it "good enough" for most business use
2) Create a connector to the Oracle database backend (something more efficient then IMAP)
3) Promote it in places where exchange is seen as a headache to be avoided: Universities, Small Businesses, Charities, Developing countries.. etc
4) Slowly move up the food chain until it is usable by Oracle's bread and butter clients - Financial institutions and large companies, & governments.
5) Tie the pricing to the customer's current licensing agreement - for example, Customers could get a reduced per CPU Oracle licensing charge if they use Lightning with the Oracle backend.
The trick will be to ensure that Mozilla Lightning supports POP3, IMAP, and Oracle DB Backend seamlessly so that the customer could slowly move up the food chain. Also important will be tools to do the Exchange to Thunderbird/Lightning migration in a background script, RIM(PDA) integration, and Exchange coexistence tools.
Opportunities
Security
One of the perceived weaknesses of Exchange is security. An opportunity will be to create a simple way to manage S/Mime or PGP certificates centrally. Copying and improving a system similar to the one that Lotus Notes uses might be a first step.
Automated Archiving
Financial institutions spend large amounts of money in software to manage archives to meet Sarbanes Oxley and FED regulations. If Oracle were to integrate tools for this then they might have a slight advantage over MS Exchange.
This is so true.
I use Yahoo mail for all my mail and calendar needs when on the road. They offer a free Intellisync program that syncs all contact and calendar data with Outlook. It also works on Palms.
I also have a Nokia phone. I downloaded "Nokia PC Suite", wich is a free collection of programs for editing images and sounds for the phone, as well as syncing contact and calendar data with, yes, you guessed it, Outlook.
Conctacts and Calendar sync. That's the main reason I use Outlook.
- Sw Usr
Funnily enough, I used a pure IMAP mail system once. And that time it was with Outlook 2000, and I'd have to agree, that experience would put most users off too. Outlook + Exchange however I found to work quite well (which is what I have to use at work), as they should. Outlook + POP3, I found it to be a mixed bag with Outlook 2000, 2002. As you say, it was *okay*. Outlook 2003 was actually the first version to work properly (for me at least) with POP3.
Linux sucks. And you're fat. Take a shower hippy.
the best places for xul reference:U LElement.html p /xul.xml 2 49.shtml
p /xul.xsd
http://www.xulplanet.com/references/elemref/ref_X
http://mb.eschew.org/
http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe/xulref/
http://mozref.com/reference/
http://xulmaker.mozdev.org/xpath-evaluator/no_wra
http://books.mozdev.org/html/index.html
http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/04/12/28/2144
Schema Definition for xul (xsd)
http://xulmaker.mozdev.org/xpath-evaluator/no_wra
For live help you can try channel #xul on irc.mozilla.org. but please patient when asking questions, since most developers are probably very busy managing multiple xul projects.
The Outlook + viruses argument is older the dot com bomb days.
We've been running Exchange 2000 from the 2nd week it came out and upgraded 6 mail servers to 2003 within a month of it's arrival as well. We've had 1 virus make it through email to this date. Call it competent admins or smart deciscion making, it doesn't matter. Sybari Antigen was our savior at the end of the day. Yes, it's a blatent advertisment...
I guess I just laugh when people *actually* have virus problems at a business. It comes down to incompetent admins and poor deciscion making. At the end of the day you can't blame users for inept virus protection when your server lets them right in.
From what I gather, an upcoming goal for Firefox development is to package all the back-end engine stuff into a "XUL Runner" runtime platform that could be installed separate from any one application. Firefox itself would then be just a ~1MB bundle of XUL code, chrome, etc., and Thunderbird, Sunbird, and other apps could be equally lightweight.
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
(Think before you respond!)
OK...
A new word or concept?
:)
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
i haven't really searched the web on this, whether there already exists an open standard, but i think the road block to calendaring is there is no open standard for it.
just like we have imap4/pop3/smtp for emails, we need something for calendar services, for sending out invites, receiving invites, converting invites into an entry in a calendar. otherwise, it's always exchange/outlook, domino/notes, and plugins to these 2 proprietry standards.
plugins to these proprietry standards will not help much. they just extend them.