Quality Open Source Calendaring / Scheduling?

Jim R. Wilson writes "In past jobs, I've used Microsoft Outlook/Exchange, Novell Groupwise, and Google Calendar for handling business appointments. I'm sorry to say it, but I have yet to see a rival to Microsoft's scheduling features. On Slashdot I have occasionally read rumblings that there are better open source email and calendaring solutions out there. Can anyone substantiate this claim? What are the OSS alternatives? Can any compete with Microsoft's resource scheduling?"

Comments

no

[Anonymous Coward]

no

Re:no

[Crispin Cowan]

Who ever moderated the parent as "troll" didn't think about it very hard. A simple "no" in answer to this question is actually quite accurate. That is sad, and there is a great deal more to be said on the matter, but it is the truth.

Re:no

[rsborg]

Who ever moderated the parent as "troll" didn't think about it very hard. A simple "no" in answer to this question is actually quite accurate. That is sad, and there is a great deal more to be said on the matter, but it is the truth.

Perhaps the troll rating was because there's no easy way to moderate something as "incorrect". Troll/Overrated are the only two real options, unless the moderator wants to give up modding this topic and reply to the post (as to why I feel "No" is wrong, see other replies further down)

Also, "No" is very much NOT informative nor is it insightful. I think the current moderation of the GP post is inaccurate, becuase there is no real meat to the reply. A one-word "informative" "answer" is neither. It could well be the beginning of one, but is incomplete.

Re:no

[mapsjanhere]

It's correct, and it includes all the necessary information without wasting any electrons. Perfect example of an informative post imho.

Re:no

[Crizp]

And that is correct. The grandparent was yet another one of those who say there's an alternative, but don't suggest any alternatives or reasons.

Re:no

[sammyo]

Exactly, there's even a book about the biggest most heavily funded effort: Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software but download it and try it out!

Re:no

[jdparkinson]

Jim, take a look at Thunderbrid with Lighting or Sunbird. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/ The community is making great progress. It may not be everything you want but I think you will find it to be pretty good and getting better all the time. Your input will also help make it better.

Re:no

[lordSaurontheGreat]

MS is the king of calendaring because MS is a business. They understand scheduling and calendaring best because they are slaves to it. It's one of the only instances of Microsoft using the stuff they make.

Re:no

[VolciMaster]

Ummm.... what about Scalix (scalix.com) & Zimbra (zimbra.com)?

Re:no

[jhol13]

I use Lightning. It is POS.

There is no way to set the view (what hours to show, etc). There is no "add event" button nor can you do it (in mail view) with right mouse nor from menu. It does not understand tnef encoded (Outlook) invitations neither can it answer (to Outlook) invitations with "yes/no". It cannot share "available" info. When right clicking on the calendar the time of the new event has nothing to do with the place I right clicked - date is correct though. The reminder pop-up is not 100% reliable and sometimes pop-ups events from the past.

Yes, it has progressed, they have removed the modality of the "new event" dialog[1]. But then they insisted that I cannot have the "events soon" below e-mail folders (on the left bottom), it "needs" own frame (on the right), just wasting space.

[1] Extremely telling how far from usable it still is, it was still less than half an year ago.

Re:no

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a perfectly fine answer. Perhaps you just talk too much.

Re:no

[0p7imu5_P2im3]

But tell us your real opinion of Microshaft.

J/K ;-)

But seriously, fancy word play (Microshaft, M$, etc.) and insults don't really show people the errors that are inherent to Microshaft's products and business model. The problem is they haven't seen the alternatives in most cases, so we just sound like fruitcake when we claim that Microshaft products suck without showing them alternatives. After all, with all their problems, they are a far cry better than nothing at all... or at least a short cry better.

More on topic: I use a PDA for my calendar alternative. Lightning is on my work computer, but since I don't sync with that PC, it really just stays dormant. I've had the same popup reminder reliability issues with lightning as others have mentioned and I don't use the meeting scheduling functions that Outlook has.

A PDA, and especially a PDA phone, can be much more helpful for reminders, and if you pay for a data plan, time sensitive emails.

Re:no

[plague3106]

You rant how No is not the correct answer, then you fail to substantiate that with evidence? If the OP was incorrect, please enlighten us (and the /.er that posted the question).

Haven't found much

[cbreaker]

I haven't found much, either. It's either some half-done web-based solution or it's got seriously missing features.

Evolution works great with Exchange; all they need now is to create their own back-end =)

PS. Public folders have gone away in Exchange 2007; big mistake if you ask me. It was a selling point for Exchange.

Re:Haven't found much

[Wicked187]

I believe the removal of Public Folders in Exchange 2007 is a result of integration with Sharepoint. The functionality is supposed to still exist, just outside of Exchange, itself. I haven't tried it out yet, as I do not have a 64-bit server to install on, but I do like a lot of the features in Sharepoint, and I can see how they would be better than Public Folders (and considering that Outlook pulls data in from Sharepoint, it should be fairly seamless from the user perspective).

Re:Haven't found much

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure about public folders?

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/topquestions.mspx?wt.svl=overview

Q. What is happening with Public Folders?
A.

Public Folders are included and supported in Exchange Server 2007. Microsoft has communicated that future releases of Exchange Server may not include public folders. If you use Public Folders, read the Exchange Team Blog on the topic of public folders for more guidance.

Re:Haven't found much

[jayp00001]

I find it a much needed improvement. Some of the functionality is gone but it can be reproduced with a little work on the sharepoint side. BTW you can play with exchange 2007 at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/virtuallab/default.mspx without having to build your own

Re:Haven't found much

[Spinlock_1977]

I wrote a calendaring web app a few years back, and it was certainly a half-done web-based solution some seriously missing features. I wish you had included mine in your survey, because I still don't have any customers for it.

Re:Haven't found much

[ibi]

It's worth looking at Chandler (fat client) and Cosmo (server) from

http://www.osafoundation.org/

It's been a long time coming, but it's finally approaching a useable release and it's quite interesting. I think it will be a real choice in 2008...

Re:Haven't found much

[cbreaker]

Yea, that's what I've been seeing - use Sharepoint. But Sharepoint is a whole 'nother beast. I think they should have improved the functionality of Public Folders. Sharepoint can't do a lot of things that PF's can, and Sharepoint itself is a bit of a pain in the ass.

It's going to seriously slow the adoption of E2k7 because many companies really use them. One company I contracted at a couple years ago had over 25,000 public folders, many of which were used daily.

Outlook integration isn't quite as seamless as it could be; you still have to link folders to Sharepoints, etc.

Re:Haven't found much

[Anonymous Coward]

"PS. Public folders have gone away in Exchange 2007; "

This is incorrect. Public folders are still alive and kicking in Exchange 2007.

Re:Haven't found much

[sharkey]

Public folders have gone away in Exchange 2007

They are in there, just disabled by default. If you use Outlook 2003 or older they are required, so Exchange 2007 includes them.

Re:Haven't found much

[iago-vL]

Perfect, it'll be ready just in time for the Year of Desktop Linux! :)

Re:Haven't found much

[samkass]

The best candidate I've seen for the full calendaring "infrastructure" is the open CalDAV spec, but it's only really used commercially by Apple at this point. But since Apple has released their reference implementation as open source , perhaps we'll get more implementations and a snowball effect of support.

Re:Haven't found much

[fastest fascist]

Not to comment on the quality of this particular app, but isn't that kind of the open-source mantra? "It'll be a real choice next year..."

Re:Haven't found much

[ShieldW0lf]

It's a calender. You can buy them at the department store, complete with beach bunnies or half naked firefighters, depending on how you swing.

Lets not pretend that there's anything particularly special about anything MS has done with calenders that you couldn't do yourself, ok? It's a fucking calender.

Personally, I like the ones with the half naked girls much better than anything made software, be it commercial or open source.

Re:Haven't found much

[ShieldW0lf]

In other news, NASA spends 1 million on a pen that writes in space.

Because, you know, pencils are so lower class.

Re:Haven't found much

[everphilski]

Personally, I like the ones with the half naked girls much better than anything made software, be it commercial or open source.

Does said calendar show you at the drop of the hat what meetings/obligations everyone in your department has for the day/week? I didn't think so ... That's why businesses use Exchange.

Re:Haven't found much

[opypod]

i use evolution at work where EVERYTHING is ms. it's the only way i can integrate my linux box with the rest stuff going on here. that being said. evolution is buggy and unreliable. it frequently messes things up royally, like calendering and scheduling and often looses connection with the ms backend. i'm sure the problem is not entirely evolution, but it still sux when you're just trying to get work done. especially in an ms environment where evolution is supposed to shine....

Re:Haven't found much

[Crispin Cowan]

That is so painfully wrong.

Paper calendars work great for scheduling with the rest of your family, because you all pass through the kitchen. But that does not scale to large enterprises, you know, like with more than 50 people. It does not scale to distributed organizations, where you don't share a kitchen. It does not connect appointment scheduling to nag 'bots that remind you to attend the meeting.

But I think this is the core reason why open source calendaring sucks: it is a problem that most open source community people don't have, and only really is a problem in large organizations.

Sadly, this has lead to open source completely failing to take over the mail server market. Linux & *BSD, Postfix, and Qmail all make great mail servers, and are used by many ISPs, but they are largely unused in enterprises, precisely because of the lack of calendaring. As a result, corporate mail servers are invariable Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, or Novell Groupwise.

Hula was an attempt to address this, but either due to Novell not doing it right or the community just not caring, it did not work out so well :-(

I would really like to see the open source community get this right. If we don't, then the mail server market will continue to be dominated by proprietary products.

Re:Haven't found much

[Ephemeriis]

PS. Public folders have gone away in Exchange 2007; big mistake if you ask me. It was a selling point for Exchange.

They aren't quite gone yet... Exchange 2007's GUI has absolutely no tools for managing Public Folders, but you can still manipulate them through PowerShell - and MS claims that GUI tools for Public Folders are on the way in SP1. Or, if you're desperate for a GUI right now, you can install Exchange 2000/2003 management tools.

Microsoft has stated, repeatedly and loudly, that Public Folders are on the way out. If I had to guess, I'd say that they're likely moving that kind of functionality into a new/different product - something like SharePoint maybe.

Re:Haven't found much

[Anonymous Coward]

public folders aren't gone, they're just discouraged. they're still there. I'm in Exchange 2007 training right now typing this.

Re:Haven't found much

[jamshid]

This is a great article about the Chandler saga: http://www.gamearchitect.net/Articles/SoftwareIsHard.html. It's the Mitch Kapor financed Exchange killer. So many smart people, so many good intentions, but 7 years later it's barely beta.

I've always thought really smart, hard working people are the biggest problem with software -- they tend to make things that only really smart, hard working people can use, fix, and extend.

Re:Haven't found much

[r3b00tm0nk3y]

Outlook integration isn't quite as seamless as it could be; you still have to link folders to Sharepoints, etc. The tremendous number of needless changes in the way servers/users are managed will slow the adoption of E2007. The powershell fetish ui alone will keep any number small network admins from using it as long as 2003 still works.

Re:Haven't found much

[Anonymous Coward]

Read "Dreaming in Code" as a detailed description of the saga developing chandler. It's a really great read even if you're not particularly interesting in PIM software as a topic.

Re:Haven't found much

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the complete story

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb851487.aspx

Exchange 2007 sp1 brings PF back into gui management. In a bit of a twist for microsoft they built they UI on top of the command line interface of exchange (Probably in some vain attempt to get props from /. readers), so the several things including public folder gui didn't quite make it in before RTM.

I'm certain feedback from waves of confused Exchange 5.5 admins made sure the GUI was in sp1.

Re:Haven't found much

[maetenloch]

In other news, NASA spends 1 million on a pen that writes in space. Because, you know, pencils are so lower class.

It would be funny if it were true, but it's not according to Snopes. Space Pen

Re:Haven't found much

[dave562]

Microsoft has stated, repeatedly and loudly, that Public Folders are on the way out. If I had to guess, I'd say that they're likely moving that kind of functionality into a new/different product - something like SharePoint maybe.

This issue completely sums up my one beef with Microsoft. They take something that works perfectly well and they fuck with it. I have used SharePoint. It is a huge PITA to setup and get working. Public Folders already work great in Exchange. They provide all of the functionality that is needed. But Microsoft wants to push Office 2007. The only "killer feature" in Office 2007 from Microsoft's point of view is the Sharepoint integration. So they rip the functionality out of Exchange, toss it into SharePoint and by the time Office 2009 rolls around, you are going to "have to" have it if you want Public Folders to keep working. The forced upgrade juggernaut will keep rolling on. It pisses me off, big time. I'm perfectly happy with the way my network functions right now. Exchange 2003, Windows Server 2003, SQL Server 2005, XP SP2 on the workstations, some Mac OSX boxes for the "creative" department, an Ubuntu Linux box for the web department and life is good. But noooo... can't just leave it at that. We're going to be rail roaded into Vista, Exchange 2007 and Office 2023 because Microsoft will never leave well enough alone.

Re:Haven't found much

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, this has lead to open source completely failing to take over the mail server market. Linux & *BSD, Postfix, and Qmail all make great mail servers, and are used by many ISPs, but they are largely unused in enterprises, precisely because of the lack of calendaring. As a result, corporate mail servers are invariable Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, or Novell Groupwise.

Is there a particular reason "mail" and "calendar" are tied together, or is it simply that "Microsoft does it that way", so everybody else is expected to follow suit, as they have with word processor + spreadsheet = "office software" (whatever that means)?

I've used free wiki software at big companies, and it didn't have a calendar. I've used free issue tracking software at big companies, and it didn't have a calendar. So clearly simply "it's a server, but it doesn't have a calendar" isn't the only reason why free mail servers aren't used by some of these big companies. They could simply say "OK, we're using Postfix. Microsoft, can your calendar work with Postfix? No? Goodbye".

Re:Haven't found much

[greginnj]

Pencils are dangerous in space.

1. They are more pointed than pens, and thus more likely to puncture things that shouldn't be punctured.

2. They create dust, which is a no-no on space missions. Wood pencils (obviously) from sharpening. Mechanical pencils are prone to have their leads break off, and float about. More to the point, the operating mechanism of both kinds of pencil is to rub off graphite dust onto paper. Some of this dust may be released by smudging.

Remember that graphite, and thus graphite dust, is conductive. Do you want to take the risk of conductive graphite dust causing a component to short out?

Why do you want NASA missions to fail???? ( oblig bit o funny )

Re:Haven't found much

[geobeck]

Public folders have gone away in Exchange 2007; big mistake if you ask me. It was a selling point for Exchange.

As someone who used to administer an Exchange server that had 24,000 public folders by the time I inhereited it--in a 30-person office--all I can say is good riddance!

Re:Haven't found much

[Omega996]

I think the real problem is Outlook, not Exchange. Exchange would die a lonely death if it weren't for Outlook, as it's not particularly awesome as an SMTP/IMAP/POP server, and (at least as far as I can tell) only Outlook can use the Calendar/Public Folders feature of Exchange (discounting OWA).
...And this talk of no public folders in E2K7 is disturbing, as I just picked up an Opteron 1214-based server for our switch to E2k7. Guess I'll need to find another use for it...

Re:Haven't found much

[ianare]

The server is written in the Python programming language Now, I am a python programmer and it's a great language, but this type of application would best be handled by a lower level language. Python is great when you need to bang stuff out quickly, or expect to be continuously making code adjustments, but at a (small) sacrifice in performance. In other words, the exact opposite of priorities than for a mail server (stable well thought out code, running as fast as possible).

Re:Haven't found much

[JohnsonWax]

Oracle is a big part of CalDAV and is likely to move completely to it with their calendar system soon. They're a pretty big player. There are other big names involved. This one should take off well.

Re:Haven't found much

[johny42]

Unless there are half naked girls in your department, I don't really see a choice here.

Re:Haven't found much

[Omega996]

Well, of course not - MS isn't making money if they're not selling you software. It's a lot like Intel and their 2-year turn-and-burn architecture upgrades. If you're not shelling out money for a new motherboard that has the latest Intel ICH to support the latest Intel processor, they're not making money off of you. It's stupefying that companies let themselves get into positions where a monopoly like Microsoft or Intel can dictate when products need to be upgraded; I chalk it up to expedience vs. actually verifying what's needed for a particular task.

I'm in that situation where I work - small company, 100% reliance on MS products, and the company isn't keen on upgrading to Vista. The CIO-equivalent was stunned when I told him it would be very hard indeed to get XP preloaded on our HP workstations after the middle of next year, so we needed to start looking at what it will take to integrate Vista now. Since the company didn't put desktop OSes on their Software Assurance plan, we're basically stuck with whatever the OEM throws on the disk. Ah, well....

Re:Haven't found much

[atamido]

Public folders still exist in E2k7, they've just been "de-emphasized". I don't have a book handy, but I want to say that it is optional during installation as to if it is installed, dependent on some other option being selected. You can do an install of E2k7 with or without public folders just fine. They do state clearly that the next version of Exchange will not have public folders at all, but I don't have to even think about that for at least another 4 years.

Re:Haven't found much

[Flwyd]

Unless you've got an awesome bugfree version, "Evolution Exchange Great" should not appear in the same sentence. If I tally each time I hit a bug in an installed application over the course of a month, evolution-exchange would have at least 40% of them. This is particularly frustrating because Exchange support is the only reason I use Evolution. I know Microsoft's lack of open standards is the real culprit, but when evolution-exchange decides to download all my mail for the last two weeks even though it's already got it all, the monkey on the screen takes the blame.

Re:Haven't found much

[tzot]

Now, I am a python programmer and it's a great language, but this type of application would best be handled by a lower level language (I think). Python is great when you need to bang stuff out quickly, or expect to be continuously making code adjustments, but at a (small) sacrifice in performance (which is negligible in a network-limited application). In other words, the exact opposite of priorities than for a mail server (stable well thought out code (note to self: python does not support buffer overflows, too), running as fast as possible (which would be a problem if the python mail server ran on a 4 year old or older machine)).

There. Now it's correct.

If I may summarise: a mail server is not computation-intensive. Give me €100,000 (€100*10^3) for a year, and I will prove my point that python is fast enough (eg compared to postfix) on current hardware for a mail server; of course, we would sign a contract with specific details mutually agreed upon, and if by the end of the year the program wouldn't cover the contract terms, I would give you back your money.

Re:Haven't found much

[the_olo]

To add insult to injury, I'd like to point out that MS Exchange+Outlook is not only about calendaring. It's also about:

• Tasks
  
• Contacts
  
• Notes
  
• Journal entries
  
• Instant messaging
  
• Custom forms for distributing and collecting information,
  

everything abstracted at some level so you can:

• give access to those elements to other coworkers with a unified interface
  
• create custom views to visualize sets of those types of objects in various ways (e.g. you can display calendar events on a timeline view, similarly to how journal entries are shown by default)
  
• use public folders with them (well, not anymore - the functionality deprecated...) and have user-controllable ACLs on everything
  

Plus lots of additional usability features that OpenSource community failed to replicate, e.g.:

• real-time bidirectional client-server communication (server can notify the client instantly about a change in a folder - e.g. a new meeting added by someone else who has proper permissions to the folder you're in)
  
• a nice client-side UI for managin server-side mail filters
  
• ability to control permissions about who can send mail in whose name (without admin intervention)
  
• import/export of various types of data in lots of formats - CSV, TXT, vCard, vCalendar etc. - compare that to Mozilla Thunderbird, which after over 4 years still cannot sort out Outlook Express import properly if the files are in a different location than software expects.
  

Re:Haven't found much

[the_olo]

BTW, eGroupWare might be close functionality-wise on most fronts (on project management it's even better than MS Exchange which doesn't do it at all).

But it's still weak if you need disconnected operation, caching and real-time notifications from server to client.

Re:Haven't found much

[Crispin Cowan]

Evolution, with a plug-in, can use the calendar features of Exchange. Unfortunately Evolution maintenance has suffered lately, and while I used to happily use it for calendaring, I have not been able tot get it to work within the last year.

Re:Haven't found much

[deniable]

OK, let's turn this around. Mail is another collaboration tool along with group scheduling. Why wouldn't you have them integrated with a common security infrastructure, directories and so on. It's a cohesive combination of tasks.

As for Postfix, when a Manager comes along and says that he needs to be able to schedule meetings with his team, you'll get Outlook/Exchange or you'll get another job.

Re:Haven't found much

[Allador]

Okay, I know this is going to come across as crazy talk ... but have you considered just ... not updating?

Considering that MS server products will continue to get security updates for 10 years after release, I dont think it'll be a big burden on you.

Re:Haven't found much

[Exter-C]

I absolutely agree with you, Evolution although has a great intention is so buggy, features work in one version then not in the next (see Exchange filters not working in the current Ubuntu 7.10 launchpad bugs) it seems that there is no quality control. On the upside it has improved dramatically but its still not feature comparable to outlook in the remotest way. Their priority should be to get the full rpc over https feature set working (including GAL) then just do a huge bugfix exercise. Once evolution is stable it will allow many organisations to hasten their move to open source.

Re:Haven't found much

[Exter-C]

I have to agree with you. I have to say thanks to the evolution project for having some working features but at the same time it seems to be so buggy from my experience that its more simple to use OWA directly.

Re:Haven't found much

[Weedlekin]

"1. They are more pointed than pens, and thus more likely to puncture things that shouldn't be punctured. "

Unless you use grease pencils, which work under water and in space.

"2. They create dust, which is a no-no on space missions. Wood pencils (obviously) from sharpening. Mechanical pencils are prone to have their leads break off, and float about. More to the point, the operating mechanism of both kinds of pencil is to rub off graphite dust onto paper. Some of this dust may be released by smudging. "

None of which apply to grease pencils.

"Remember that graphite, and thus graphite dust, is conductive."

Grease pencils have no graphite in them.

Note that I don't believe the anecdote about NASA spending a million developing a pen, but like the military, they have a notable habit of spending ludicrous sums on items that are identical to ones that can be bought much more cheaply (i.e. same manufacturer, same parts, but the military version is painted green and costs 25 times as much).

Re:Haven't found much

[mdwstmusik]

"But it's still weak if you need disconnected operation..." I've been using it with the iCal Server app. to deal with this limitation. This allows me to sync with a desktop/laptop calendar and in turn, sync with my PDA, Cell Phone, and iPod. I agree, eGroupware has a lot of functionality.

Re:Haven't found much

[cbreaker]

That's exactly what I've found as well. But it's not just calendaring. It's mailbox sharing, it's instant mail notifications, and it's centralized mail storage. All of these things are provided as basic functionality of Groupwise, Exchange, and Notes/Domino. NO open source project/package has these.

POP/IMAP are fine for very small businesses, and GMail is okay for individuals. But neither are appropriate in even a small/medium sized business. People want to share calendars, mailboxes, and they want it backed up centrally.

Re:Haven't found much

[2short]

"Note that I don't believe the anecdote about NASA spending a million developing a pen, but like the military, they have a notable habit of spending ludicrous sums on items that are identical to ones that can be bought much more cheaply (i.e. same manufacturer, same parts, but the military version is painted green and costs 25 times as much)."

It's not really a matter of what you beleive; the facts are on record. NASA initially used pencils, but wanted something better for the reasons the parent mentions. I don't know if they considered grease pencils, but off the top of my head they don't write very finely. I'm sure they would use them in appropriate circumstances, but even on the ground, there isn't much I'd consider pen and grease pencil equally suited for.

In any case, I hear NASA has this habit you mention, but the example is always the pens. They didn't spend a ludicrous sum on the pens that replaced the pencils. They spent zero dollars. Nothing. Pens suited for space were developed and given to them completely for free.

Re:Haven't found much

[Weedlekin]

""Note that I don't believe the anecdote about NASA spending a million developing a pen""

First, you reply to this with:

"It's not really a matter of what you beleive; the facts are on record"

And then you say:

"They didn't spend a ludicrous sum on the pens that replaced the pencils. They spent zero dollars. Nothing. Pens suited for space were developed and given to them completely for free."

The two statements contradict one another.

"I don't know if they considered grease pencils, but off the top of my head they don't write very finely"

There are grease pencils that write as finely as other pencils -- it depends on what they're made of. They also have a notable advantage of being usable on a much wider variety of surfaces than either pens or pencils, and many are made of substances that leave a permanent mark. Another type of marker that's readily available and extremely cheap is the capillary marker, which as the name suggests works by capillary action, and does not therefore rely on gravity. As with modern grease pencils (many of which do not require sharpening), they're available in a variety of thicknesses, the finest of which are comparable to other types of pens.

Re:Haven't found much

[everphilski]

No, but I have a fully naked one at home :)

Re:Haven't found much

[the_olo]

This allows me to sync with a desktop/laptop calendar...

It doesn't cover your tasks nor contacts. It's calendar-only. Yes, open protocols suffer from lack of general, abstracted architecture for groupware - they're all patchwork, stitched together. You can use CalDav for calendar, LDAP for address books (theoretically - no useful implementations of this idea exist), IMAP + SMTP for mail, etc. As a result, each type of object has to be handled completely differently on both the server and client sides. Maybe that's the cause of lack of proper OpenSource groupware solutions - there's no single, standard, open, all-purpose groupware protocol to base them on.

Anybody care to design one?

Re:Haven't found much

[Omega996]

I have really hit or miss luck with Evolution - sometimes i can get it working fine, other times it will not. I am probably wrong, but it seems that since Novell has had their grubbies all over it, the quality of the documentation has fallen somewhat; it's also possible I'm just less intelligent than I used to be. Regardless, I've tried it, and when I can get it set up right it works more or less ok (occasional crashes (a lot like trying to run Outlook under WINE, now that I think on it), but I'm not always successful in doing so. The point of this reply? Who knows.

Re:Haven't found much

[plague3106]

Huh? Nothing will ever force you to upgrade. The company I work for proves that; we're STILL on Office 2k.

Re:Haven't found much

[dave562]

I can kind of agree with that. I have a client that is still running Office 2K. On the other hand, I dealt with a situation where a company was running NT 4 and they were forced into an upgrade because their accounting package needed to be upgraded. It might not always be Microsoft that directly forces the upgrade, but sooner or later, something will come along. Usually it will be some sort of database that hits a record limit.

Re:Haven't found much

[mdwstmusik]

"It doesn't cover your tasks nor contacts. It's calendar-only. Yes, open protocols suffer from lack of general, abstracted architecture for groupware - they're all patchwork, stitched together. You can use CalDav for calendar, LDAP for address books (theoretically - no useful implementations of this idea exist), IMAP + SMTP for mail, etc. As a result, each type of object has to be handled completely differently on both the server and client sides. Maybe that's the cause of lack of proper OpenSource groupware solutions - there's no single, standard, open, all-purpose groupware protocol to base them on. Anybody care to design one?"

I only responded with the solution that I use for off-line "Calendaring / Scheduling" since that was the original topic of the discussion. I have yet to have the need to sync my 'tasks' for off-line use, but I do like to have my contacts with me on the go.
Fortunately, I have shell access to our eGroupware database. I wrote a script that pulls the desired contact info. from the database and saves it to a Vcard file. No, it's not ideal and it's something that should be included in the app., but ical and vcard formats allow me to do that.
Also, there is http://www.egroupware.org/sync, and XML-RPC

Re:Haven't found much

[Crispin Cowan]

Is there a particular reason "mail" and "calendar" are tied together, or is it simply that "Microsoft does it that way", so everybody else is expected to follow suit, as they have with word processor + spreadsheet = "office software" (whatever that means)?

I agree with another poster that the fact that Outlook bundles mail and calendar is a major part of it. But I think there is another factor: disconnected operation. When you have a distributed application that needs to interact with mutiple people, and you can run the protocol over e-mail, then those people can interact with the traffic while off line. You can be on an airplane or something with no network, check your calendar, and schedule an appointment with a co-worker. Conversely, while you are on a plane, co-workers can make appointments with you, and it is all reconciled later when you connect and sync up your mail.

Disconnected operation is critical for enterprise calendaring, because the people who do the most calendaring are leaders like the CEO and VPs, meetings can't happen without them. Worse, these VIPs tend to travel more than most, so they demand disconnected operation for their most critical applications, such as calendaring.

Re:Haven't found much

[2short]

There is no contradiction. He said he doesn't believe the anecdote.. I assure him its falsehood is clearly documented. He suggests it is the sort of thing NASA does. I disagree, and point out the actual facts of the pen thing as a counterexample.

I don't care about grease pencils, nor know why NASA chose not to use them. Possibly just that they had great pens that did the job and were free. Also, whatever fabulous advantages "modern" grease pencils may have are irrelevant to decisions made in the 1960s.

Re:Haven't found much

[JambisJubilee]

Think about inhaling a (floating) piece of graphite from a broken pencil.

Power Failure Resistant:

[Anonymous Coward]

Application: Pen and Paper.

Re:Power Failure Resistant:

[PrescriptionWarning]

Unfortunately its not chicken scratch resistant

Re:Power Failure Resistant:

[Eberlin]

As much as I love the Y2K compliant Office App...

0) Geeks will argue which pen and which paper is the best.
1) The Gentoo crowd will make their own paper from pulp.
2) Where's the ^H on Pen?
3) There are some serious latency issues
4) Sometimes the output is so horrible that others can't read the file.
5) Sometimes the output is so horrible that I can't read my own file.
6) You can backspace on a word processor. You can shake an etch-a-sketch. If you mess up on paper, you need new hardware.

Re:Power Failure Resistant:

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all I need is a paper calendar that can pop up a reminder on my computer screen when I have a meeting, as I tend to not check a paper calendar every minute. Plus one that I can update from home without actually carrying it around with me would be great. I can't decide if letting other people schedule me into meetings would be a good feature or not so I won't worry about that one.

Re:Power Failure Resistant:

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's get this straight -- you can't just "upgrade" to pencil. I mean, at the very least you'll want pencil home premium with the decent no-smudge erasable lead. Aside from the optional "eraser" you'll eventually have to cough up money on "sharpener."

But I guess if you really must, I'd have to suggest pencil ultimate -- the mechanical kind. There's an "eraser" built in but it's often small and inadequate so you'll have to fork over for an external one anyway.

Re:Power Failure Resistant:

[Anonymous Coward]

Hire an assistant ... somebody who can come in to your office every minute and put a sticky note on your monitor. That person can also be responsible for syncing your schedule by making lots and lots of photocopies.

Re:Power Failure Resistant:

[SleptThroughClass]

1a) The Slackware fans will make their own paper from tree seeds.

Re:Power Failure Resistant:

[OptimusPaul]

Mod parent up! Serious, nothing beats the Pen and Paper, except maybe the pencil and paper. Once they find a simple way to replicate it we will be set.

Re:Power Failure Resistant:

[Anonymous Coward]

Pencil has persistence and data corruption issues.

Re:Power Failure Resistant:

[tuomoks]

Rated as funny and, yes, it seems funny today. I'm from time we had secretaries and I miss those times. Scheduling between internal and external (customer) connections is PITA. The secretaries were able to negotiate, no system can do that, it is out of your time. They knew personal things what you never would put to any scheduling system, bring flowers or a bottle of whiskey to next meeting because the big boss has a birthday, whatever. They reminded you of all the papers you will need to take to the meeting, they had your flights ready, they proposed to have another person to go with you or just sending another person because whatever reason, etc. No calendar, scheduling, computer system can never do that and it is out of your time - sometimes a lot! So hire an assistant!

Re:Power Failure Resistant:

[fruey]

Hear hear!

However most modern companies in modern industries (like tech) don't believe in assistants any more, when they are a key resource to take away scheduling etc. from people who can use their time more productively (writing code, testing a site, whatever).

Just because the computer can do email, scheduling, and you can use IM and phone... some people aren't good at that and waste way too much time when they could just say to their assistant "I need this tomorrow, let xxx know about that meeting next week and schedule it, and I need to be in Houston a week tomorrow" and it'll happen.

In my company, there are 150 employees and 0 assistants. And people bitch most about execs not turning up to meetings on time and forgetting stuff, even though they have blackberries and outlook and mobile phones and laptops.

Re:Power Failure Resistant:

[tehcyder]

Mod parent up! Serious, nothing beats the Pen and Paper, except maybe the pencil and paper. Once they find a simple way to replicate it we will be set.

Maybe they'll invent a machine that's, like, a typewriter attached to a TV screen, connected by wires to other typewriters attached to TV screens, and they all save the words you type onto some sort of permanent magnetic record?

I know, but a man can dream...

Re:Power Failure Resistant:

[Gazzonyx]

1a) The Slackware fans will make their own paper from tree seeds. As a Slacker (since 10.2 release, give or take a week), I can assure you that we don't use just any tree seeds. We only use vanilla seeds, and they Just Work!

.....or

[AsnFkr]

How about an OSS software package that actually WORKS with Outlook's calendar system properly? I'm not talking about OWA via Firefox, I'm talking about something that supports all the pretty colors and features of the calendar.

Re:.....or

[disasm]

opengroupware has a plugin for working with outlook. I haven't used that one in a while though.

Sam

Re:.....or

[Anonymous Coward]

Scalix

Re:.....or

[192939495969798999]

Outlook is purposefully difficult to interface with, as with most Microsoft products, so that if you have to get events from/to it, you're stuck with it.

Re:.....or

[ahodgson]

I'm sure if Microsoft ever allows outside software to properly interoperate with Exchange, that will happen. But they don't.

Shocking, I know.

Re:.....or

[billbaird]

Postpath, check it out. Not open source, but utilizes open source software and runs on Linucks.

http://www.postpath.com/

Re:.....or

[Whitemice]

It works pretty well, although some people seem to have problems. There is also a ZideOne plugin under development with a target for initial release at the end of Q4 2007; that is a MAPI provider for CalDAV & GroupDAV servers. Both of which OpenGroupware is... so you'll have two options.
http://www.zideone.com/

Compatibility

[WPIDalamar]

I think the main problem is we can't really come up with an open source scheduling system that's compelely new and innovative because you need compatibility with people outside your organization.

If we're not coming up with something new and innovative we're stuck making outlook clones. People don't like writing software like that.

Re:Compatibility

[jellomizer]

two words "backward compatibility". You can make something new and invoative while keeping outlook compatability. Thats how Microsoft gets dominate. Imbrase a technology, saying this is good. Extend while keeping all the old features put new ones in so there is little risk in adopting. Extinguish once you have dominace make your product incompatible with the rest to force the rest to go to you.

Re:Compatibility

[nine-times]

I think the main problem is we can't really come up with an open source scheduling system that's compelely new and innovative because you need compatibility with people outside your organization.

That's not all that true of the companies I've worked for. I'd be kind of annoyed if someone outside of my company sent me a meeting invite. You're not in my company; don't make assumptions about my scheduling.

Re:Compatibility

[forrestt]

How is that an assumption about your scheduling? It's an invitation to a meeting, if you can't make it or don't want to, you are free to decline the invitation or even just ignore it. But, it would be nice if your dentist could send you an appointment reminder with a link that would put it in your calendar so when your boss is wondering where you are he can look at the calendar (no, telling your boss has no effect on them knowing where you are when they want you). Or perhaps your friend could send you an email to go do something that would require you to take off early Friday and include a link to update your calendar. Or maybe some vendor could send you an invitation to meet them for lunch with multiple times for the event and you could pick one. Or maybe a customer needs to meet you to schedule a time they can call you so you send them a meeting invite, Or maybe even the people from SANS sending you an email after you register with a link to update your calendar to say you won't be at work for that week.

Being in your company has nothing to do with wanting information in your calendar, and you are the person that gets to decide if it is worth putting in the calendar or not.

Re:Compatibility

[mbadolato]

I'd be kind of annoyed if someone outside of my company sent me a meeting invite. You're not in my company; don't make assumptions about my scheduling

You apparently don't work on a team that requires interaction with lots of clients and/or vendors and require $time_interval meetings to coordinate the development efforts of tech teams from each company involved.

Re:Compatibility

[rubycodez]

that "backward compatibility" is boring enough to turn off anyone who is creative and writes open source software for fun. especially with Microsoft's undocumented features.

Re:Compatibility

[brunascle]

you can just put them in the calendar yourself. that's what i do.

if my dentist sent me a meeting invite, it will not be how i want it. he'll likely mark it as "busy" or "out of office" for the exact time of the meeting, with the default 15 mins reminder. that's not how i want it. i'll need it to expand much further than that, because it takes at least an hour to get from work to there; and i'll want a 1 week reminder.

i agree with the GP. sender-created meeting invites work fine for the office, but not for anything else.

Re:Compatibility

[toleraen]

You're not in my company; don't make assumptions about my scheduling. Yeesh, I take it you don't get too many party invitations in the mail? Your Friday nights are booked up all the way through 2009? How dare someone try to include you in a gathering that might be relevant to your interests!

That's why, at least in Outlook, there are "Propose New Time" and "Decline" buttons. We should get together next Tuesday at 1330 so I can show you these features.

Re:Compatibility

[MightyYar]

I have never, in almost 10 years of Outlook use, received a meeting notice from outside the company.

Evites? Sure. Emails that say "wanna get together"? Sure. Even these new-fangled gmail/google calendar things... but never something from another Outlook user.

Can you even do this? How? I just sent myself a test message, and Exchange turned it into a simple text and html message at the internet gateway. Further, outlook did nothing special with this message - just displayed the text.

Re:Compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you do realize that it would take you less time to edit the existing details to match your requirements than it would to create the entire thing from scratch, right?

Re:Compatibility

[brunascle]

it takes me 10 seconds to create it myself.

Re:Compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you could have a filter system in place.

If [sender] == 'Dentist' {
    Reminder = 1 Week
    Padtime +- 40 mins (Whatever commute is)
    Comments .= Actual appt time = x, padded by padtime for commute
}

If we can do it with other e-mails coming in, why couldn't it show up with a calendar invite.

Re:Compatibility

[Jamie Zawinski]

• If we're not coming up with something new and innovative we're stuck making outlook clones. People don't like writing software like that.

What are you talking about?? Writing clones of commercial software is the prime directive of open source! I'm going to go out on a limb and say that actually there are quite a lot of people who like nothing more than doing exactly that.

Re:Compatibility

[nine-times]

Do you and your friends really use Outlook invites to schedule your personal lives? Talk about "yeesh".

Sorry, but I usually talk to my friends. Outlook seem inherently unfriendly to me. It's like saying, "I don't want to be bothered talking to you and trying to plan. I just want to set a meeting time." To me, it only makes sense when scheduling a meeting for subordinates within my own company (or someone else who you have authority to call to a meeting unilaterally). Otherwise, if you want my time, take the time to talk to me like a human being.

Re:Compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the spammers would figure out how to put ads on your calendar. ;-)

Re:Compatibility

[forrestt]

As long as I could reschedule them to be seen when I'm not around that would be fine :)

Re:Compatibility

[bcattwoo]

Yeah, it would never occur to me either to send a meeting invite to anyone outside of my organization.

Re:Compatibility

[Mr. Underbridge]

If we're not coming up with something new and innovative we're stuck making outlook clones. People don't like writing software like that.

You'd think not, and yet we have like 175 MS Office clones (more or less). And that despite the fact that OpenOffice is now pretty damned good. It would be great if integrated groupware became the next big target like productivity software used to be.

Re:Compatibility

[toleraen]

Do you and your friends really use Outlook invites to schedule your personal lives? No. If I may quote myself:

Yeesh, I take it you don't get too many party invitations in the mail? The rest of your response...I was mainly joking. When I set up meetings with people outside my own company, I usually call them to see when they're available. Usually that's because the meeting revolves around their participation though.

Still, if you can't accept meeting invites from peers within your company, that's just terrible work ethic. I'm trying to get my product done in time and sent out the door. I don't have time to place calls back and forth between 6 people to get a consensus on a time for a peer review. I'm going to look at everyone's availability in Outlook, pick a time that's free for as many people as possible, and send that invite out.

This time I'm serious...do you get offended when people email you as well? It's inherently unfriendly too, since so much communication is done via tone of voice, facial expression, hand movement, etc. They obviously couldn't be bothered to call you, they just want to pass all the information and questions they have when it's convenient to them. After all, a calendar invite is basically just an email with a time and date field added on to it.

Re:Compatibility

[nine-times]

I think meeting invites are fine within a company, particularly if you're in a position where it's acceptable to unilaterally call a meeting. I don't believe that e-mail is unfriendly, but I also disagree that a meeting invite is "just an e-mail with a time and date field added on to it."

The reason I don't find meeting invites to be friendly is because the presentation of the invite doesn't make it seem like a friendly invitation. The interface (within Outlook, at least) presents itself as a demand on your calendar. "I've set this meeting. If you don't like it, you should actively decline, but otherwise I'll assume we're meeting."

You'll probably think I'm being silly, but let's look at some things Outlook doesn't do. AFAIK, you can't send a real "meeting request", for example. Unless you just send a normal e-mail asking this, Outlook won't send a non-time-specific calendar event saying, "I'd like to meet with you. Can you set a time that's convenient for you?"

Also, Outlook doesn't present you with an automatically generated list of who hasn't responded to your invitations. So unless you're paying attention or you check the meeting, you won't know that I neither accepted nor declined your meeting invite. This leads many people to assume that you've accepted until you specifically decline.

Because of all this, I'd generally prefer that someone sends me an e-mail saying, "Do you want to meet? If so, when is good for you?" Now, I might respond, "Yeah, let's meet. Schedule it and send me an invite." If that's not the general order of things, then I think a meeting invite presents itself as an order, "APPEAR AT MY MEETING!"

Re:Compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason I don't find meeting invites to be friendly is because the presentation of the invite doesn't make it seem like a friendly invitation. The interface (within Outlook, at least) presents itself as a demand on your calendar. "I've set this meeting. If you don't like it, you should actively decline, but otherwise I'll assume we're meeting."

You'll probably think I'm being silly, but let's look at some things Outlook doesn't do. AFAIK, you can't send a real "meeting request", for example. Unless you just send a normal e-mail asking this, Outlook won't send a non-time-specific calendar event saying, "I'd like to meet with you. Can you set a time that's convenient for you?"

And if Outlook did let someone send you a "real" meeting request, you'd probably bitch and moan... "They expect me to do their job for them and fill out a meeting request? How rude. They should look at my schedule and send a request with the time already in there."

If that's not the general order of things, then I think a meeting invite presents itself as an order, "APPEAR AT MY MEETING!"

Were your parents really strict with you? You seem to have some pretty strong issues with perceived authority and the need for autonomy. I'd suggest that the "reason you don't find meeting invites to be friendly" is a consciously controlled perceptual construct you've created for yourself. A large majority of the world gets a meeting request, thinks to themselves, "Okay. Yet another thing to do." and then goes on about their lives without stewing over the perceived tone of a dialogue box.

Re:Compatibility

[nine-times]

And if Outlook did let someone send you a "real" meeting request, you'd probably bitch and moan... "They expect me to do their job for them and fill out a meeting request? How rude. They should look at my schedule and send a request with the time already in there."

No, that's my point. I don't like other people looking at my schedule and trying to schedule me for a meeting with them. If they're within my company and I know them or they're my boss or something, then it's fine, but otherwise I want people to ask me when I'm free. I don't want them trying to make unilateral decisions about my schedule. My free/busy information only tells you whether I have a specific appointment scheduled, but it doesn't actually give you any clue as to whether I'm busy.

Re:Compatibility

[elevator]

Also, Outlook doesn't present you with an automatically generated list of who hasn't responded to your invitations. So unless you're paying attention or you check the meeting, you won't know that I neither accepted nor declined your meeting invite. This leads many people to assume that you've accepted until you specifically decline.
But sure it does? If you consult the meeting request from within the meeting organizers' calendar, it displays the status for each attendee. How is that not auto-generated?

Re:Compatibility

[toleraen]

The interface (within Outlook, at least) presents itself as a demand on your calendar. "I've set this meeting. If you don't like it, you should actively decline, but otherwise I'll assume we're meeting." I agree that it would be nice to change the default behavior of adding it to your calendar, but at the same time it's saved me a few times on meeting invites I glanced over on a Monday morning. But if someone expects you to be there when you haven't responded, that's just silly. That's the whole concept of RSVP. If someone didn't respond to my snail mail party invite, I won't be expecting them to show up at my party. If someone that is required at my meeting hasn't responded within a few hours of my meeting, I give them a call.

Unless you just send a normal e-mail asking this, Outlook won't send a non-time-specific calendar event saying, "I'd like to meet with you. Can you set a time that's convenient for you?" Again, use the Propose New Time feature. I usually send out invites saying "What time/day works for you? Thanks." They respond with a proposed time, and everything works great.

Also, Outlook doesn't present you with an automatically generated list of who hasn't responded to your invitations. Opening the meeting in your calendar and selecting the Tracking tab is too much? If something was so important that I needed to spend a dozen+ man hours discussing it, I can take the 15 seconds to check that tab.

Re:Compatibility

[Salamanders]

Hrumph. My scheduling software is compelely new and innovative and compatibile with people outside my organization. Shameless self promotion: http://vern2.benjaminhill.info/

Re:Compatibility

[nine-times]

Yeah, but you have to go individually checking up on all your various meetings. There's no simple/prominent display of "all outstanding meeting invitations" that make it obvious that someone hasn't responded. I can go to my "Outlook Today" page or whatever they call it and see my outstanding tasks and meetings for the next couple days, but it won't show me who hasn't yet responded to meeting invites.

Re:Compatibility

[Sax Maniac]

You're totally right... but now you've put an image of RMS in a Starfleet suit in my head. Damn you.

Re:Compatibility

[MightyYar]

Maybe it's because I've only run smallish projects with a dozen or so people, or maybe it's because I disdain meetings and only call them when I can't get the same information by stopping by people's desks...

But I've never lost track of a meeting that I organized! I mean, if it's important enough for me to actually call a meeting, you can be sure that I'm going to make sure that the right people are there.

Then again, I know people who call meetings to essentially get status updates (where each person speaks in turn to give the boss-man their status). I also know people who regularly call meetings with too many people (Hint: if you can't fit your meeting into a meeting room, then you invited too many people). I can see losing track if all of your business is conducted via meeting like that.

Re:Compatibility

[nine-times]

That's the whole concept of RSVP. If someone didn't respond to my snail mail party invite, I won't be expecting them to show up at my party.

I don't know if you've ever actually thrown a party, but excepting formal events (like weddings) you should usually expect that some percentage of guests just won't RSVP. If you invite 50 people and get 20 responses, you might want to prepare for 10-20 of the non-responders to show up (depending on the crowd). My point here is that RSVPs aren't always a reliable method of planning.

Also, there are some times when I'm the boss and I'm just going to call my meeting. If I know you work 9-5, I know your schedule is always open 10am-11am, and I know you haven't taken a vacation day tomorrow, I might just schedule a meeting for you at 10am and make it your responsibility to reschedule if you can't make it.

Again, use the Propose New Time feature. I usually send out invites saying "What time/day works for you? Thanks." They respond with a proposed time, and everything works great.

But my point is that by forcing the organizer to select a time first, it sets a certain amount of inertia to the process. And that's fine so long as the organizer is in a position to make suppositions about others' schedules, but otherwise, suggesting a time in the first place without having talked first, it feels to me like someone else penciling themselves into my schedule.

And please keep in mind that I'm not actually talking about the intent of the sender. I'm saying Outlook handles this badly IMO.

Opening the meeting in your calendar and selecting the Tracking tab is too much? If something was so important that I needed to spend a dozen+ man hours discussing it, I can take the 15 seconds to check that tab.

As I was saying elsewhere, it isn't convenient or obvious. I've had many situations where I've had someone else assume I was going to be at a meeting because I didn't decline, even though I never accepted either. I've had time where I got busy and neglected to check whether someone actually accepted my invite. I have a lot of meetings all the time, and sometimes I'm even going from one appointment to another. In some cases, when dealing with subordinates, I just set a meeting and expect that if they can't make it, they'll make sure to let me know. I don't have time to go around chasing them down, trying to make sure they're not ignoring my meeting invites. If I wanted to call around to make sure everyone was going to be at a meeting, I would do that instead of using a computerized calendar.

Re:Compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

if my dentist sent me a meeting invite, it will not be how i want it. he'll likely mark it as "busy" or "out of office" for the exact time of the meeting, with the default 15 mins reminder. that's not how i want it. i'll need it to expand much further than that, because it takes at least an hour to get from work to there; and i'll want a 1 week reminder.

I'm sorry your calendar client gives complete control of your appointment settings to people who invite you to meetings. You should find one that doesn't, and none of that would be a problem. Seriously, I feel bad knowing that your calendar client lets other people play with your calendar without your explicit approval. You really should find something else if you have any control, because that sounds like a bad time.

But assuming you had a calendar client that lets you control your calendar, even if you have to change settings for the meeting (and you shouldn't often -- you should set your defaults to meet your preferences for new invitations) it's still useful to get a link that adds the basic entry to your calendar. Ignoring the reduced data entry, and automatic resolution of things like time zones, it could provide all of the same useful features that in-office invitations do.

For example, accepting the invitation from and email can tie it to an address book entry, so that calling to re-schedule is as simple right-clicking the calendar entry and selecting "Dial". If the dentist had published their busy/free information you could look that up using the URL embedded in the calendar entry and be ready to suggest a new time that works for both of you when someone answers. And once you're done they can send you and update for the invitation, and your calendar client can move your old appointment, complete with all your customized settings, to the new time and date.

And if the dentist sends you spurious updates, or you don't want to put them on your calendar, you can just ignore them like you would any other email you didn't care to read. If you want to make the "appointment" start an hour earlier you can, and you don't even have to send an update about it to your dentist. I really don't see how this wouldn't be useful for everyone with an electronic calendar.

Re:Compatibility

[nine-times]

If you've never lost track of a meeting that you've scheduled, then either (A) you haven't run many projects or called many meetings, or (B) you have a nice laid-back job where you can just sit around keeping track of your meetings.

As for me, some days I can keep track, and some days I don't get two minutes in my office before someone else pops in asking for direction on some other project (or some other damned thing). Sometimes I have to call meetings not because *I* want a status update or because *I* want to say something, but because I know which 5 people need to be in the same room for 15 minutes and they won't do it unless I call a meeting.

If you want to be snippy, you can argue that I should have better employees and/or a personal assistant. And great, that's loads of help. But the whole point of the computerized calendar is to make it more efficient to keep track of appointments. If they're designed in such a way to force me to constantly review meetings individually, I'd call that a design flaw.

But since you're being snippy, I'll give you a tip: Meetings aren't bad or even something "to be avoided". Sometimes people just need to get in the same room for them to actually listen to each other and get things done. If you can run a successful project without meetings, then your running a very simple project. If you do need meetings (as any complex project will), but your meetings are just ineffective, then you're doing it wrong.

Re:Compatibility

[Omega996]

Ugh, I remember those days (your comments about scheduling a meeting so the 5 people who needed to speak face-to-face could do so, etc.). As much as I hate Windows administration, I'm glad I'm out of the corporate bureaucracy. Not like the small companies don't try to do the same thing, of course, but it's a lot harder.

Now, if I could just find a smallish company, with 100% UNIX/UNIX-like infrastructure, that was interested in using the products that performed the best, not which ones were readily available... /daydream

Re:Compatibility

[DragonWriter]

I think the main problem is we can't really come up with an open source scheduling system that's compelely new and innovative because you need compatibility with people outside your organization.

Do you?

I've used various combined email/scheduling systems in different jobs over the years, and not once used anything more advanced than the e-mail portion with people outside of the organization. Yes, most systems support this, but I don't think use of it is so widespread that a truly innovative system that was far superior within the organization would be entirely without a market simply because it didn't automatically interface with users outside of the organization.

(And, of course, there is no reason a system that provides innovative internal features can't also support fallback to dull, boring, common formats and functionality for interfacing with external clients using more primitive software.)

Re:Compatibility

[MightyYar]

I realize that my message was a bit snippy, but I didn't know how to say what I said without sounding snippy. I'm sorry for sounding harsh, but I stand by what I said. Meetings should be used sparingly, should include as few people as is possible, and most managers call too many of them.

No, I've never run a "big" project. My biggest project involved 12 or so engineers on two continents. I was in charge of a team that was integrating and testing a piece of equipment that my company produced. Everyone had essentially the same job, but there was a lot of back-and-forth between the mechanical designers, the software team, and the subsystem guys.

I tried to restrict meetings between the two geographic groups to once-weekly - mostly because it was almost exactly a 12-hour time difference, so the meetings were not convenient. *I* was constantly in meetings (especially early on), but my team was not. Most of these were called by others, and they'd invite my whole damn team - I would always "take the bullet" in the hopes that my team would actually get work done. When asked a question that I didn't know the answer to, I'd note it and promise to get back to them.

Meetings that I called were usually small (as in the example you provide). I honestly don't know how anything gets accomplished in a meeting of more than about a half-dozen attendees. If you are reviewing a feature, then there really shouldn't be more than 1 representative from marketing, the project management, the test group, and maybe two from the software team. The whole group should have read the feature ahead of time and be ready to discuss it. If you show up and someone hasn't read the feature, then disband for half of an hour and regroup (unless it's a really big feature). Don't waste 3 man-hours on reading through it as a group just because the marketing guy didn't read it first.

I do wish they kept more secretaries around, but that doesn't mean you can't delegate stuff off. Micromanagement can be effective, I'll grant you that, but it will have you turning gray in no time. It's okay for you to not understand some aspect of your project, so long as someone on your team does. If you need a meeting called to hammer out some details, pick the guy on your team who is going to do the work and tell him to organize a meeting to hammer out the details. You can still go if you want, but at least now you don't have to be your own secretary the whole day.

I understand that some organizations are micro-manager and meeting crazy. Believe me, I know - that is the environment where I worked in. Sometimes I would catch flack for not knowing everything all the time, but it also saved me a few times because people get into some really heated battles in those big micro-manager meetings, and I could often just say, "I don't know, I'll find out immediately after this meeting and get back to you." They'd be mad, but an hour later they would have had time to cool off and I don't have to get into a shouting match when I relay the information. Of course, once in a while one of your guys makes a bad decision and you have to deal with that, but that is a lot easier than defending your own bad decisions, which come a lot more frequently when you are trying to make all of the decisions for a project.

Wow, I'm rambling... sorry. Anyway, I agree that MS Outlook isn't ideal for someone who spends the whole day in meetings that they've called. But if you schedule more than a meeting or two a day, and you are inviting more than a dozen people in total between the two meetings, I'd suggest reviewing your management style. 12 people x 2 hours = 24 man-hours of meeting time. If it's all managers then no big loss - they'd just be putting together Powerpoint slides or Project Gantt charts. But if there are engineers in there, yikes, that had better be a real working meeting.

But don't listen to me, my career was just so-so. I wasn't much for the ass-kissing, so I was forever called in to rescue dead projects but never put in charge of something from the start. The slick guys looking for the quickest way to business school always got first dibs. I'm much happier working for myself :)

Re:Compatibility

[cecil_turtle]

Agreed, and not to mention that I keep business life and personal life separate. I would never receive an email from my dentist, wife, family, friends, etc. to my work address. If I need to be off of work for personal reasons, that's all my workplace needs to know - not that I'm at the dentist.

Re:Compatibility

[deniable]

Yeah, right. You'd rather play phone tag to get everyone to schedule a meeting than have Outlook find a time.

As to telling people you're busy, I used to set 'me time' as an appointment in my calendar. A couple of hours in the morning to catch up was perfect and I had a recurring appointment that people didn't mess with.

Re:Compatibility

[Allador]

It works just fine, I've had it happen many times.

It's possible you've got a configuration or filter at edge that is stripping the attachments.

Re:Compatibility

[Allador]

You'll probably think I'm being silly, but let's look at some things Outlook doesn't do. AFAIK, you can't send a real "meeting request", for example. Unless you just send a normal e-mail asking this, Outlook won't send a non-time-specific calendar event saying, "I'd like to meet with you. Can you set a time that's convenient for you?" Yes, you can. Set a time, mark the meeting request as tentative. In the request text, ask the person to suggest the best time.

That person then responds to the message with a tenative acceptance and alternate time. Outlook then presents to you the opportunity to accept this.

All of these are first-class concepts in Outlook, and the UI supports them (ie, makes 'tentative' requests look different, offers you a response choice of 'propose an alternate time', etc).

Also, Outlook doesn't present you with an automatically generated list of who hasn't responded to your invitations. So unless you're paying attention or you check the meeting, you won't know that I neither accepted nor declined your meeting invite. This leads many people to assume that you've accepted until you specifically decline. Yes, it does. Click on the 'responses' or 'scheduling' button. The responses view lets you see everyone who has and hasnt responded, and for those who have, how they've responded (accept, deny, propose a different time, etc). The scheduling view shows you everyone's free/busy times (if you have the perms), and what their response has been.

Because of all this, I'd generally prefer that someone sends me an e-mail saying, "Do you want to meet? If so, when is good for you?" Now, I might respond, "Yeah, let's meet. Schedule it and send me an invite." If that's not the general order of things, then I think a meeting invite presents itself as an order, "APPEAR AT MY MEETING!" Thats just your reading wayyyy too much into it. The mechanism reflects a pragmatic reality. Meetings are often scheduled for a number of people, by an admin or secretary, who wont even be attending. Having one-on-one conversations with everyone is just insane. Go talk to the admin of a director or VP sometime, and ask them what it's like to schedule time for 5 different busy Directors, VP, AVPs, etc. Without a centralized schedule, which can show free/busy time, its something they would spend an hour talking on the phone to do. Thats just wasteful.

I think this sort of thing is all just depending on the kinds of companies you've worked in. If you work in one where some classes of people are extraordinarily busy, and tend to have packed schedules, and they are in different buildings or campuses, you see the value of these systems.

Re:Compatibility

[MightyYar]

That could be for the outgoing test that I did, but that doesn't explain never receiving an incoming. Are you sure that the meeting request works via internet? How does it do this? Is there some special MIME type or something? How does exchange know that it is going out to another exchange user?

I have no access to our exchange server, so I can't experiment with it's settings :)

Re:Compatibility

[Allador]

My free/busy information only tells you whether I have a specific appointment scheduled, but it doesn't actually give you any clue as to whether I'm busy. That exact reason is why so many people mark off their calendars with blocks of time for things like 'reserved for coding' or 'project prep' or 'working from starbucks' or whatever, so that when people are scheduling meetings, they dont put them over time you dont want a meeting.

The problem with the whole 'call to ask' is that it doesnt scale. It only works when you have a relatively low number of meetings or things on your calendar. Eventually, you get to the point where you dont have the time, energy, or attention to manage it all anymore, and these systems help. A secretary/admin/assistant would also help, but these tend to cost alot more.

Re:Compatibility

[Allador]

I'm not sure, to be honest.

But I've received several from outside organizations (who are also using their own exchange installation and outlook).

I just did a test from my exchange account to an imap account I have through thunderbrid.

At least in this scenario, it delivers an email with a meeting.ics attachment in it.

I think why most people probably dont is most people choose their recipients in Outlook via pointy-clicky Global Address Book. You wont ever have the opportunity to send to outside accounts if you do that.

So basically, most folks probably dont know they can. *shrugs* a guess in any case.

I was surprised too the first time it ever happened.

Re:Compatibility

[Bert64]

So create something better, with it's own client and it's own features..
Then make an outlook plugin that supports the same features exchange does. If your happy with that feature set you can use outlook, if you want access to the new features then you need to use the new better client.

Re:Compatibility

[Yoozer]

Perhaps you may be the owner of a bright red stapler and they first started doing meeting notices in the past 3 months? ;)

Re:Compatibility

[nine-times]

I understand that some organizations are micro-manager and meeting crazy.

I don't really micromanage, and I do delegate quite a lot. Jeeze, I wouldn't be able to get anything done if I didn't delegate. I've just had to work with people who are meeting-phobic and won't sit down and talk to each other, even when they really need to. For example, right now I have three managers who are constantly going back and forth every day on IM and e-mail, they sit just down the hall from each other, but when a problem pops up, they often won't just sit down and talk to each other about it because they "don't like meetings".

Ok, so they don't like meetings and don't think they're important, so then they when a problem comes up, they both set their teams working on solving the same problem. Often they're either duplicating effort or they're interfering with each other. Every now and then, they're even sending conflicting information to clients. So I have to call a meeting and say, "Hey guys, what the hell is going on?" They'll insist for the first 5 minutes of the meeting that they have it covered and don't need a meeting, but once they get talking, suddenly you hear a lot of "Oh, I didn't know you were doing that!" Or else, "Oh, that's a great idea, and we could be doing this too!"

Sometimes you really just have to get the right people into the same room for 15 minutes. I've known a bunch of people who don't like meetings and think they're just a tool for the PHB, and so they don't have them enough. I agree that there's such a thing as meeting that are too long, that are unfocussed, that are unproductive, and that have too many people in them, but I don't agree that the unhelpfulness of poorly-run meetings is an indicator that meetings should be kept to a minimum.

And like I said before, maybe I wouldn't have to have as many meetings myself if I had better employees who would just communicate productively on their own, but right after reading me say that is when you should be saying, "yeah, good luck with that". Better and more likely, I'll probably be getting some kind of assistant to make things easier on myself.

Re:Compatibility

[MightyYar]

At least in this scenario, it delivers an email with a meeting.ics attachment in it. Ahhh, there is the magic. Mine had no such attachment from my company's exchange server.

Thanks!

Re:Compatibility

[MightyYar]

I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire...

Re:Compatibility

[nine-times]

Jeeze, I wish you people would read a little better before responding. I use Outlook. I use meeting invites all the time. I even block off hours of time when I expect that I will be busy. However, still, an empty block in my calendar doesn't actually give an indication of whether I can handle a meeting during that time. I don't expect everyone to call me to ask if they can have a meeting. But I do think the system sometimes gets used in a way that I don't consider to be very polite. IMO, if you don't really know me well enough to have any idea how I spend my day, and if you're sending me an invite to an event that I don't already know is coming, I would prefer to get some kind of phonecall first. Don't just send me an invite and then assume that I'm going to show up, even if I don't respond.

And yes, I've had that happen. The problem that I'm talking about is that people use e-mail and meeting invites instead of real communication, and if people really are that busy, a lot can get lost in the shuffle.

Re:Compatibility

[MightyYar]

You bring up some excellent points. Don't even get me started on email. Why people type out a 15-minute email when they could instead pick up the phone (or better, get off of their fat ass and walk down the hall) is beyond me. Things like Blackberries make this even worse - now these guys sit in unproductive meetings writing unproductive emails. They sold us on the whole "open floor plan" in the new building specifically to address this - oh, well.

You are right, getting 2 or 3 guys together who should be talking (but who aren't) is a good reason for a meeting. I think working meetings like that are fine, and I have lots of them - though usually I just swing by one of their desks and drag the other one along too... or even better, catch them both in the same room at the end of a meeting that someone else called :) "Can you two stay in the room after the meeting?" LOL.

Re:Compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I think that's very untrue. People apparently like to write gnome (windows), Compiz (Quartz), OpenOffice (Microsoft Office), Evolution (Outlook)... the list can go on and on and on. Generally, open source projects tend to copy the initial concept (probably because this is the step that requires the most design before coding something that is tedious and boring) and then to improve on that. I regard most of the open source programs mentioned above to be superior to their closed parallell but that is because of the improvements made _after_ the initial copying of a product.

So, we don't need anything new and innovative really, but we need to make an exchange copy and with that implace, improve, improve, improve. That's the way open source programs have always been successful.

Re:Compatibility

[nine-times]

Yeah, sometimes I'll just walk around, try to grab people. Sometimes it's just good to walk around to see what people are actually doing with their time anyway. The only problem that I have with that is that I don't always want to put people on the spot or interrupt what they're doing. So when I say "a meeting", i really just mean "multiple people in the same room talking about something." It could be 10 people, or is could be me and one other person who I'm talking to at his/her desk. To me, if it's scheduled and/or focussed on a specific topic, it's a meeting.

And part of the reason to schedule is specifically to avoid wasting man-hours. Sometimes I know that person has some down time, where they're either surfing the web or talking to me, and sometimes I'm happy to let them surf the web and sometimes I'd rather they talk to me. So I'll schedule it for when they have down-time or ask them to schedule it for when they have down-time, so that I can talk to them without keeping them from their work. But that's just the ideal. Sometimes you have to pull people away from their work for 15 minutes will waste less of their time than having them work on the wrong thing for 3 hours.

I know why people hate meetings, and I understand why there's the image of the PHB. I used to have this boss that would call me into useless meetings all day and show retarded Powerpoint movies. He was the cliché. But I also have come to realize that good communication is vital to getting projects done, and as a manager you have to try to make sure that communication is happening. Sometimes that means calling people into meetings, sitting them down, and making them talk.

Re:Compatibility

[AeroIllini]

Don't allow the failures of one particular implementation to color your opinion of the entire concept.

Outlook should not let any random person sending you an invite decide when *you* will get the reminder. The person getting the reminder should control that setting, not the sender. That was a dumb move on Microsoft's part, and I argue with it every day at work.

I would imagine that any sane OSS alternative to Outlook would include global functions that override the per-invite settings, and allow the user to change those settings on incoming invites very easily. A sane OSS program will also probably allow the invite to automatically decide on "busy" vs. "out of office" based on the location, but again, be easily overridden.

There are a million things I wish Outlook did right. I, for one, welcome any upcoming OSS calendaring overlords.

Re:Compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

A federated calendar subscription solution is needed. Exchange does this ... to a point. The trust that has to be allowed between Exchange servers for calendaring to work effectively is less than ideal.

I don't have all the answers, but some way to request a calendar subscription with different level of detail provided for each calendar and requester is needed. Within a calendaring server, all levels of detail can be defaulted.

- View Busy/Free 24/7
- View Busy/Free work hours
- View Details 24/7
- View Details work hours
- Delegate 24/7
- Delegate work hours
- and perhaps some limited time/duration for detail information ... 2 weeks being a default to see detailed calendar data.

When the requester asks for data, they must provide a CERT so the calendar server can respond with an encrypted answer and provide updates as needed within the allowed duration. Think of this as a team calendar solution. Individuals/invitees would still be notified of changes if a non-declined event changed on any calendar.

There has to be more issues to solve, but manual updates need to be avoided for events.

Re:Compatibility

[sjames]

Or perhaps your friend could send you an email to go do something that would require you to take off early Friday and include a link to update your calendar.

Like anyone wants their boss to see "DUDE!!! Let's get 'faced and smoke some!"

Re:Compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much everything you have described except for the picking one out of many options is easily done in the Zimbra collaborative suite (Open Source or Network Edition). Here is the site if you are interested in checking it out.

Look to google apps

[stratjakt]

You're unlikely to find anything native. It's just not a sexy project people want to volunteer to.

Re:Look to google apps

[Archangel Michael]

I reject the notion that a calendar app ala Exchange/Outlook is not sexy.

There are TWO things that OS needs to do, and that is one, the other is a Universal Directory Service that isn't a pain in the rear and is supported by everyone.

When Open Source completes the foundation for both, and obviously tying both together, then it can start to compete with the likes of MS. While I don't particularly like Active Directory, it has useful features for managing just about everthing in a Corporate Windows Environment, which makes Windows almost usable.

What I'd like to see is a consortium of UNIX companies (Sun), Linux Companies (IBM, Novell) and Apple get together and build a foundation for a complete, open, extensible and cross platform Directory Service that can rival Microsoft's version. The closest I've seen to this is all using Microsoft's Active Directory as the backend, and using what little compatability there is to function with other Open Source setups.

If done right, it would rewrite how we do just about everything on inter-connected networks and data.

Re:Look to google apps

[Archangel Michael]

Oh, and such a system would be quite "sexy", it's also very difficult to pull off. However, the most enjoyable things in my life were the things that took the most effort.

There's a difference between nailing the cheap floosy at the local dive, and meaningful long term relationship built on a strong foundation. If you've never had the latter, and only the former, you'll never know what I'm talking about.

The slut in a tight outfit may look sexy, but I can assure you that it only looks that way. If you really thought about it, a cheesy slut is actually gross.

Re:Look to google apps

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems you've never heard of LDAP...

Re:Look to google apps

[Anonymous Coward]

I see no reason to call LDAP a slut! It's just friendly when you get it drunk.

Re:Look to google apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but it's LIGHTWEIGHT and so it looks sexy in a tight outfit. Thus, it's a slut!

Re:Look to google apps

[Darby]

There's a difference between nailing the cheap floosy at the local dive, and meaningful long term relationship built on a strong foundation. If you've never had the latter, and only the former, you'll never know what I'm talking about.

Absolutely. Of course, if you've only had the latter and never the former then you're missing out as well ;-)

Re:Look to google apps

[Archangel Michael]

LDAP isn't the same as what AD provides. Not by a long shot. The fact that many organizations use AD to provide LDAP services shows that while LDAP is nice, it's a pain to tie divergent systems together.

And LDAP is only part of what AD provides. What AD provides is a integrated management system. LDAP doesn't really do that.

php web calendar from k5n.us

[disasm]

I've used the php web calendar from k5n.us for a number of clients and for personal usage as well. It's nice because it has very nice print friendly pages for printing your calendar, multi-user support, group support, public access calendar, rss feeds, and webdav support for keeping in sync with sunbird or icalendar. Sam

Citadel is the best i know of:

[guysmilee]

Citadel is the best i know of: http://www.citadel.org/doku.php

What features?

[Spy der Mann]

It's hard to expect the developers to write a feature they haven't been asked about, and/or don't even know it exists.

In other words, what features do you use in MS products that you haven't found in the free/open source applications?

Re:What features?

[jimbojw]

In other words, what features do you use in MS products that you haven't found in the free/open source applications?

Sorry I wasn't clear enough in my initial question. What really impresses me about Outlook/Exchange is when you go to schedule a meeting, it allows you to see when all the participants, rooms and resources (like projectors) are available in a horizontal chart of sorts. People who are busy are marked off in blue, out of office is purple, etc. To find a time that works for everyone, you just scan across until you see a vertical bar of white (everyone free), or try to minimize conflicts.

I don't know of MS holds a patent on the UI, but I haven't seen it anywhere else. Also, with respect to calendaring, in Outlook you can open up several calendars (yours and others) side-by-side in order to see who's free when. It's a pretty simple bit of eye candy, but nonetheless, I've only seen it in Outlook.

Re:What features?

[surajbarkale]

I have seen similar features in Lotus Notes. But let's pretend I didn't mentioned it :)

Re:What features?

[xaqar]

Java Communications Suite's calendar does this as well. Looks very similar to Outlook's chart. It is free (lower case f) as well.

Re:What features?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not OSS as far as I know, but Oracle Calendar (formerly Corporate Time, now part of the Oracle Collaboration Suite) also does all of these things with scheduling. (No email, though - my office uses Thunderbird for email and OCal for scheduling.)

Re:What features?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I don't know of MS holds a patent on the UI, but I haven't seen it anywhere else.

This function is available with the CalDav server standard and that particular feature is available in the implementations in the open source Zimbra client/server and the 10.5 version Apple's iCal server/client. I don't know about other implementations, but I imagine most other ones either include this or will soon, as Caldav has really taken of in adoption by major projects. Zimbra even offers that feature via the Web interface to their server.

Also, with respect to calendaring, in Outlook you can open up several calendars (yours and others) side-by-side in order to see who's free when.

I think Evolution has an interface like this (works with CalDav), but if I recall Zimbra allows you to overlap as many calendars as you want in one window, making the comparison quite a bit easier IMHO.

I'd definitely look at Zimbra if you're serious about a OSS solution with lots of features and compatibility with both standards and proprietary interfaces (they have a full featured Exchange plug-in so users can still use Exchange as their client if they want). The server will run on all the popular Linux distros, OS X, and as a VMWare appliance.

Re:What features?

[NatteringNabob]

The Sun Calendar server had this feature back around 1990 or so, maybe earlier.

Re:What features?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those features you are speaking of also exist in Meeting Maker. (http://www.meetingmaker.com/)

Re:What features?

[dskoll]

Sorry I wasn't clear enough in my initial question. What really impresses me about Outlook/Exchange is when you go to schedule a meeting, it allows you to see when all the participants, rooms and resources (like projectors) are available in a horizontal chart of sorts.

The SugarCRM calendar module has exactly that feature (for participants, anyway. For resources, I'm not sure.)

Re:What features?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're asking for a federated calendar system. You can do this with outlook/exchange, because everyone is using the same calendar system. If you want others from outside of the organization to participate you're going to still have to manage the scheduling conflicts by hand or at least send another invite, right?

If you want others to participate that aren't a part of your organization, you want a way share calendar information that would automatically resolve this issue. I don't know if that would ever happen. It use to happen when you would call the secretary and have that person setup the meeting with the other secrtaries.

Re:What features?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lotus Notes has the same thing -- everyone's free/busy status is lined up in tabular format (people are rows, hours are columns) and you can slide your meeting time-frame left and right until everyone is available (and your meeting bar turns green). I've never seen it work across organizations, though; ours only works within the company.

Re:What features?

[snoyberg]

I don't know of MS holds a patent on the UI, but I haven't seen it anywhere else.

We use Lotus Notes in our office. Pretty much the same thing. Unfortunately, I don't really know about FLOSS offerings since this arm of Corporate America refuses to use open source :(

Re:What features?

[tknd]

There's also the auto-scan next button. Meeting recurrences (every week, every other week, nearly any combination), reminder times, hovering your mouse over blue bars (meetings) will show the meeting title if it is public, accept/decline/tentative confirmations, and the list goes on and on...

Re:What features?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lotus Notes does the same sort of "show me how conflicted everyone's schedule is" display. It's really useful for seeing how futile it is to try to get everyone to the same meeting.

Re:What features?

[BattleApple]

This is probably the only feature I like in Lotus Notes. We use it across several facilities in different time zones and it works quite well.
http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?57b626a49a.gif

Re:What features?

[Skapare]

Why don't you just write up a complete requirements document that specifies everything you want in a calendar scheduling system. Be sure to explain things as if they were the first time ever done. In other words, absolutely do not reference any other software or system. Don't say "do such-and-such the same way as foo-bar does it". Don't make it necessary for the developer to look at any existing implementation or even ever have experienced using one.

Re:What features?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for the record my company uses Novell GroupWise and it has had the scheduling across multiple calendars like this for years.... I've been here for five years and it's been that way at least that long...

Re:What features?

[myowntrueself]

I'd definitely look at Zimbra if you're serious about a OSS solution

If you are serious about OSS then you will leave Zimbra alone because, although they *call* it 'Open Source' what they are really doing is redefining 'Open Source' to suit their marketing strategy.

Its released under an *attribution* license not an Open Source license.

Its *badgeware*

It cannot be forked; if you make changes to the source you have to be careful to preserve the Zimbra logo all over the place, on every page of the web interface.

It creates a legal burden on the user of the source.

Re:What features?

[MadHakish]

I would have to agree.. As a linux user I've always been frustrated by the half-capable job evolution does of interfacing with exchange, and the overall lack of alternatives but Zimbra really has a winner on their hands..

I now run thunderbird with the sunbird lightning plugin to manage my own calendars on a Zimbra server using iCal over https, a very complete web frontend that's fast and featureful and just plain works, and all of my Outlook users have full access to every "exchange" like feature supported by the plugin which is everything short of public folders. I would rather use a real file server + vpn + other better tools for data/content management but that's just my preference.

The only real killer feature exchange has right now over Zimbra is rpc-over-http for remote access even over highly restrictive networks because everything is done over port 80 and http calls.. Zimbra's SOAP interface for calendaring is similar to this, but they lack the true mail/contacts/calendar -> port 80 sync that rpc-over-http allows remote roadwarriors who find themselves needing access from free wifi hotspots in airports, hotels, and other restricted networks..

Re:What features?

[DeVilla]

Notes has that availability chart too. If there's a patent then IBM has a license. (And they might.)

Re:What features?

[tame1]

Evolution has something very close to this. Also, my understanding is that Evolution versions > 2.14 will integrate with Google Calendar. Offhand I have not done the required setup to make the "Availability" feature work with other google calendar users, but I think the Evolution guys may have. (I run 2.8, haven't upgraded yet to 2.14, so I can't know for sure). I think its worth looking into.

Re:What features?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Calendar has been able to do this for a year now. http://ianmurdock.com/?p=419

Re:What features?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

If you are serious about OSS then you will leave Zimbra alone because, although they *call* it 'Open Source' what they are really doing is redefining 'Open Source' to suit their marketing strategy. Its released under an *attribution* license not an Open Source license. Its *badgeware*

You're making a common error by confusing "open source software" with "free/libre software." Zimbra is OSS, because you can see the code and make changes to it, with some restrictions. It is arguably not free software because some of the restrictions to the license are bit more restrictive than industry standards.

It cannot be forked; if you make changes to the source you have to be careful to preserve the Zimbra logo all over the place, on every page of the web interface. It creates a legal burden on the user of the source.

Even the BSD license requires the credits be maintained in any future version. Zimbra has taken it further, without doubt, and in so doing have made it hard for a competitor to make a commercial fork. They have not, however, done much to hinder regular users of the software who want to customize versions for their own use. Basically, the restrictions don't matter to users, just competing vendors, which is certainly not ideal but is not a deal killer for most users. It also works with established open standards, so once off of Exchange, there is nothing preventing you from later migrating to Citadel or iCal server or something else entirely.

For small and medium businesses, Zimbra is a great choice. For a very large business like IBM who is likely to be contributing a lot of code to whatever system they use, they'd probably be better off with something with a more traditional license, like GPL. Of course, anyone making purchasing decisions at IBM or the like probably already know that a lot more concretely than I do, so I'm not too concerned I misled them.

Re:What features?

[TRS-80]

After being bought by Yahoo, Zimbra's license got changed to being the Yahoo Public License, which is a BSD-alike. Why they haven't publicised this more I don't know, but it is true FLOSS now.

WebCalendar

[DaGoodBoy]

We use this: http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php

Works well for our needs.

Re:WebCalendar

[Captain Splendid]

Seconded. Been using for our (small) office needs for over 2 years now. Even a host migration in the middle went off fairly well, considering I'd never had to install it manually before.

Yes, it looks a little low-rent, and there are some features I would love to see, but it gets the job done.

Re:WebCalendar

[man_of_mr_e]

Check out the demo.

"The WebCalendar demo page has been taken offline due to some malicious users. I anticipate putting it back online shortly. Check back in a few days..."

That fills me with confidence as to the security and robustness of it...

Re:WebCalendar

[AllInOne]

I think that's because the demo he provides gives admin access. You would expect that a malicious admin could do some damage if he/she chose, no?

Kontact

[PeterBrett]

The KDE organizer/calendaring system is extremely good -- I use it all the time. It supports multiple calendars as well as calendar export and sharing (although I don't use those features).

Apparently there's an enterprise info sharing server available based on it too.

Re:Kontact

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes extremelly utterly shitty. Not even Kmail accepts HTML signatures! ^^'

Re:Kontact

[tzanger]

The KDE organizer/calendaring system is extremely good -- I use it all the time. It supports multiple calendars as well as calendar export and sharing (although I don't use those features)

this is one of the things I dislike about OSS: Interop. I run Linux, love KDE and it's actually my only working environment. I haven't found a good way to get my scheduling stuff to work well with my wife's WinXP laptop, nor either of our Palm systems. Web-based stuff just isn't an option, as it's 99% crap and having to pull up a browser to do anything in a half-assed fashion with iffy javascript is just a pain.

It's nice that the source is out there and I can hack away on it, and I've done that for various projects, but it seems like everyone has their own Very Best Way Of Doing Things and nobody wants to interoperate in any meaningful way.

Re:Kontact

[EvilRyry]

KDE4 - Windows, Mac and Linux. Problem solved.

Could you help us help you?

[narrowhouse]

Jim,

I hate to say this, but unless you give us a few reasons why some of the solutions you have looked at are not sufficient I doubt you will get any meaningful response.It's a pretty common problem when people ask for an open source replacement for a program they have used and were reasonably happy with.

Without some starting point for comparison you will just get dozens of stories about how product X works fine for them.

Re:Could you help us help you?

[whoever57]

How about this:
1. It needs to have a client/server architecture (for mobile clients who don't have always-on connectivity). Pure web-based calendars don't do this.

2. It needs to have Windows and Linux clients.

3. Outlook plug-ins don't work. This is a limitation of Outlook. The plug-in can't be the default calendar, and Outlook will only pop up reminders for the default calendar. Also, my experience of OpenGroupware's plug-in is that it is unstable.

4. It needs to have a means for one person to schedule an event on someone-else's calendar (if the appropriate permissions are given).

5. It needs to have a way for people to view the details of other people's calendars (if the appropriate permissions are given). Free/Busy information is not enough in some cases.

If someone can tell me of a calendar system that meets these requirements, I would be thrilled!

Oh, one more -- it desn't need to try to replace other things, such as email servers, etc..

Re:Could you help us help you?

[Tony Hoyle]

Google calendar.

I can't imagine what situation someone would be in where they didn't have *any* web connectivity where they were - not even their mobile phone... If they haven't got that then scheduling a meeting is going to be kinda hard anyway.

Re:Could you help us help you?

[ahodgson]

Oh, one more -- it desn't need to try to replace other things, such as email servers, etc..

Yeah that's my big issue. The only working (or at least theoretically working) open source calendar servers are not calendar servers, they're "groupware" servers. My email server works fine, thanks. So does my LDAP server.

Oh, and I say theoretically, because maybe someone somewhere has OpenGroupware working, but it sure isn't me. Even the self-contained demo images don't work, let alone trying to install and configure the pig.

Re:Could you help us help you?

[bleh-of-the-huns]

Well, with regards to mobile users, there is the option of running a Funambol server, which would allow you to sync data (calender, contacts, and for some mobile variants email, which it really just pops/imaps and sends to your phone) to and from mobile devices (supports symbian, wm, hell there is even a iphone app for jailbroken iphones)

Not a complete solution for the OP or your, but a portion that you could integrate into an existing solution that requires mobility.

ps, I do not work for them.. nor do I do any development, short of trying to get it to work on FBSD.

Re:Could you help us help you?

[Anonymous Coward]

3. Outlook plug-ins don't work. This is a limitation of Outlook.

And this is where things fail. A good portion of people use Outlook (it comes with Office after all), and the Office 'monopoly' has allowed Microsoft to wedge itself in with Exchange. (The same way that the Windows desktop monopoly allowed Active Directory to enter the market, killing off Netware.)

If you can't use plug-ins, you're stuck with Outlook-Exchange.

Re:Could you help us help you?

[edmicman]

Man, you can't even get the first damn requirement right.

. It needs to have a client/server architecture (for mobile clients who don't have always-on connectivity). Pure web-based calendars don't do this.

Way to completely ignore the requirements and offer a useless answer!

Re:Could you help us help you?

[Woldry]

Lack of web connectivity is a lot more common than you think. My workplace T1 line goes down occasionally, but the network within the building doesn't need the T1 line, so I can still connect to the server. Also, our mobile workers go into very rural areas with very poor cellular coverage, and are often out of touch completely -- web or mobile phone. (They can call via landline, unless they're in Amish country, which is actually often the case.)

Of course, as you say, if they can't even phone in, then scheduling a meeting will be hard; however, if the scheduling system works like Outlook, they can at least have a copy of the calendar as it was updated the last time they were able to log in, which is not the case with Google Calendar or other web-based apps.

Re:Could you help us help you?

[billbaird]

3. Outlook plug-ins don't work. This is a limitation of Outlook. The plug-in can't be the default calendar, and Outlook will only pop up reminders for the default calendar. Also, my experience of OpenGroupware's plug-in is that it is unstable.

Not true, there are a lot of MAPI plugins...some work better than others. We are currently using Oracle Collaboration Suite's MAPI connector and it is very stable. It allows shared calendar, email folders, contacts. Most users wouldn't know the difference from exchange.

Re:Could you help us help you?

[jsebrech]

Yeah that's my big issue. The only working (or at least theoretically working) open source calendar servers are not calendar servers, they're "groupware" servers. My email server works fine, thanks. So does my LDAP server.

That's the crux of the issue: you need the integrated solution. Your identity in the central address directory has to match your identity in your mail client which has to match your identity in the calendar. Your mail server has to have the same concept of identity as your calendar server has. This means they must both link into your ldap server.

Using my outlook at work I can:
- Propose a meeting to someone from the ldap directory (active directory is essentially ldap).
- Book a room reservation right from inside the meeting request window (custom outlook extension that we developed)
- Have the other person able to confirm or counter-propose that meeting request while both of you are off-line.
- Have the other person able to inspect and possibly even modify the room reservation's information right from inside outlook.
- Have the resulting meeting show up in public calendars for consultation by anyone in the company.

I admit I don't know much about the open-source offerings out there, but I do know this: you can't build a usable system of that sort without pulling together the components into a single groupware suite.

Re:Could you help us help you?

[tmarthal]

Uhh, web based calendars (and google calendar) actually do have a client-server interface.

The problem is the thin-client (the web browser) not having Offline caching mechanisms to change data while offline and then re-sync (they can only view it). This is actually by design, since they are thin clients.

What you want is a thick, non-web based client to do the storage for you. That's fine, but its a limitation of the clients, not the actual service.

Re:Could you help us help you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly this has been the situation for quite some time. I have been looking for a completely open standards based solution and have found little luck over time. OpenGroupware was able to technically fulfill most of the needs, but in reality was hard to use, configure, and manage when I last used. However, Recently I came across this project, http://www.bedework.org/bedework/ which looks to be promising. I plan to investigate it thoroughly when I next get a chance.

Re:Could you help us help you?

[tbuskey]

Syncing!

I sync my Palm with Outlook/Exchange.
My Yahoo calendar syncs with Outlook better then with the Palm
My Blackberry syncs the calendar with Exchange
I just install a simple app, a few configs and it's there. I don't have to do lots of work, as an end user, to make it work.

Re:Could you help us help you?

[ahodgson]

A calendar server could just use an existing LDAP or SQL database for identity.I don't need a fancy document storage groupware server to share calendars. The client obviously needs email access, but that doesn't need to be integrated. My email server of course uses the existing LDAP server.

Re:Could you help us help you?

[Whitemice]

You're kidding right? Comparing google calendar to what is provided by Exchange is just absurd. I can't even begin to image 250 people trying to use google calendar to schedule meetings & manage resources, what a nightmare.

Re:Could you help us help you?

[Whitemice]

>How about this:
>1. It needs to have a client/server architecture (for mobile clients who don't
>have always-on connectivity). Pure web-based calendars don't do this.

Agree 100%. That is why we use OpenGroupware. Support for common protocols as well as a great API - http://code.google.com/p/zogi/ - we've integrated OGo into our company Intranet for scheduling & workflow as well as built a very effective CRM tool which sits on top of the excellent groupware engine provided by OGo for universal access to all the data, one calendar, one task list, etc... Fabulous.

Want screenshots?
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=ddv5htgd_14zrg6zm&hl=en
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=ddv5htgd_12gqn63p&hl=en
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=ddv5htgd_8c225bq&hl=en
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=ddv5htgd_4dpzjmz&hl=en
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=ddv5htgd_0sb385m&hl=en

I'm also working on a .NET fat client - Consonance
http://code.google.com/p/consonance/
http://docs.opengroupware.org/Members/whitemice/consonance/ConsonanceLogin/image_view
http://docs.opengroupware.org/Members/whitemice/consonance/ConsonanceTaskWindow/image_view
http://docs.opengroupware.org/Members/whitemice/consonance/ConsonanceScreenshotContacts/image_view

There is NO other *truly* Open Source groupware server than can do what OpenGroupware can do.

> 2. It needs to have Windows and Linux clients.

Ok

> 3. Outlook plug-ins don't work. This is a limitation of Outlook. The plug-in
> can't be the default calendar, and Outlook will only pop up reminders for the
> default calendar. Also, my experience of OpenGroupware's plug-in is that it is unstable.

Sorry to hear that, it has worked pretty well for us. Although we only have a few users. I work with another shop that has lots of users, and they've been successful. Have you contacted Skyrix support? You very much need to keep the connector up to date as Outlook and the MAPI tags it uses evolve at Microsoft's discretion.

If you aren't willing to use a plugin (and ZideLook is a MAPI provider, many plugins are just miserable PST sync things) then I'm afraid you have to abandon Outlook or use Exchange.

ZideOne, an alternative Outlook provider, is scheduled for release at the end of Q4 2007. http://www.zideone.com/
ZideOne will provide access to any CalDAV / GroupDAV server.

Alternatively to that you can use Thunderbird / Lightning with OpenGroupware using the GroupDAV connectors provided from the SOGo project.
http://www.inverse.ca/english/contributions/sogo_connector.html
That should also work, I believe, with the Citadel groupware server.

> 4. It needs to have a means for one person to schedule an event on
> someone-else's calendar (if the appropriate permissions are given).

OpenGroupware does that.

> 5. It needs to have a way for people to view the details of other
> people's calendars (if the appropriate permissions are given).

OpenGroupware does that.

>Free/Busy information is not enough i

Re:Could you help us help you?

[Whitemice]

> Oh, and I say theoretically, because maybe someone somewhere has OpenGroupware
> working, but it sure isn't me. Even the self-contained demo images don't work,
> let alone trying to install and configure the pig.

Really? Have your tried posting your problems on the list? Because I've installed the InstantOGo demo dozens of times and never ever had it fail to come up? Are you sure the hardware you used is supported by the underlying CentOS distro?

And for being a pig.... No way. OpenGroupware is entirely modular and developed in Objective-C using roughly the same bundle technique pioneered by NextStep. OpenGroupware is light and fast. It is complicated, but of course, it is an groupware server after all.

Re:Could you help us help you?

[ahodgson]

It comes up fine. I run dozens of CentOS servers. Ogo itself just doesn't work (and by not work, I mean, clicks on simple menu items result in constant errors indicating serious installation or initialization problems).

It's not that Microsoft's Calendar is that great

[Anonymous Coward]

It's that the integration with the email is pretty much perfect for business.

This is Slashdot.

[jellomizer]

Just because it is by microsoft people hate the product even if they never used it before. They will say Some Obscure Open Source tool is better even though they never really used the microsoft one... After so they just may realize that they are missing someting. That is the last thing they want to hear. It would be like someone from an other political party saying someone from the other party actually made a big difference and the world is better because of him/her. It just wont happen.

Re:This is Slashdot.

[Bryansix]

Oh, I love Outlook for Calendering. When you get a group of people who know how to use it it's really useful. You can use the thing to replace a CRM, and you can easily invite people to meetings. It's fast when working in a corporate environment with Exchange. All of that is great. The part I'd like to cut out is paying money to Microsoft for it. Not because I have some sort of vendetta against them. But because it shouldn't cost as much as it does.

Re:This is Slashdot.

[orclevegam]

I've used Outlook before. I used it for over four years as it's the official corporate e-mail/scheduling client. The scheduling they did a pretty good job on, I'll give them that, but as an e-mail client I've never cared for it. I much prefer thunderbird or the web interface on gmail. Really the question people are looking for is, how do we replace the scheduling portion of Outlook and still retain all it's nice features while using the e-mail client of our choice?

This is particularly tricky because one of the nicer things with Outlook is the ability to send e-mails with meetings in them and receive feedback as people accept or reject the meeting request. My thoughts on it are that you could probably get around the problem by using a new URL scheme, something like schedule:schedulingserver.com/scheduleID109 or some such that you can associate to an external application that way you can embed it as a hyperlink inside en e-mail. Using something like that you can use whatever scheduling client you want (assuming it understands the protocol the scheduling server uses) and whatever e-mail client you want because it's just a hyperlink with a URL.

Re:This is Slashdot.

[PrescriptionWarning]

What it really comes down to is choice, if Microsoft were the only clear choice then I'd say you were right. However some of these alternatives aren't that obscure and are really quite capable of holding their own without needing to stand beside MS for direct comparison. The largest problem is their _relative_ obscurity to most people... hence the reason for this topic's existence: to find information!

Re:This is Slashdot.

[srussell]

Just because it is by microsoft people hate the product even if they never used it before.

I have to use Exchange at work every day. It sucks. My main gripes are:

• It doesn't integrate very well with anything but Outlook
• It often has problems with timezones and/or time changes. We get a week or two of screwed up scheduling twice a year, right around the daylight savings time change.
• Resource scheduling is just stupid. If you forget and add a room as a required participant instead of a resource, it doesn't get scheduled, and ends up double-booked. This happens to everybody, even people who have been using it for years.
• Sometimes it silently drops people from the invite list

That said, the free/busy tool is pretty decent, and the IMAP functionality is acceptable.

--- SER

Re:This is Slashdot.

[pembo13]

I'm the opposite. I don't use Outlook. So i have no opinion of it. This is much different for the Microsoft software I regularly use.

Re:This is Slashdot.

[Super_Z]

This is particularly tricky because one of the nicer things with Outlook is the ability to send e-mails with meetings in them and receive feedback as people accept or reject the meeting request.

The Mozilla Lightning plugin for Thunderbird supports this feature.

Re:This is Slashdot.

[raddan]

On the other hand, there are a number of experienced Exchange admins, myself being one, who could give you pages of information about why Exchange sucks (which is to say that Exchange has great features but terrible design). I would be very interested in an open-source groupware application that did all of the things that Exchange does, and more importantly, could start off as a drop-in replacement. So I think this question, and the following discussion, is worthwhile. Yeah, "some people" will complain. So what?

Re:This is Slashdot.

[orclevegam]

Good to know, thanks for the tip. Would still be nice to see this implemented as a URL so the OSes standard URL handling behavior could be invoked from any e-mail client.

Re:This is Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

So go write your own. I'm sure you can beat the 65 dollar per user cost.

Re:This is Slashdot.

[baldinoos]

I'm not sure *most* people hate products because they are developed by Microsoft. I am sure that *most* people hate closed standards because they inhibit competition and hinder technological advancement. MS just happens to be the most blatant offender of this mantra.

Re:This is Slashdot.

[Shadowlore]

Just because it is by microsoft people hate the product even if they never used it before.

Maybe you need a new line and some experience. I work in a very large global enterprise messaging environment. The Exchange side of the house dislikes/hates it. In many cases more than the Linux side does. Some of our guys know more about what it does and how it works than our engineers at MS. They like it the least (or hate it the most depending).

Thus your claim that those who don't like it do so just because it came from MS is demonstrably false, uninteresting, and almost a knee-jerk reaction.

As I said for years "Exchange was an outgrowth of Sendmail. Is it any wonder it was/is so bad?". I hate sendmail as much as I dislike Exchange and for most of the same reasons.

It would be like someone from an other political party saying someone from the other party actually made a big difference and the world is better because of him/her. It just wont happen.

Maybe you need a new political party to hang with. Or maybe meet up with Ron Paul supporters. Democrats, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, even some Greens are all doing exactly that regarding Ron Paul. Indeed the primary anti-Paul vitriol is from Republicans. Or maybe you need some history education. Many members of the Democrat party had and have great things to say about Reagan, including that he made a big difference and we are all better for it.

Re:This is Slashdot.

[Skapare]

Well, I need tools that work on the computer I use. I can assure you that what Microsoft makes can do no better than "works sometimes". Hint: I don't run Windows. Something web based might help, but some people are saying even that is bad.

Re:This is Slashdot.

[Dorkmunder]

Just to address your issues (not that I'm saying Exchange is a miracle curer or anything): 1. if you are using POP or IMAP then it integrates just fine with any mail client. WebDAV can also be used. If you want full MAPI integration then certainly you are getting deep into the weeds 2. If your Exchange server is giving you Time Zone issues this is the fault of your Exchange Admins. There were fixes for this (albeit Microsoft was super late getting out an easy to install patch so you had to do your own patching to avoid the problem before people noticed). 3. The Resource scheduling thing has never been a good way to do it. There is a tool called AutoAccept Agent that you can download for Exchange that makes things a breeze. Check it out 4. Never seen this problem but maybe I just haven't missed the folks during the meetings ;-)

Re:This is Slashdot.

[einhverfr]

My major concern is that I would like to see open source tools in these areas. Heck I do use some tools written by Microsoft (and they do happen to be open source-- WIX for example). I use Windows only grudgingly (and only for testing or for running through scenarios when preparing technical documentation).

If the question is one of quality open source calendaring, I would have to say that there are not a lot which really meet all needs yet. This is one area where the best approach is to find something that is almost good enough and help make it good enough.

Also engineering quality calendaring software is deceptively difficult. I expect it will be a while before something really takes the world by storm.

Re:This is Slashdot.

[robfoo]

Resource scheduling is just stupid. If you forget and add a room as a required participant instead of a resource, it doesn't get scheduled, and ends up double-booked. This happens to everybody, even people who have been using it for years.

I set up all our resources with an autoresponder rule that sends "Oi, I'm a resource" emails in response to any meeting requests.
That way when users forget to select 'resource' they get an email saying "I'm a <meeting room/laptop/whatever>, I don't check emails much. Please select me as a 'resource'" sort of thing.
It's a hack workaround, but that's what my Exchange experience has mostly been.

My biggest pet peeve with the Calendaring bit is it's NOT client/server. It all works via email. If I book a meeting with you, and you accept but don't send a response, I have no idea that you're attending. The 'tracking' tab in the appointment doesn't know you're attending. Even though both my calendar and your calendar are stored on the same server!

Kontact

[padonak]

Try Kontact (part of KDE Personal Information Manager).

CalDav

[jlittle]

CalDav is the wave of the future, with most calendaring clients supporting it (but not MS), and many servers commercial and otherwise also supporting it (Zimbra). The real coming out party was the commercial release of both OSX Server 10.5 and the client, which have both ends. But guess what, the server is open source: calendar server can be gotten and put on any platform. If you want something today, Zimbra or OSX Server are there for the taking. RedHat has a Messenging product coming out based on Zimbra for this exact purpose.

Re:CalDav

[Anonymous Coward]

Linky to the actual product from Apple.

http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/ical.html

Re:CalDav

[nine-times]

Yeah, I'm really hoping the rest of the non-Microsoft world will center around the standard, and it will end up that CalDav:calendars::IMAP:mail.

Re:CalDav

[Chelloveck]

Yeah, I'm really hoping the rest of the non-Microsoft world will center around the standard, and it will end up that CalDav:calendars::IMAP:mail.

That's not saying much, considering how many mail hosts still only support POP3.

Re:CalDav

[cadeon]

Has anyone used OpenConnector with Outlook + CalDAV, with success? As it works out, I started looking into ways to make events from my company's application to show up in Outlook *yesterday* - and I was thinking about doing it via CalDAV so I'd be usable on other clients too.

Re:CalDav

[zoontf]

I just attended the Mac OS X Leopard Server seminar Apple is touring through the country with... in Boston... and during the talk about CalDAV, the Apple tech reps said that Microsoft had a plugin available to Office for using CalDAV to some degree. I don't know more than that, but at least some Apple people think that MS is on board with CalDAV. Actually, they listed the steering committee members for CalDAV on a big screen, and buried among the 50-some-odd names was Microsoft.

So, CalDAV maybe worth more investigation.

Re:CalDav

[wodgy7]

CalDAV is indeed the holy grail. Finally we have something open source that supports all the major user-visible features of Exchange (time visibility, resource scheduling, etc.), is standards-based, and is supported by multiple vendors. There has been nothing like this for far too long.

Re:CalDav

[Anonymous Coward]

In outlook 2007 you can go to Tools, Account Settings, Internet Calendars and set up iCalendar ones to be downloaded and published.

Re:CalDav

[wolfgang_]

We are currently developing a full-featured, professional-grade, Calendar (actually "groupware") server. It is based on standards such as CalDAV and even CardDAV (which has no RFC yet). The implementation of those is not yet complete but we are getting there. So it works well with Thunderbird/Lightning but not yet with Apple iCal.

Also, the web interface provides a look similar in look and feel to the Mozilla applications. We did this in order to provide a good integration between the user environments (web interface and Mozilla clients) and to provide a simple yet useable interface....

The software can be downloaded from http://www.inverse.ca/contributions/sogo.html. Also, you can play with it on http://sogo-demo.inverse.ca/.

Re:CalDav

[palegray.net]

The real coming out party ...

I didn't know CalDav swung that way. You never can tell these days...

Re:CalDav

[wodgy7]

CalDAV is much more flexible than just downloading and publishing iCalendars. It's a complete groupware server. For instance, your secretary can make changes to your calendar if you authorize her to, you get free/busy time slot viewing/finding for team members, everyone in a group can schedule a fixed resource like a meeting room, etc. Most of this is difficult with just iCalendars, which are fundamentally just files.

Re:CalDav

[mrzaph0d]

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Re:CalDav

[the_olo]

Isn't CalDav protocol polling-based (which is practically unavoidable with protocols built on HTTP)?

You cannot have the server instantly notify the client about e.g. a new object (e.g. meeting) placed in one of the available workspaces (e.g. calendars, either personal or shared).

Instead, your client periodically polls the server for new data, which is quite ineffective and you don't see changes made by other people instantly.

It's also a source of significant load on the network when you start talking thousands of clients.

Re:CalDav

[davids-world.com]

We were looking into CalDAV just a few days ago, and we couldn't find a decent web client that supports it. (We tried Horde Kronolith, but the client UI turned out to be poor, and support for CalDAV or even just WebDAV nonexistent.)

What a sorry state of affairs...

What about Darwin Calendar Server?

[SuperKendall]

Apple provides a nice calendar server with Leopard server - but it works with Linux (any anything else running Python) as well...

What Is The Point??!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there some particular reason you need to replace Outlook for an Open Source alternative?

This makes no sense to dump something that works and is clearly the best solution right now.

Unless you just want to save a couple of bucks, there's nothing magical about an Open Source product that makes it better.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Pr0Hak]

The magic comes in when you have some in-house programming talent and the open source software doesn't do *quite* what you want it to in some particular area (and neither does the commercial alternative).

An organization that is using an open source package has some chance of making a tweak to the application to make that one little piece fit their needs and environment better. An organization using a closed source solution is essentially at the mercy of the software publisher in this regard.

(That isn't to say that there aren't other arguments to be made for why open source software is less advantageous than a comparable commercial package, just wanted to point out that I do think a little bit of magic does exist here.)

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Bryansix]

A couple of bucks? Have you ever seen the bill Microsoft sends you for licenses for Exchange 2003 or 2007 and 50 licenses for Office 2007?

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[orclevegam]

It's also nice to be able to eliminate Windows machines off your network that you're not really using for anything but hosting a few select applications that require it. Having to have an entire server running just to host exchange server is a pain in the butt when you already have plenty of Linux servers around that could do the job if there was a cross-platform alternative to Exchange open source or otherwise.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[dbrutus]

The universe of people who can use your calendering product is bounded at the bottom by the cost per user. If you have a nice solution that has zero cost per user like the Darwin Calendering Server, entrepreneurial startups everywhere end up with a marginally lower burn rate and a small number of them who would have run out of money right before they produced something useful will end up surviving and adding to the material goodness that is free market capitalism. It's part of a larger process of squeezing all the costs possible out of IT.

So go ahead and use what you like if you're established. It's quite likely that the cost to reimplement would swallow up any cost savings for many years to come but if you're creating a new division which is separate from the rest of the mothership or a new start up, there's a real need for something better on the cost front and preferrably stripped of the proprietary handcuffs.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Retric]

We have done the same thing with closed source software.

EX: A coworker was having major issues with a closed source DLL so he decompiled it fixed the bug and then sent the update back to the company. We used his copy until they sent out and update.

However, IMO extending open or closed source software is mostly a waste of time, because minor tweaks to software you don't really understand tend to create more issues than they solve.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[jimbojw]

Unless you just want to save a couple of bucks, there's nothing magical about an Open Source product that makes it better.

Why yes, I /would/ like to save a couple of bucks thank-you-very-much. ;)

More importantly though, I feel that calendaring and scheduling are two of the remaining strongholds of MS Windows with respect to business users. For nearly everything else there's a solid alternative: browsers, chat clients, media players, word processors, spreadsheets, etc all have viable replacements that are just an apt-get away.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

s there some particular reason you need to replace Outlook for an Open Source alternative? This makes no sense to dump something that works and is clearly the best solution right now.

Up until a few years ago, I would have agreed it was the best solution for most businesses, but times have changed. I don't know what industry you're in, but a lot of larger companies are introducing more Linux and Macs on their networks and the ability to function cross-platform and across a variety of clients is a huge feature for a lot of companies.

Unless you just want to save a couple of bucks, there's nothing magical about an Open Source product that makes it better.

According to MS, in order to license the current version of exchange it will cost you $4000 per server + $97 per user + some unnamed fee if you want to interconnect with other companies servers. So, assuming you have 1000 people and two servers, you're looking at over $100K. And for that price you can only use all the functionality if all your clients are on Windows, so your advertising people on Macs and your software development team on Linux both end up running their own little calendaring servers or using a shitty Web interface that has not kept up with the regular client. People with smartphones also end up costing you extra for connectors that allow them to access some of the functionality of your Exchange server, instead of all the functionality of a CalDav server.

To summarize, the failures of Exchange are:

• licensing costs
• future licensing costs for upgrades to support new clients
• lousy cross platform support
• added expense to support smartphones
• lack of choice for clients
• lack of choice for server platform (only Windows and VMWare) Whereas CalDav servers like Zimbra also support OS X, Linux, Solaris, etc.
• lack of choice for support and customization and services, only MS instead of RedHat, Zimbra Inc, IBM, etc. (If MS does not fix a security hole tht is a problem for you, you're screwed, whereas with CalDav you can hire someone else to fix it or even fix it using internal programming resources)

...there's nothing magical about an Open Source product that makes it better.

Umm, not magical, but being OSS is a feature, one that Exchange is lacking. It is not the only feature that matters, but it does bring significant benefits, including reduced risk and protection from vendor lock-in.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[prelelat]

I think that is a little extreme. If your company is going to fail because your money to run exchange then I don't think you were going to do well in the long run. Not because you didn't have the money to run exchange but because you didn't run a proper cost analysis before going ahead with all of your projects. If it wasn't exchange it would be something else. I mean really all of these features that outlook has are very nice, I use it on a daily basis, but people do get by with just a simple pop account and a paper calendar. It's a shame that people think they have to have all the nice features to run a business. I could be hard but really you don't need all of these features. If you do your company is probably large enough that you have the money to maintain the server.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, assuming you have 1000 people and two servers, you're looking at over $100K"

$100 per user is outrageous for software that is integral to your business? I don't think so. The OSS solution would have to be damn close in functionality to justify not spending $100 per user, and none of them are.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Liquidrage]

I can't fathom anything that couldn't be extended or plugged into exchange. Save for maybe tiny glowing fish predicting the future. But other then that, this isn't the tool to be barking up that tree with. Closed source doesn't mean "can't do". In fact, commericial products are often much easier to make small changes to because since it is closed they've given hooks into many areas that a boy, his dog, and a GUI can alter to make work. Where as with open source your developers need to work up the nerve to actually go in, change/add, before recompiling. And for something major like a mail server (let's be honest, mail servers are typically tier 1, major critical apps for most orgs) that change shouldn't come lightly.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[tzanger]

EX: A coworker was having major issues with a closed source DLL so he decompiled it fixed the bug and then sent the update back to the company. We used his copy until they sent out and update.

I have several concerns with that approach:

• time and skill needed to decompile, locate bug, repair bug and patch a binary is orders of magnitude greater than that needed to fix an OSS bug
• DMCA violations if you're in the US (or Canada, apparently)

While anything is possible (I reverse engineer shit for a living), it doesn't make everything worth doing. Spending my time fucking around with closed-source software in order to get something to work correctly is not my idea of time well spent.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

$100 per user is outrageous for software that is integral to your business? I don't think so.

You don't judge the cost of something only relative to how important it is, you also judge it compared to other offerings in the market. If something works 90% as well, but costs 1% as much, it is reasonable to consider. If something works better and costs less, well that is something you may want to consider even more. Is $100 a person too much for staples every year? Without them your business would become disorganized. But no one pays $100 a person because you can get them for a lot less from a competitor. The same is now true for calendar/e-mail/scheduling software.

The OSS solution would have to be damn close in functionality to justify not spending $100 per user, and none of them are.

Like I said, a few years ago, I'd have agreed (for most medium and large businesses). Now, however, in many ways OSS competitors like Zimbra are more than close in functionality, they are superior in functionality including all the ways I listed in the post you're responding to. Do you know any features where Zimbra is inferior to Exchange that balances out the list of ways it is superior? It seems to be winning on cost, functionality, interoperability and flexibility. The only way I know in which it is inferior is in that there are not as many engineers experienced with it, but assuming you're hiring quality people, that is not a large concern.

Basically your assertion that Exchange is better, is unsupported by anything so far and your claim that cost does not matter is absurd.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Meorah]

"or using a shitty Web interface that has not kept up with the regular client"

The OWA client for Exchange 2007 is so good that there are companies who are getting rid of Outlook for all normal mail users and having everyone use the web client. The only people who get Outlook 2007 are Exchange Admins and special case-by-case basis (usually execs). So heterogenous environments are better from a client perspective (plus its easier to administer the web client anyway).

"licensing costs"

marketing websites and resellers say different things. resellers get massive breaks and pass them on to customers. Our Exchange 2007 organization license was just under $3k from our reseller and our CALs were $25 per user.

"future licensing costs for upgrades to support new clients"

OWA is going to be the client of choice in the future. Outlook already has too many garbage features that nobody uses in it. This is not a big secret to system integrators, sr system admins, tech managers, or MS. There are too many advantages to web clients for most environments to bother with issues related to mail clients, including future licensing costs for upgrades.

"lousy cross platform support"

OWA light does suck (firefox, opera, safari, etc). But if you can use IE, OWA is great.

"added expense to support smartphones"

Simply wrong. There are no additional licenses required to use Exchange ActiveSync on your CAS server. You licensed the user to access a mailbox. They can use any method to access that mailbox that you turn on. You may be confusing this with the premium CAL required for users of companies who choose to go the unified messagine route. You can't use OVA without UM which requires the premium CAL.

You have to buy a blackberry enterprise server if you want to use blackberries, but you had to do that before and will have to do it again in the future. that's RIM's deal, not MS. Any symbian or palm phone that support EAS will work just fine out of the box, and obviously all the windows mobile phones are seamless to integrate.

"lack of choice for clients"

Outlook, OWA (web), EAS (mobile), OVA (voice), and basically any client that supports POP3 or IMAP4 if you choose to turn those features on, on the server. Nobody says you are limited to the native Exchange MAPI unless you choose to do so.

"lack of choice for server platform (only Windows and VMWare) Whereas CalDav servers like Zimbra also support OS X, Linux, Solaris, etc."

True, but do you really blame them? As nice as it would be to load Exchange up on Linux, it just doesn't help MS make more money by doing that. The fact that Exchange depends on all sorts of Windows-specific technologies like PowerShell and the .NET platform doesn't make it a very easy application to port to another OS, either.

"lack of choice for support and customization and services, only MS instead of RedHat, Zimbra Inc, IBM, etc. (If MS does not fix a security hole tht is a problem for you, you're screwed, whereas with CalDav you can hire someone else to fix it or even fix it using internal programming resources)"

True, and really the only valid point you made. Congrats!

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Culture20]

The OWA client for Exchange 2007 is so good that
The OWA client for exchange 2007 is so lacking in features that I can't even forward my email to a real mail server. I am stuck using OWA unless I build a windows box just to run outlook to set my forwarding rule. In the mean time, anyone who sends me email from the MS side of my company as their email go into exchange, and everyone else goes into the real mail server. CC'd email chains are all incomprehensible now. Thanks Microsoft.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Nkwe]

The point is that with the Microsoft solution I can have my calendar data on my home desktop, my office desktop, my laptop, and my smart phone. All of my appointments are synchronized across all devices. I can edit my calendar on any of those devices and the the information is synchronized immediately with all of the other devices (or is queued up for synchronization if something is off line.) I can edit my calendar and create or process meeting requests on any device without regard to if I am connected to the network or not. As soon as I am connected to the network, everything synchronizes. A copy of all the calendar data is stored on the Exchange server and gets backed up, so if I lose my phone, my laptop, and both my desktops, there is still backup copy of the data. If I get a new laptop or smart phone, all I have to do is point it at the Exchange server and the device get all of my current calendar information.

Note then when I talk about the cell phone device being on line, I don't mean docked with my PC, I mean having a GPRS connection. My smart phone is online any time I have data coverage.

In addition to calendar information, my address book and email gets the same synchronization and multi-master synchronization benefits.

Yes, you have to pay Microsoft lots of money to have integrated and synchronized calendar, contacts, and email with the ability to access and edit all information from any [supported] device when you are both online and offline. It is worth it.

Yes, device support is limited and it is not cross platform. I grudgingly give up cross platform support for the benefits I get.

Yes, I would love to have this functionality in the OSS world. Where is it?

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[mapsjanhere]

$100 per person is nothing compared to rolling out a new system and having to teach 1000 people a new software. It might be something to consider if I start up a brand new business, but who opens a start-up with 1000 users. Training cost will always be much in excess of any (reasonable) license fee, but then, you don't buy AutoCad and LabView for everyone in your organization.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Yes, I would love to have this functionality in the OSS world. Where is it?

I don't see any features you list that are not included in Zimbra. Additionally, you don't have to buy the connectors for your smartphone since they pretty much all support CalDav for free now. Additionally, you only have to pay for support and for a connector to support exchange clients and you have to pay once, not every few years. You don't have to buy Office for your home system either and it does not have to be a Windows machine.

It sounds to me like you decided there was no replacement for Exchange instead of actually looking at the other options on the market, especially Zimbra. Zimbra is a near drop in replacement for an Exchange server. You'll probably want to pay for support and migration services for the first year, but in the end you're off the upgrade cycle, have more choices, flexibility, and platforms supported.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right about the OSS points, but you obviously have not, used, shopped for or worked with Exchange.

According to MS, in order to license the current version of exchange it will cost you $4000 per server + $97 per user + some unnamed fee if you want to interconnect with other companies servers

FUD http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1107101

a shitty Web interface that has not kept up with the regular client

More FUD, or at least a lack of understanding. The OWA client looks and acts exactly like the fat client, and has since 2003. http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/05/12/427674.aspx

People with smartphones also end up costing you extra for connectors that allow them to access some of the functionality of your Exchange server

And more FUD, or just being a hater. Clearly don't know what you're talking about. The free Active Synch Exchange product has more functionality than the relatively expensive BES. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996303.aspx

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Meorah]

Get your Exchange admin to create a transport rule for you that copies your email to wherever.

Or set your mailbox's mail flow settings to forward your mail to another external mail contact.

That way, the rule is always in effect instead of depending on you logging in from the client that has the rule in place.

Or maybe they don't want you screwing around and sending business email to some mail server that they aren't liable for and think you're retarded for even wanting duplicate repositories for your mailbox and refuse to fulfill your request.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did you hear that you must buy connectors for smartphones? Exchange's Active Synch is free and has better features than the Blackberry Entrerprise Server, which is not free. You're making arguments that are just plain false.

It sounds to me like you decided there was no replacement for Exchange instead of actually looking at the other options on the market, especially Zimbra

It sounds to me like you do not understand the power of Exchange. I'm not a fanboy, but the OP was right - nothing can fuck with it, not even close.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The OWA client for Exchange 2007 is so good that there are companies who are getting rid of Outlook for all normal mail users and having everyone use the web client.

Having used the previous version I had hopes all the bug reports I sent MS would be fixed in the 2007 version. I was disappointed. For years now at my former employer we had to transfer certain files via CD or shared folders because as e-mail attachments they would render the entire Exchange Web interface for a user inoperable until an admin went in and removed that e-mail and attachment.

If you go to Microsoft's support pages and look at which features are supported via which interface they all out 92 features, 9 of which are fully supported in the Web interface.

marketing websites and resellers say different things. resellers get massive breaks and pass them on to customers. Our Exchange 2007 organization license was just under $3k from our reseller and our CALs were $25 per user.

And the same is true for the competition. If you have enough users or want to support it in house, you can get away with as little as zero licensing fees for OSS solutions.

OWA light does suck (firefox, opera, safari, etc). But if you can use IE, OWA is great.

Yeah great if you ignore the missing features and if you use a nonstandard browser that only works on one platform and which is banned in many secure environments.

Simply wrong. There are no additional licenses required to use Exchange ActiveSync on your CAS server.

You have to license a third party plug-in for most smartphones in order to get them to interact properly with an Exchange server. At least that has been our experience.

You have to buy a blackberry enterprise server if you want to use blackberries, but you had to do that before and will have to do it again in the future.

But do you have to if you want to use Blackberries and other smartphones with CalDav. For most the answer is no (Palm, iPhone, all T-Mobile), although I have not investigated blackberry in particular.

Outlook, OWA (web), EAS (mobile), OVA (voice), and basically any client that supports POP3 or IMAP4 if you choose to turn those features on, on the server. Nobody says you are limited to the native Exchange MAPI unless you choose to do so.

Except Exchange only supports a subset of features using POP and IMAP and lacks full support for scheduling, calendars, etc. In addition that means you're running two different protocols for the same purpose increasing your exposure to security risks. Running a crippled Web client or a crippled desktop client is not the same thing as getting your choice of all features on any client adhering to the standard, which is why we have standards and why MS avoids them.

True, but do you really blame them?

Blame? Who cares about blame? I'm interested in what features each solution offers and if MS does not want to provide features for strategic reasons then I certainly do ake that into account.

As nice as it would be to load Exchange up on Linux, it just doesn't help MS make more money by doing that.

Strangely I have no interest in MS making more money, only in saving money for myself and my clients. If MS wants more of my money or none at all they will find they are getting none at all in most cases. Why would you even consider this a mitigating factor when comparing two solutions?

True, and really the only valid point you made.

Bullshit. The truth is every one of the items I listed is an area where Exchange is losing in comparisons. If you actually looked at the costs of both solutions side by side or even took bids requests on such a project you'd have a much better idea. There are a lot of open and hidden costs to exchange and it is winning right now on three things:

• reputation - mo

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

True, and really the only valid point you made.

We paid for licensing to get iPhones and Blackberries to synch properly and support editing on the device without screwing up all the time. I believe we wrote our own connector for Palm devices, engineering time not being free.

True, and really the only valid point you made.

I've used Exchange servers for years and I've used Zimbra and Lotus. I think I have a pretty good handle on where each one is weak. I've even used Exchange 2007, unlike most people here and I have experienced where it still falls down.

I'm not a fanboy, but the OP was right - nothing can fuck with it, not even close.

Umm, okay, what other solutions have you tried and which you're comparing it to? Have you tried, Lotus, Zimbra, Citadel, and iCal? Or are you just assuming Exchange is better without having tried anything else?

I provided a concrete list of where in my experiences Exchange is inferior. Where in particular do you find it to be superior.? It is easy to say it is better, but tell me a few concrete ways. What features does it have that are better? Is it more stable (sure isn't in my experience). How is Exchange so much better? I'm listening or are you just an astroturfer paid to spout FUD as an AC to try to make it seem like people with experience prefer Exchange?

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Nkwe]

It sounds to me like you decided there was no replacement for Exchange instead of actually looking at the other options on the market, especially Zimbra. Actually I have been using Exchange for over 10 years so yes, 10 years ago there were not other options on the market. Every couple of years I take a look and see if there is an alternative. So far there has not been.

A quick look at Zimbra seems to indicate that it has primarily a web based interface. Since I need off line access, I can't use a tool that is only web based. It wasn't clear to me that the back end of Zimbra fully supported enough Exchange emulation or similar functionality to keep Outlook as a client happy. I don't have to use Outlook as my client, but if I don't, the tool must provide off line, editable access to email, contacts, and my calendar.

I will spend more time looking at Zimbra and not just brush it off to a "quick look", but my first impression from the web site didn't seem to indicate it supported a method of synchronized offline access.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[belrick]

s there some particular reason you need to replace Outlook for an Open Source alternative? This makes no sense to dump something that works and is clearly the best solution right now.

Up until a few years ago, I would have agreed it was the best solution for most businesses, but times have changed. I don't know what industry you're in, but a lot of larger companies are introducing more Linux and Macs on their networks and the ability to function cross-platform and across a variety of clients is a huge feature for a lot of companies.

Unless you just want to save a couple of bucks, there's nothing magical about an Open Source product that makes it better.

According to MS, in order to license the current version of exchange it will cost you $4000 per server + $97 per user + some unnamed fee if you want to interconnect with other companies servers. So, assuming you have 1000 people and two servers, you're looking at over $100K. And for that price you can only use all the functionality if all your clients are on Windows, so your advertising people on Macs and your software development team on Linux both end up running their own little calendaring servers or using a shitty Web interface that has not kept up with the regular client. People with smartphones also end up costing you extra for connectors that allow them to access some of the functionality of your Exchange server, instead of all the functionality of a CalDav server.

To summarize, the failures of Exchange are:

• licensing costs
• future licensing costs for upgrades to support new clients
• lousy cross platform support
• added expense to support smartphones
• lack of choice for clients
• lack of choice for server platform (only Windows and VMWare) Whereas CalDav servers like Zimbra also support OS X, Linux, Solaris, etc.
• lack of choice for support and customization and services, only MS instead of RedHat, Zimbra Inc, IBM, etc. (If MS does not fix a security hole tht is a problem for you, you're screwed, whereas with CalDav you can hire someone else to fix it or even fix it using internal programming resources)

...there's nothing magical about an Open Source product that makes it better.

Umm, not magical, but being OSS is a feature, one that Exchange is lacking. It is not the only feature that matters, but it does bring significant benefits, including reduced risk and protection from vendor lock-in.

To summarize, the failures of Exchange are: ...

You missed one of the biggest failings. Outlook/Exchange puts the brains in Outlook and the storage and message passing in Exchange. This is not a problem by itself, but couple that with the fact that the OS platform for Outlook is Windows, where date and time are kept in local time, results in horrible problems when things like DST start/end dates change. North America got a rare taste of that this year, but some places, like Brazil, seem to choose there DST start dates weeks before the date, not years! It causes all sorts of problem because Outlook tries to compensate for multiple time zones but then you get multiple instances of Outlook (sender, receiver) doing that with potentially different views on local time in each others location. All hell breaks loose.

Given that the whole point of the Calendar feature is to deal with time and schedules, that is a damning failure.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Meorah]

tired of doing point by point analysis, but Exchange 2007 is probably one of the most valuable products that MS still offers.

keep using those faulty arguments, though.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Culture20]

Or maybe they don't want you screwing around and sending business email to some mail server that they aren't liable for
That's the fun part. We have two legit mail systems (exchange, and postfix on a unix system), and the unix-using groups only sign up to exchange for the calendering. I'm new, and the MS group just upgraded to exchange 2007, so no one understood why I kept complaining about two email systems. ;) Thanks for the info though, I'll start the red tape rolling tomorrow.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[mawhin]

While anything is possible (I reverse engineer shit for a living), Wow. I didn't think that was possible. Pipe you the output of a toilet and we've a proper perpetual motion machine..

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[einhverfr]

Is there some particular reason you need to replace Outlook for an Open Source alternative? Ok, you might be trolling....

Replacing outlook is not the problem. We have Evolution for that. The question is replacing Exchange.

This makes no sense to dump something that works and is clearly the best solution right now. Except that Exchange only runs on Windows, and saying that Windows works and is clearly the best solution right now is a bit of a stretch.

Domino on Linux is a possibility but if you don't want to pay big bucks and want something open source, it is not an option.

Unless you just want to save a couple of bucks, there's nothing magical about an Open Source product that makes it better. Actually in this case, you will probably spend more but get something which will, in the long run, be better.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[einhverfr]

Right, but does it run on Linux?

Oh right, you *also* expect me to learn Windows server administration and security (which is a heck of a lot more complex than Linux server administration and security), and pay for license fees as well....

Sorry, I don't run production servers on Windows.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[einhverfr]

There is a huge difference though.

In most open source communities you not only have access to the code, you have access to the authors of the code. This is a big deal in terms of understanding what you are doing.

Secondly, you can get people who understand the codebase who then make changes. This is not limited to your IT staff but includes lots of other people as well (other businesses that may extend the software as one of their standard services).

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[einhverfr]

Cost misses the point. Quite frankly, aside from a few issues where no customization is needed, I never position FOSS as a less expensive option.

Instead, the fact is that you often pay more for a product, training, etc than you would for commercial software. However you also get more out if it. You get a package that meets your specific needs better (because you are also paying for customization). You get a package where you can more directly steer its future by actually talking to people involved in further development. You get a package where you can more easily manage upgrades and changes, and where a lot of the support for IT management processes is free of charge.

With FOSS, often people do pay more but generally the ROI is significantly higher.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[einhverfr]

tired of doing point by point analysis, but Exchange 2007 is probably one of the most valuable products that MS still offers. That says a lot right there. Note that you are comparing Exchange to other MS products, while the GP is comparing Exchange to the competition.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[flyingfsck]

I guess that while you probably know Outlook, you don't really know Exchange. MS Exchange is fine for up to about 50 users, beyond that, it runs into terrible scaling problems. An Exchange server database slows down once it reaches 30GB and becomes impossible once it reaches 100GB. So, to serve email to a large organization, you need a rack full of servers. Compared to Citadel, which can handle tens of thousands of users with terabytes of email on a single server, Exchange is horribly inefficient. You can replace a rack full of Exchange servers with two Citadel servers - one being a hot standby for the other and then you can retrench most of your IT staff too, since Citadel is zero maintenance. Running MS Exchange doesn't make economic sense compared to free alternatives. A medium sized company can easily save half a million dollars a year by dumping Exchange.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[cecil_turtle]

Exchange for mail and calendaring is an OK solution, not the best, depending on your viewpoint. As a mail server it's actually pretty inferior to many offerings especially if you're not just hosting your own company's mail (multiple domains) and tied up with active directory. From an administrator's standpoint it's been pretty bad as well. 5.5 was a nightmare, 2003 has some improvements but is still generally unstable especially when you get to larger public and private folder sizes. Backups can be a pain, recovery from "corrupt" databases is near impossible, etc. I haven't yet used 2007 and don't plan to, we're 80% migrated off of Exchange (thank god) and I hope to finish the project in the next 6 months.

So yes, there is a need for other options. One of those needs is saving (more than) a few dollars, but there are many other reasons as well. Once you start down the Microsoft path and start running applications and services the "Microsoft way", you get further in bed with them and it gets more expensive and harder to get out - you lose flexibility and portability in the long run which is obviously what MS wants. Exchange might be a workable or even good solution for some companies, but in the long run it will never get any cheaper or easier.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Allador]

which is a heck of a lot more complex than Linux server administration and security Thats very questionable. It may be 'different' than what you're used to, but that doesnt make it more complex.

In fact, I would say that in the common case, Windows is simpler to use when you're using it in the typical, well documented scenarios.

It's when you hit the edge cases and have to start working with Windows in ways it wasnt designed to work that you have troubles. Whereas on open-source systems, the curve is much less steep on the edges, because someone has been there before.

In fact, what I've seen a ton of is when Unix guys have to work on windows systems, they'll tend to actively ignore the 'best practices' out there, because its different than what they're used to. So they're working way outside the norms. Not surprisingly, they run into problems, and they blame windows, rather than their not just doing it the 'blessed' way. They then complain about how its so complex and hard to use.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Allador]

It's not as bad as it sounds, at least in the bigger picture.

Typical prices are something like $50-100 for office, and $50-75 for core cals.

So this is like $100-150 per employee, approx every 3-5 years, depending on your upgrade cycle. If you are on a subscription or SA, then you're paying a bit more, every year, but you can use whatever version you want whenever you want.

So lets say worst case $50 per employee per year. Thats not free, but its not terrible.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Allador]

Even for startups, the cost is not material.

Startups, unless their core competency is in windows server administration, probably shouldnt be doing their own exchange server anyway.

You can get hosted, high quality exchange 2007 for as low as $7 per user per month. Thats $84 per year, per employee.

For any reasonable sized startup, less than 50 people, thats just not a material cost, and it'll work adequately.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Allador]

A couple notes ...

Any smartphone that can consume WebDav doesnt need a separate connector.

The only mobile clients that I'm aware of that need a separate product is blackberry, and thats a product from blackberry, not ms.

The windows smart phones work perfectly out of the box, no extra for-pay software, no muss, no fuss.

Also, keep an eye on those costs, you dont specify the time-frame they cover.

An exchange server will last you 5+ years, so that $4000 is amortized over 5+ years. Thats $800 per year per exchange box.

And the cal costs are 'per-generation'. Plus they cover ALL the covered products in your org.

So for example, if you're paying $100 per FTE for a Core CAL, that covers Windows Server, Exchange, Sharepoint, and SMS. And that $100 covers you until the next 'generation' of these products. So figure 3 years. Thats like $35 per year per employee for this licensing.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Allador]

Do you know any features where Zimbra is inferior to Exchange that balances out the list of ways it is superior? I'm not the guy you're responding to, but ...

Zimbra is pretty much a web-only client. That sucks. Web interfaces for email, calendering, tasks, etc are terrible.

Yes, they have Outlook plugins. They're crappy and unstable, and they dont work very well.

Yes, they have a 'Zimbra Desktop', but its pre-alpha stage, and not useful for those running a business.

Mind you ... Zimbra when it grows up will probably be great. And it probably is great now from a system-administrators standpoint, and maybe the linux techie's standpoint.

But from the end-user standpoint, its not even close.

They need a quality rich client with offline capabilities before it can compete.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Allador]

MS Exchange is fine for up to about 50 users, beyond that, it runs into terrible scaling problems. An Exchange server database slows down once it reaches 30GB and becomes impossible once it reaches 100GB. I'm not sure where you're geting your info, but this is incorrect.

I've owned exchange installations in the half-terabyte to terabyte range, and it all works just fine. You're constantly disk bound at that size, so you need reasonably fast disk subsystem, but thats not hard.

Exchange's architecture IS less effecient than simple file-system storage of email text files and similar, and MAPI is harder on your edge servers than IM
AP, but its just not that huge of a deal.

since Citadel is zero maintenance Exchange is fairly low maintenance as well, at least for competent admins.

Every repetitive task you need to do can be trivially automated. So there's some up front configuration, no question, but its not like it requires something done to it every day or anything.

In fact, its been my experience that if you properly size the hardware, and arent constantly fiddling with your production servers (ie, no amateurs), then exchange boxen are pretty bulletproof. They just sit and thrash the disks ... like any mail server.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[R_Dorothy]

Having worked on and supported several different server operating systems over the years, Windows is the odd one out. Skills and - more importantly - methodologies learnt on Unix transfer to other platforms so, even if you don't know the exact details, you can work through things to figure out how to achieve the result. Windows is more difficult because it is different: in most places it follows the pattern but there are too many places where it doesn't and there is no pattern to these places, you just have to know where they are - these are the 'best practices' to which you refer.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[R_Dorothy]

MS Exchange is fine for up to about 50 users, beyond that, it runs into terrible scaling problems. An Exchange server database slows down once it reaches 30GB and becomes impossible once it reaches 100GB. I'm not sure where you're geting your info, but this is incorrect.

Those numbers kind of make sense for running a repair on a hosed exchange data store. Admittedly, that's not what GP was talking about...

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Liquidrage]

I don't expect you to learn crap. I do expect you to at least follow the discussion. Go post your "you don't know windows" tagent on someone else's post. I replied to a post about customization of software, not the fact that you're not able to admin a windows box.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[einhverfr]

Ok, here is my point. Yes, I can reasonably secure a Windows box in some environments (I do so for consumers), but I would not dream of using it in a high-value target area.

1) File permissions are a lot more complex
2) Too many braindead dependencies on network services (how many things break if you turn off the RPC service?)
3) I haven't seen a MAC framework included in Windows.

The complexity and lack of MAC means that the standard practice I use on Linux boxes of a) uninstall unnecessary services, b) simplify and lock down file permissions (the DAC element), c) turn on SELinux (a MAC framework), set appropriate policies, and test critical services to ensure they still work is not available. This makes me think that Windows security is likely to be a lot more brittle than Linux security.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa there, I'm not visiting any link that goes to mSexChangeTeam.com

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Achromatic1978]

You have to license a third party plug-in for most smartphones in order to get them to interact properly with an Exchange server. At least that has been our experience.

Your experience leaves something to be desired then - I've used several Windows Mobile devices with E2K3 SP2, with no magic other than ensuring firewall rules are fine, to allow them to connect.

Nokia N series device, on Symbian? Install MailForExchange on the device and, without a single touch of configuration, you get calendar/contact/mail on demand.

Blackberry? As the GP stated, any interop issues there are purely that of RIM's revenue model, not anything to do with Exchange whatsoever.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[Achromatic1978]

We paid for licensing to get iPhones and Blackberries to synch properly and support editing on the device without screwing up all the time. I believe we wrote our own connector for Palm devices, engineering time not being free.

Out of curiosity, what licensed product did you purchase for iPhone-Exchange synchronization? Because extensive searching has lead me to find not one. I don't own an iPhone, but I'm sure plenty of people would love this information.

Why would you write your own connector for Palm devices, when all PalmOne devices, and most of their recent models (I had a hiatus a while ago) have licensed ActiveSync? "Makes no sense."

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[dbrutus]

I think you haven't understood what marginal means. In any large continuum (and worldwide business startups qualify) there's going to be businesses that just barely miss making it. They run out of money and go under a week or two before they would have finished their product sufficient to get a key payment. It happens. It's the difference between 100 businesses in a thousand making it and 102.

People make all sorts of foolish decisions on spending startup cash. They burn through it quickly and go under because their revenue doesn't rise fast enough and nobody wants to finance the gaps with such irresponsible startups. Some investor groups toss out the cash burners fast enough, some don't. I've been on both sides of that equation.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[dbrutus]

Rarely, small expenditures can tip things over the edge. That's the textbook definition of marginal. You've got a good product and one shot at an angel who is going to fill your money gap. There's a certain pain point past which he won't finance and if you've burnt money just a bit too fast you'll go under.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[prelelat]

I get what your saying I really do, I think that the problem is, is that they make foolish decisions on things like having an exchange server. I was just saying that a smart business wouldn't try to send the time and money on an exchange server before they had revenue coming in that could cover the costs.

I could be wrong but I think as a startup you should poor your investors money and loans into things like development of the product and paying your employees instead of stuff like exchange.

I haven't seen a lot of small businesses but I have seen a few, and I have never seen one that had their own exchange server. A lot have their own website but it's never hosted internally, and even fewer have an IT department.

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[dbrutus]

I'm talking about what is. You're talking about what should be. This doesn't have to be in conflict.

I've been part of a retail startup that poured 50k in startup funds into a marble espresso setup imported from Italy, total waste of money. Waste comes in many forms and any bit of waste can be the "straw that breaks the camel's back".

Re:What Is The Point??!!

[prelelat]

I'm talking about what is. You're talking about what should be. This doesn't have to be in conflict. yeah your right. People don't always think ahead and blow money that could be used for something more important. I guess people have a certain vision of how things should be and don't want to move away from that even if it means problems. Guess thats how things go, people don't always want to wait to do something like that they just do it. Thats why I've also seen people do a better job the second go around, they learn things.

Sunbird

[RatOfTheLab]

Might be worth having a look at mozilla org's Sunbird

Re:Sunbird

[Anonymous Coward]

I will second sunbird; I had trouble with the last version, but the latest one seems to be working great under ubuntu. However even with a webdav server, this probably isn't sufficient for the scheduling needs of anything more than an individual or small group.

Re:Sunbird

[Mathiasdm]

Sunbird slows down terribly when you have a lot of events in your calendar (I have about 500, which isn't really that much), so you might have some problems with it.

I intend to check with a profiler to find the source of the slowness, but I haven't got round to it yet.

Re:Sunbird

[chefmonkey]

I also use Sunbird, but I can't leave it running. Every few minutes or so, it pegs the CPU and leaves it there for a minute or two (which is presumably the same problem you're describing). I really wish there were something else decent cross-platform. For now, I'll probably have to upgrade to OS X 10.5 and use the caldav-enabled iCal stuff. Too bad, really -- iCal is probably the most poorly written application to come out of Cupertino in the past two decades.

Not really

[initdeep]

Zimbra http://www.zimbra.com/

Scalix http://www.scalix.com/

are the two closest, but honestly, neither is a perfect replacement.

Re:Not really

[HermMunster]

Zimbra is INCREDIBLY COMPLEX TO INSTALL. It was sold to Yahoo who essentially is going to abandon all open source and take it out of that market. Do NOT trust Yahoo on this one.

Zimbra's programmers were daft. They would only make installs for certain releases of the OS and then they would get rude to those who were seeking support. They essentially created a product and abandoned those in the open source arena, and they don't care about you.

Their install requirements, their installer script, and their attitude is obnoxious at best.

Re:Not really

[myowntrueself]

Zimbra http://www.zimbra.com/

Zimbra is, arguably, not Open Source.

It comes under an 'attribution license' and hence cannot be forked. Its 'badgeware'.

Ie: you cannot take the source code of Zimbra and produce your own version *without* the Zimbra logos.

Re:Not really

[wolfgang_]

Don't forget SOGo, still in development though:
      http://www.inverse.ca/contributions/sogo.html

Re:Not really

[billbaird]

Not sure what you were doing, but I am currently evaluating collaboration suites. After downloading the install files for the 5.0RC, I had a test server up and running in about half an hour. Just followed the directions and there is a good support community with the forums and wikis. Unfortunately, their Outlook connector doesn't seem too stable...so we are still looking for replacements.

Re:Not really

[mchallis]

I didn't find Zimbra difficult to install. I set it up for a client using CentOS 5. Google for CentOS 5 instructions and follow them. The most difficult part of installing Zimbra is figuring out split DNS if you are behind a firewall.

My normal mail setup is Qmail using Bill Shupp's toaster instructions. No calendar there.

Scalix on the otherhand, is the only failed OpenSource project I've done. It was easy enough to setup, but mail delivery was not reliable. After one week live, we backed down to the previous solution.

The only real problem using Zimbra for calendaring, is that it is Web based (slow). At least that is true of the community/open source version.

Re:Not really

[demopolis]

Incredibly complex? Are you trying to do a custom Gentoo version or something? It's one of the easiest apps I've ever setup. As long as you start from a clean OS install, it pretty much walks you through the whole process. As far as support, They can't support EVERY distro, so yes, they have certain ones they Officially support. However, many people have been running Zimbra on a variety of "non-supported" OS's and share their experience and knowledge on their forums. I've never seen them get rude with anyone unless the person was being an ass to start with. As for the abandonment claims, unfounded flaimbait.

Re:Not really

[Shadowlore]

At first I thought of a sarcastic reply:
    "Do we really want a 'perfect replacement' of Exchange?".

I chuckled.

Then I came up with a serious reply:
    "Do we really want a 'perfect replacement' of Exchange?".

Calendaring is becoming less of the key. I know that's hard to hear and believe now, give it a few years. Organizations have started analyzing how much calendaring (and it's various pieces) is actually used in their environments and finding that the numbers are rather low. In many cases less than half of their users actually utilize Exchange calendaring. Then they start looking for alternatives that will cost them less (support, licensing, hardware, etc.).

Further, laws like Sarbanes-Oxley are changing the face of corporate email. For some cases, "I am not in the office" auto replies are getting banned while in others they are limited to the organization (see features in 2007 for this). Inter-organization calendaring isn't used much at all and visibility into another corporation's scheduling is not very common now and only decreasing in the future as it becomes more of a legal/liability issue.

So where does that leave us vis a vis an Exchange Calendaring replacement? It's an interesting future. One possible option is that non-Exchange orgs move to non-email based calendaring, and possibly some of the larger Exchange users trial it. Why? Because it won't be email. If that doesn't make you go "ah, I see why" you might consider reading up on SoX and its ramifications. Or not and save yourself some painful boredom and loss of a few points of san.

I've got a gut feeling that we'll see Email and Calendaring file for divorce in the near future (2-5 years). Of course, when that happens MS will keep it as part of Exchange for a couple revs while they figure it out all over again. But we will all be better off for it IMO.

Re:Not really

[Mike McCune]

What? I've installed several Zimbra servers and it is no more complex that running the install script and setting up users. I'll admit that Zimbra doesn't "officially" support all versions of Linux but it has worked under any version of Linux I have installed it on.

So, do you have any specific complaints or are you just dissing them with a broad brush?

Re:Not really

[TRS-80]

After being bought by Yahoo, Zimbra got relicensed to the Yahoo Public License, a BSD-alike. This doesn't fix the problem that Zimbra requires its own versions of OpenLDAP, Postfix, ClamAV, Java instead of integrating with your existing setup. It also doesn't support CalDAV, unlike what was claimed elsewhere in the thread.

Re:Not really

[myowntrueself]

YPL is also an attribution license in which logos have to be maintained.

And remember; this is not like a BSD/GPL license where the comments in the code and license text have to be maintained. This is where there are portions of the code have to be maintained such that the logo is in the face of everyone who uses the software.

Thats not *open* source ie the source is available to scrutiny and does not create a legal burden on users of the source.

Re:Not really

[TRS-80]

Huh, so it does. I must have missed that when I had a look at it, but I guess the lack of OSI certification should have clued me in.

Re:Not really

[myowntrueself]

The thing that really irks me is that Zimbra is, arguably, the closest thing to an open source groupware application that ticks all the right boxes and can easily get management approval.

The fact that it claims to be Open Source (the *leader* in open source groupware, no less) and that this is little more than a marketing ploy is really annoying.

I suppose that it is a sign that Open Source has truly come of age when the phrase is used as a buzzword by marketing weasels.

No callenders?

[tristian_was_here]

Mozilla has an active callender project with Sunbird and Lightening

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/

Re:No callenders?

[cavtroop]

Normally, I wouldn't post something like this, but I couldn't resist.

Do they come with spell-checkers, too? :-D

Compete in what way?

[Kohath]

Can any compete with Microsoft's resource scheduling?"

Um. Yeah. They all compete somehow.

If you'd say what feature you wanted and what you wanted to do, someone could tell you how that feature in program X competes with Outlook. Short of that, I think the best answer is "Um. Yeah."

Re:Compete in what way?

[mjolnir_]

I obviously can't speak directly for the OP's needs but resource scheduling out in real IS/IT world - you know, where we can't just magically make all those MSFT installations disappear, no matter how much we'd like to - usually means booking conference rooms. Exchange 03's implementation isn't that great; most ppl just set their rooms to auto-accept any invite, then some lucky soul gets to go digging through all those when something goes bonkers (on Exchange 03, something always does).

I'm moving us to CalDAV as soon as I kill my Exchange admin and hide his body.

Zimbra

[nycsmart1]

Have you taken a look at Zimbra?

Re:Zimbra

[FatRatBastard]

Have to second Zimbra. We just finally got a proper mail / calendering server (after limping along with vanilla Imap and google calendars... ug). There's an Evolution plugin in beta but it seems to be flaky. However, I was surprised on how much I liked the web client. Not perfect, but pretty damn useful. If the Evolution plugin is ever completed I may switch the client back to that, but in the meantime I'm quite happy with the web client.

Re:Zimbra

[QuantumRiff]

My hesitation with Zimbra is the way it implements resources. In our situation, we have resources that we want someone to "approve/deny" so that it stays consistent. IE, invite the checkout laptop (its a resource) and the person in charge of that resource gets an email, and can say yes/no/etc. I have seen workarounds of having one person have multiple calendars in their own account for resources, but then they are hard to locate/find. I am also waiting for SyncML to be built in, as all our PDA's use it to sync to our Oracle Calendar system.

Re:Zimbra

[i.r.id10t]

How did you get your bosses to agree to replacing *users* ?

Newsletter please, kthanks..

Re:Zimbra

[myowntrueself]

Zimbra is, arguably, not Open Source.

It comes under an 'attribution license' and hence cannot be forked. Its 'badgeware'.

Ie: you cannot take the source code of Zimbra and produce your own version *without* the Zimbra logos.

Re:Zimbra

[hackus]

Easily.

I showed him the cost of exchange upgrades, virus crapola vs. a commerical support license for Zimbra.

I really don't need it as it is freely downloadable, but we have to do migration so we really need to purchase it.

But just one years worth. It is all open source so by that time I should have it figured out pretty well to support it myself in house.

-Hack

Re:Zimbra

[Darby]

Zimbra pretty much does it all. The web client is top notch, and makes a perfectly fine outlook replacement (Yeah, I know. Just try it, seriously), and its got some serious scaling capacitys (Its used by some of the biggest ISPs around). Yahoo now owns it, so its got some name backing. The catch is the outlook compatible one ISNT so open source, but its pretty cheap.

I've actually been exchanging emails with them today. We're looking to replace our Exchange 2000 server. Do you have any experience with their migration tool? It looks like it works pretty well, but I haven't tried it yet.

Re:Zimbra

[mapsjanhere]

Amazing, you switch your whole organization to a mail client with serious future support issues and a 0.x calendar application? I love them at home, but at work I like to have something where I'm sure it's going to be there 5 years from now.

Re:Zimbra

[Anonymous Coward]

The web client is top notch

Zimbra's web client is hardly top notch. It is slow and bloated (I frequently get the "unresponsive script" warnings using it in firefox). It is not nearly as intuitive and easy to use as a desktop app. Furthermore, if your font settings in your browser are not defaults, it renders things incorrectly and illegibly in some areas.

Re:Zimbra

[Anonymous Coward]

Woooooosh...

Zimbra

[sg_oneill]

Zimbra pretty much does it all. The web client is top notch, and makes a perfectly fine outlook replacement (Yeah, I know. Just try it, seriously), and its got some serious scaling capacitys (Its used by some of the biggest ISPs around). Yahoo now owns it, so its got some name backing. The catch is the outlook compatible one ISNT so open source, but its pretty cheap.

Citadels pretty nice too, and Ignatius foobar is a cool guy, but its a pretty eccentric product. I think they've kinda been fucked around a bit with outlook compatibility, but I admit I havent checked in a long time.

open source?

[Anonymous Coward]

if you're looking at open source solutions shouldn't you be willing to make it as good as outlook? i really got to ask... are you looking for open source or are you just looking for free?

unless you're looking to modify the code to something that fits your needs there is no reason to go to open source unless you're just cheap.

Google Calendar or Google Apps Enterprise Calendar

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say you tried Google Calendar, did you try the Google Apps Calendar? In the Non-Profit/Enterprise version, they have a meeting scheduler and resource scheduling... what else are you needing?

not free/open but at least cross platform

[i.r.id10t]

Its not Free or Open, and far from free, but Steltor/Oracle's Corporate Time is at least available on Mac, Linux, and Windows and works well....

Gmail Appliance?

[sucati]

Why have we not seen a GMail Appliance? Seems like it could be the exchange killer.

Any particular features?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jim,
Perhaps to get a better answer, you could help us understand your needs. For example, if business meetings are with people external to your company, do you need public-facing calendar so others can check your availability?

Or possibly you need the ability to handle group events, search for available times within a distribution list, manage one-time vs global changes to recurring meetings, or some other advanced calendar functions?

You also mention "resource scheduling" -- are you looking for basic project-management features? So-called "calendar" software might mean so many things (color-coding, pop-up alarms, and so on) to different people.... It seems in the FOSS arena, lots of people create "building blocks" and you assemble your own pieces to add the function you need, which is fine if you just need to add a pop-up, but more challenging to incorporate something like "enterprise collaboration". :-)

Hey, maybe IBM will open-source Lotus Notes; and that scales up better than MS Exchange, too.

I think a lot of people would like an alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

...to Outlook/Exchange. It doesn't have to be free but 1/2 the price of Exchange would be nice and an open standard so that you could change either the client or server end if you weren't happy with what you had. As for what Outlook/Exchange features, all of them. Seriously, while I don't use all of the features in Outlook/Exchange if you add together everyone in my company they probably use 95% or more of the features.

Zimbra

[ericrost]

I use it as a personal mail/calendar server, I don't use a frontend with it much, but it does integrate nicely with evolution and with thunderbird and lightning.

It has resource scheduling (even in the free version) I just don't use it, so I really can't comment on its quality. The email and scheduling is nice, its compatible with iCal, so there's tons of public calendars out there to help keep track of generic stuff too.

Check it out.

evolution kthxbye

[bonkeydcow]

Evolution should do everything you need. Seriously, what else could it do?

I am waiting for a good calDAV server

[dominux]

in the mean time I am using webcalendar which works great. Lotus Domino runs on Linux and would be my preferred choice of proprietary solution, I am trying to get IBM to make Domino a CalDAV server, anyone who has an IBM rep is encouraged to beat them up about CalDAV support. www.bedework.org looks quite good now. Might have to re-evaluate that one.

Re:I am waiting for a good calDAV server

[marsaro]

CommuniGate Pro now has CalDAV and is free for 5 users

Look at Citadel

[bflong]

Take a look at Citadel. It does Groupdav, Kolab1, and a few others as well. Calendar, Contacts, and Email. And it's 100% GPL.

Citadel of course

[flyingfsck]

Citadel is the best kept secret on the internet. Installs in no time and does everything: http://www.citadel.org/

All Web Based on LAMP

[lager_monste]

eGroupware has all the features of Outlook with project management tools, wiki, time manager, file share access all thrown in.

And its web based so it works across platform.

It connects to POP and/or IMAP email servers and can support 100's of users on a slow server.

I replaced my web email solution with this and now use it for a whole lot more.

A great project. http://www.egroupware.org/

Re:All Web Based on LAMP

[Rock-n-Rolf]

eGroupware is a great piece of software, I sincerely recommend anybody looking for a groupware solution to have a look at this project.

Resource scheduling

[shrikel]

Can any compete with Microsoft's resource scheduling?

Google calendar handles resource scheduling, if you go with the Professional (paid) version.

Re:Resource scheduling

[essh10151]

I have been looking more and more at Google as a replacement tech for exchange (amongst other tech). $50 per user per year is cheap compared to the Exchange (os cost, exchange cost, exchange cal fee, hardware costs, bandwidth costs, backup costs and administration costs).

The one thing that they don't have is the ability for gMail to sync-in to mobile devices - e.g. not as a web-based app but into the mail handler/software itself. I am guessing that the gPhone platform may solve this. It would indeed be quite the killer.

eGroupware with Kontact

[Zombie Ryushu]

eGroupware with Kontact. All F/OSS with outlook compatibility, LDAP Integration, MySQL Backend. Its just missing Kerberos then it would be perfect.

It uses XML-RPC to transfer Addresses, Calendaring, etc. It even talks to Outlook, It would be the perfect Exchange replacement except that for the love of god, it doesn't support Kerberos! God damn it!

iCal Server

[HiredMan]

Apple's iCal Server is Open Source PHP (with Twisted Framework) and based on the new CalDAV open standard. Everyone (with the possible exception of Microsoft) is moving to CalDAV as the open standard. Many big companies (Oracle, IBM, Google) are involved with the committee and hopefully the holy grail of inter-operable calendaring systems - including free/busy, invitations etc - is finally on the horizon.

The server just officially went gold with Leopard but has actually been done for a while now. Apple's iCal Server and (closed source) Client are currently the most polished products but now that there is a solid CalDAV server I expect that the various clients with gain alot of polish and other CalDAV servers should start to roll out as well.

Check out the CALCONNECT standards body for more information: http://www.calconnect.org/

=tkk

PS Microsoft is finally a member but their commitment level is not that of the other partners.

Re:iCal Server

[Erskin]

Apple's iCal Server is Open Source Python (with Twisted Framework) and based on the new CalDAV open standard. (It's probably an innocent slip of the brain, but figured I'd mention it for anybody unfamiliar with the tech so they don't get confused.)

Re:iCal Server

[HiredMan]

Absolutely right - Python not PHP. Sorry, serious lack of caffeine this morning....

=tkk

Re:iCal Server

[Conception]

So, a lot of people are bringing up iCal Server but if you check their forums or try it yourself, you'll quickly find it is anything but polished. It's pretty flaky and difficult to get everything up and running. But most importantly, any iCal Server account has to be hosted by an Open Directory server. So, if you have OSX authenticating via AD or LDAP, you cannot create straight iCal Server accounts for those users without a great deal of trouble. In general, documentation is currently really bad.

Now in the future, it may be a really great product, but right now it feels quite unfinished.

Re:iCal Server

[MouseR]

It should be noted that

- Apple's Calendar Server is indeed open source, unlike mentioned above.
- Apple's current implementation of recurring events in their CalDav server has some issues.

Disclaimer:
It should also be noted that I work for Oracle in the very same division responsible for the calendaring stuff and that my intent is not to diminish Apple's offering. Oracle aims for full interoperability with other CalDAV-compliant offerings, including that of Apple.

Re:iCal Server

[sootman]

I've heard this pipe dream literally dozens of times in the last decade. (Note: I'd love for it to come true--I just doubt it will.) "This new open, standardized (OS, browser, office suite, calendar, file format, network protocol) will FINALLY wrest power away from Microsoft!" The fact that companies like IBM and Oracle are behind it gives it NO weight. The effect isn't even limited to software--remember when CHRP was going to give us a great, fast, cheap, flexible PowerPC-based architecture and free us from the crappy world of x86? HA! (Not that MS makes hardware, but it's the same kind of thing.) Didn't we just discuss a couple weeks ago that industry alliances never work?

MS isn't absolutely undefeated. TCP/IP, HTML, and Internet email are notable exceptions. But overall, they've got a pretty good record of taking a small market, becoming a dominant provider, and keeping their lead. The markets where they fail most spectacularly--music players, game consoles--are when they decide they want a piece of an already-filled market. But their three biggest products--a cheap OS for cheap computers, an office suite, and Exchange servers--just continue to dominate. They make money in two ways: they sell a product (Windows) that most consumers buy, and they sell two products (Office and Exchange) that most companies buy.

Basic fact: Microsoft is the 800-lb gorilla in calendaring. No other "open" calendar system will interoperate with Exchange--Microsoft will see to that. Therefore it won't build up a critical mass of users. Therefore MS's dominance will not be unseated.

PS Microsoft is finally a member but their commitment level is not that of the other partners.

Ha! Yeah. MS also deeply cares about HTML, SVG, XML office formats, etc etc etc. </sarcasm>

Re:iCal Server

[essh10151]

I get what you are saying but I disagree in one sense. If you are talking about the next 10 or 20 years of computing (and not, say, the next 3 to 5 years), I think you can argue that Microsoft has been defeated. As much as many people here hate it, web-based applications are going to become more and more prevalent. That means as long as your OS can run a browser with compatible tech (AJAX or whatever) than it won't matter what OS you have to access your web-based email, word proc., spread sheet, etc.

In this sense, not only has MSFT not done so well I don't think they will; the shift will be too much of a culture shock to them and I don't think they are innovative enough to compete. IBM looked unbeatable once too; same story.

Exchange is s a beast to beat because it is entrenched and it has a feature set that I simply have been unable to find elsewhere. But I don't think that will last forever and I doubt the whole model over the next decade or two.

Re:iCal Server

[HiredMan]

So, a lot of people are bringing up iCal Server but if you check their forums or try it yourself, you'll quickly find it is anything but polished. It's pretty flaky and difficult to get everything up and running.

I'm running it right now. As long as you use with Apple products in the way it was intended it's super easy and straightforward.

But most importantly, any iCal Server account has to be hosted by an Open Directory server.

Apple paid to create the product they wanted and - surprise - running OS X Server with Apple OD it sets up with a button push and just works. I'm sure running it on a Linux box against LDAP will take some effort. Isn't that the point of Open Source? If you want a specific usage/implementation feel free to write it yourself. Apple's supplied a 100% solution for their specific needs and 80-95% of the solution for someone who wants something different.

=Tod

Re:iCal Server

[Allador]

Oh thanks for the correction. I was just about to comment on how anyone could trust their email to a PHP based app when I saw your clarification.

Thanks!

Re:iCal Server

[Allador]

As much as many people here hate it, web-based applications are going to become more and more prevalent. That means as long as your OS can run a browser with compatible tech (AJAX or whatever) than it won't matter what OS you have to access your web-based email, word proc., spread sheet, etc. Thats only relevant for the subset of the IT using population who have always-on, fast, ubiquitous connectivity, and who also can live with the inherent limitations, loss of control, and security/privacy issues for web-hosted apps.

Re:iCal Server

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's iCal Server is Open Source PHP (with Twisted Framework) ... Twisted is Python, not PHP

Zimbra

[hackus]

http://www.zimbra.com/

We are replacing all of our Exchange users and dumping exchange by the end of the year.

It is an open source free replacement for Exchange.

Very nice and integrates well with Sunbird (Thunderbird Calander).

-hack

ECCO - Not open source but still awesome!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can any compete with Microsoft's resource scheduling?"

Yes, a 10 year old program called ECCO still kicks the CRAP out of even the latest version of Outlook! It was originaly a commercial product owned by NetMange back in the mid 90's. How ever I think (rumor has it) M$ paid them to stop making and selling the program. I think it is open source now, not sure on that. Any ways, it is free if you can find it, I know that much. And I know support groups have even found ways of making it work across networks and with Exchange servers! I personally have not done this but I hear it can be done. So Google around for ECCO or EccoPro and see what you can find! It is an extremely powerful PIM, is based on an entirely relational concept, and can sync with some hand held devices (I used to sync with a Sharp PIM). It's cool because everything can be setup as a series of relation links, so you can see what you have scheduled and also what task notes or contacts are tied into that event. And it's not just copying the text around all over the place like Outlook automates, it uses actual relational linking internaly! Also the entire interface can be highly customized. Check it out...

I tend to use a lot of obscure old commercial apps that have now gone free or are abandon ware... I use ECCO as my PIM, and a program called Courier (used to be Calypso) as my email program, which is much more powerful than Outlook or Thunderbird, is internaly relational, but perhaps lacks some of the spam filtering that Outlook and Thunderbird now have (how cares, my server does all that any ways!).

So yeah, two examples of small commercial software outfits that had better programs 10 years ago than some of the stuff being done today...

communigate

[nldave]

We've been using communigate for about a year and a half now at my company (replaced all our windows+exchange servers with centOS+communigate), and I must say it's been a great alternative to exchange. It's got all the features you need and a pretty good web interface. Their info is at http://www.communigate.com/

Devices, devices, devices

[Average]

My bugaboo with calendaring has been devices. We're a introspective enough shop that we get away with a lot of open source. But, for calendars? Blackberrys, Symbians, PalmOS, Windows Mobile for Smartphones and PDAs, iPhones... and the list grows. I hope CalDAV picks up soon, because even Exchange isn't 100% on syncing with all these devices.

Bunisoft Meldware?

[psykocrime]

How about Meldware from Bunisoft? They have
a calendaring module. I haven't used it, but it might be worth a look.

Zimbra meets GCal ?!?

[Wylfing]

I rely on Google Calendar for my day-to-day needs. Can an enterprise implement Zimbra and still send out messages that auto-trigger Google Calendar to update itself like Outlook does? Conversely, can a business implement a Zimbra solution to interface with someone else's Outlook solution?

I really don't know the answer to these questions. I have a number of clients who use Outlook/Exchange for calendaring but I am pretty much all-Linux on my end. The thing that seems to work is they schedule events on my Google Calendar by dint of GCal auto-interpreting Outlook's email messages, but that's the extent of it.

Exchange/Google Calender/iCal/Blackberry

[NickCatal]

The biggest problem with the calendar system now is that there is no standard 2 way communication platform. I do all of my scheduling online then pull it down to Outlook on my PC, iCal on my Macbook Pro, then sync my blackberry with iCal so that IT pulls down google calendar.

If there was a good 2-way platform that would allow me to upload AND download (safely! I know there are hacks) from a service like Google Calendar I would be more likely to use it.

I am thinking of getting a hosted Exchange server but I don't want to pay the extra $$$ to Sprint and not get my current 'power vision' plan

I don't think

[noldrin]

http://www.openchange.org/

http://www.bedework.org/bedework/

Google Calendar?

[AHumbleOpinion]

Why have we not seen a GMail Appliance?

A snippet from http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/users/calendar.html:

Integrated contact list -- Your contact list in Google Calendar is always in sync with Gmail, so you'll never need to look someone up in Gmail to send an invitation.

Integrated into Gmail -- Gmail recognizes incoming meeting requests and invitations, and helps you RSVP without ever leaving your inbox.

Mobile access -- You can get event reminders, check your calendar and even add new events to your agenda with SMS commands from your mobile phone.

Two options.

[amper]

There are essentially two options out there that I would be willing to use: Zimbra and iCal Server (Darwin Calendar Server). Zimbra is sort of in limbo right now due to the Yahoo! acquisition, and Apple has not yet released a packaged version of iCal Server outside of Mac OS X Server 10.5 (you can, however, get it from the Subversion system).

I hope that Yahoo follows through on their stated intention to keep the open source version of Zimbra.

The other problem is clients. Right now, there aren't many clients that interoperate with Darwin Calendar Server. Apple's iCal is probably the only one ready for prime-time, though supposedly Mulberry works, as well. Mozilla Sunbird will hopefully catch up at some point. Zimbra doesn't have a stand-alone client package, last time I checked, but the Zimbra Desktop package is a good start, even though it itself is actually a web application running against an embedded web server with database synchronization.

This has been a long-term interest of mine. C&S competition to Exchange is one of the key areas that the industry has consistently failed to address.

Citadel is *the* solution

[IGnatius T Foobar]

You really want to check out Citadel. It has a very comprehensive feature set -- not just calendars but also email, address books, message boards, instant messaging, access via all standard protocols plus a gorgeous ajax-style web user interface.

The best part about Citadel is that it is very easy to install. There's an automatic installer script right on the web site. No fuss, no muss, just enter the install command and watch it go. No tedious mucking about with integrating all of the pieces yourself, as the entire Citadel system is self-contained.

And the whole thing is GPL, unlike solutions such as Zimbra and Scalix which claim to be open source, but when you actually go there you find out that to get the full feature set you have to buy a commercial version. The Citadel project makes its very best work available to everyone on the same terms.

Re:Citadel is *the* solution

[jimicus]

I've looked at Citadel myself. I think it looks good, but I also think that when you say "shared calendars" to most middle and upper management, it gets interpreted as "Outlook + Exchange".

Without Outlook integration - and I mean real, half decent integration, must plugins are completely lousy for whatever reason - in my experience it is a much harder sell.

Re:Citadel is *the* solution

[IGnatius T Foobar]

I've looked at Citadel myself. I think it looks good, but I also think that when you say "shared calendars" to most middle and upper management, it gets interpreted as "Outlook + Exchange".

Sadly, there is quite a bit of truth to that statement. Fortunately, there is an Outlook connector for Citadel currently in beta test. It's quite nice -- while most non-Microsoft Outlook connectors merely do synchronization, this one implements a full store (i.e. the equivalent of what you get when you connect to Exchange). Outlook and non-Outlook clients will *both* be first class citizens on a Citadel system. We'll have this out within the next couple of months, and it'll be very useful.

Re:Citadel is *the* solution

[jimicus]

This one implements a full store (i.e. the equivalent of what you get when you connect to Exchange).

Now that would be impressive. Most that I've seen synchronise at regular intervals (say, every 30 minutes) so it's really very easy to schedule clashing meetings, don't schedule address books and at least one doesn't synchronise free/busy information so you can't schedule meetings properly anyway.

Is it going to be free (beer/speech)?

Re:Citadel is *the* solution

[ListerD]

Citadel is the nuts! We're currently testing it now. The bosses love it!

Once the Outlook connectivity works fully, they'll have the killer backend we need to finally get rid of Exchange!!!

Re:Citadel is *the* solution

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Regrettably the connector cannot be free, because it is being built by an outside vendor whose revenue model depends upon being able to sell copies of it. However, we're being very careful to ensure that the only time money is spent is if you want to connect Outlook to the system, unlike Zimbra and Scalix who have built that cost into the price of their high-end server products. We are very strict on making sure the Citadel server will always be both free and Free. In any case, the cost is peanuts compared to what an Exchange seat would have cost.

Re:Citadel is *the* solution

[WebCowboy]

Is it going to be free (beer/speech)?

Based upon the direction that Citadel has been following w.r.t licensing and that where it is mentioned they're proud of being a "100% truly Free" application (and not some watered down "community edition" with closed extensions) I expect that MS-Exchange connectivity will be licensed under GPLv3, just as the rest of the citadel and webcit projects are presently licensed.

I've been running a citadel server for some time now--it replaced Postfix as an email server--and it has proven to be extremely capable, considering the simple little thing it is. I am running the second-to-latest release and the more I hear about what is in development the more I'm looking forward to upgrading. Citadel shows excellent promise and would really take off with a greater profile...it makes IBM's "Boated Goats" look embarrassingly clunky already. With Exchange compatability on this level perhaps it could put ugly old Bloated Goats to sleep for good and get on with the task of giving Exchange itself a run for its money.

Re:Citadel is *the* solution

[WebCowboy]

I expect that MS-Exchange connectivity will be licensed under GPLv3, just as the rest of the citadel and webcit projects are presently licensed.


Sadly it looks like the connector is being developed by a closed source developer rather than within the Citadel project itself so my prediction isn't quite true. Still it would make a great alternative to Exchange, and fortunately for me Exchange compatibility is not an issue.

I quite enthusiastically plug Citadel wherever I can, not only because it performs extremely well and is easy to administer, but because the project is very open (the citadel.org site has a LOT of info on protocols and other technical developer stuff) and the more people that are aware of it the more likely people will get involved in developing it and moving it forward (eventually, perhaps, leading to a Free exchange connector ;-). I'm still amazed that software of this quality, with a 20 year history of development, continues to fly under the radar with much of the Free software community.

Re:Citadel is *the* solution

[IGnatius T Foobar]

I'm still amazed that software of this quality, with a 20 year history of development, continues to fly under the radar with much of the Free software community.

I'm surprised at this too. Much of the blame goes to the Slashdot editors, who have over the last couple of years rejected more than a dozen stories about Citadel. I don't know why.

Re:Citadel is *the* solution

[Allador]

Thanks for posting this.

For many of us out there, who live and die on our laptop, often out in the field, sometimes with connectivity, sometimes not (even with my sprint evdo card), having a rich client that works online and offline is just absolutely critical, a showstopper requirement.

Plus, for those of us who live and die by email, tasks and calendaring, rich clients are infinitely preferable to web-clients, no matter how flashy and ajax-y.

So all this is me saying thank you for recognizing this subset of the userbase, who would love another option, but also like Outlook.

Re:Citadel is *the* solution

[wizard of aahz]

furasato - I was just noticing your feature request. Might I suggest logging into bugzilla and entering a feature request? http://bugzilla.citadel.org/. This way it won't get lost in the chatter online here. It would be great if you ran out of excuses not to use Citadel. -Aahz

Google Calendar with Thunderbird

[angrytuna]

I've recently become a fan of Google Calendar ever since I found out that it could be read from and written to within Thunderbird (using the Lightning calendar extension, and the Provider for Google Calendar add on). I wouldn't suggest it as a business solution, but for personal use, it works well. I'm not really a fan of the google calendar web interface, but now I don't really have to deal with it, and my changes are replicated to anywhere I've got the plugins installed.

Anyways, my $.02. More directions here.

Re:Google Calendar with Thunderbird

[vinsci]

Please mod parent up. A troll moderator have modded it down to 0.

Re:Google Calendar with Thunderbird

[R_Dorothy]

I'll second that recommendation. I have Sunbird on my home and work PCs and GPE calendar/Erminig on my N800 when I'm on the move. As most of my friends use Gmail and thus Gcal it works quite well as an informal groupware.

Zimbra

[Anonymous Coward]

Zimbra worked the best of the non-exchange groupware we've tried. It's not open source though. Before that we tried Scalix and moved off it.

Scalix?

[rael9real]

What about Scalix? It has a very good web client, but also works with Evolution if needed. It has good calendar support and various other goodies. We're thinking of switching from Domino/Notes to save costs.

Re:Scalix?

[Darby]

What about Scalix [scalix.com]? It has a very good web client, but also works with Evolution if needed. It has good calendar support and various other goodies. We're thinking of switching from Domino/Notes to save costs.

My biggest problem with Scalix when I was testing it out about a year ago was the really poor exchange migration tools. They might have come pretty far since then though.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

a billion and a half dollars

[rubycodez]

Somehow everyone forgets the enormous cost of malware proliferation, load and downtime due to Microsofts sloppy coding and quality practices. So you want to be a participant in the Microsoft Enterprise Malware Distribution System , by all means pony up for their overpriced, bloated, poorly engineered crap.

As long as you're running all MS stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

becuse where I work, there needs to be TWO exchange servers and we have a heterogenous system but we find that often half the people (whether MS users or not) often can't see the other half.

Some use POP mail from a text mailer on Linux and the emails are "lost" on the way to a windows user using Exchange.

Every time there's an update, this problem appears for a few weeks.

I would say that even MS can't get a good email/calendar solution going, it's just that when it
goes wrong, you don't know where the blame should lie, so you assume it's outside MS.

Exchange for the Win

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The short answer is no.

There are several products out there compare in this part or that part. There are some that let you do this or that. In most cases, to replicate all of the functionality of Exchange, you would several different packages working together. The 'big-business' packages like Lotus are getting pretty old.

The key thing to understand is what Microsoft works hard to do. That is integration. Integration leads to lock-in. Exchange/Outlook is the most powerful combination there is. All of the other competitors are trying to replicate what Microsoft could do with Exchange 2000/Outlook 2000. The 2003 product line has several nice updates. But... Microsoft has Exchange 2007 out.

Exchange 2007 is amazing. The management of it is great. Wonderful tools that make it easy to maintain. The Outlook Web Access in 2007 has almost the same exact functionality as Outlook 2007 if you are using Internet Explorer. It's comparable to gMail if you are using Firefox. But the real kicker is the Outlook Voice Access. Not only can you check your email via the phone or listen to you vm via OWA or Outlook, but you can even reschedule a meeting via the phone. It even sends out an update to all of the attendees.

As much as I hate actually dealing with it, Exchange does not have any real competition. The only reason a business shouldn't use it is if they have issues with the licensing. Or, of course, they already have a huge investment into something else like Lotus.

IBM Notes/Domino - not open source but....

[Fireshadow]

I'm not familiar enough with Exchange or the others to comment on features. Have you looked an Lotus Notes from IBM? Notes is the client peice, Domino would be the server backend.

Resource scheduling is built in. One example is the Resource Reservation database. This can be items as mundane as "who has what projector" to tracking which VP can book what conference room. As for calendaring, Notes has supported the iCal standard since 6.5.6 (?) so you can make a meeting entry in your calendar, send it to your business contacts who are using Outlook 2k3.

If you have to use the Outlook client, Domino can talk to it as well. It's called DAMO (can't remember what that stands for) and costs one extra client license.

I agree it's not open-source. Domino does run on Linux, Windows, AIX, and others. IBM has made a fair commitment to the open-source community by it's business decisions. As for the cost, I think it'd be worth the effort for you to get a quote as it may not be as expensive as you think. Stated differently, the quality of the support is worth the cost.

Try the second or third link down in the middle of the page. The second link is for version 8. The third link is for version 7. You have to register to create the webmail account information. Software Demo Link: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/demos/

Full Disclosure: I do NOT work for IBM or any of it's partners. I do make my living as a Notes admin so there's my bias.

Re:IBM Notes/Domino - not open source but....

[EvWatson6]

Bloated Notes is the worst Mail, Calendar, don't get me started on tasks list in existence.

DAMO does not work and I can't wait for version 8, only need 2GB of memory to run the client

Love that JAVA!!!

So refreshing...

Re:IBM Notes/Domino - not open source but....

[ctron]

it works ... all of it. even not officially supported Linux versions like debian and ubuntu work fine. also DAMO works.

notes is the only software that provides all functionality combined with a working client application that is (gladly) not web based (although you can have a web based one) that works on ALL major operating systems like windows, linux and mac os x.

So show me another one!

Citadel offers a reasonable alternative...

[fleeb_fantastique]

If you want a calendar and e-mail solution, you might want to take a peek at Citadel.

Yes, it has a web interface, but you do not have to use it (just as Exchange). It offers IMAP, POP3, and SMTP protocols for working with mail. Currently, a company named Bynari even has an Outlook plugin that works with it, although I do not know how well.

You'll need to install it on a Unix-like machine rather than Windows. You can decide for yourself if that's good or bad.

But, maintenance is significantly easier than Exchange, and it offers calendaring in a standards-compliant way.

If you want, you can try it out for yourself (although outbound e-mail is necessarily disabled because spammers would otherwise abuse it) at Uncensored, where you can also ask support-related questions.

It has a very long history, and a pretty stable pedigree. The developers also try to be as responsive as possible... and it's open-sourced. Of course.

Some folks think of it as one of the internet's best kept secrets. Give it a spin and decide for yourself.

Not exactly in the same league ...

[Anonymous Coward]

but http://doodle.ch/ is pure genius for arranging appointments. Just give it a try, you will love it.

What I miss most ...

[jopet]

is decent, out-of-the box holyday handling. Every 2cent paper calender gives me much more information on that than practically all Opensource calendar programs. Most programs rely on "event files" that you have to download and that simply mark the days as holydays by showing a whole day event. The quality of the event files is often low, does not distinguish between regions or religious and state holidays and it is hard to handle several of these event files at once (e.g. when doing business in Europe with seval countries).
But just handling the holydays as events also prevents decent scheduling, e.g. automatically moving a repeating event to the next non-holyday.

The best program, though also far from perfect in that respect, on Linux is still korganizer. Evolution and Lightning/Sunbird just suck.

Citation needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously for all the usual reasons.

While the parent post obviously didn't like the Zimbra installer, you may want to try it yourself. Enough people installed it, successfully, to repudiate the claim that it's "obnoxious".

Also, there's no evidence that Yahoo will abandon the OS version, and plenty of evidence that they will continue to offer it.

Re:Citation needed

[essh10151]

You're correct that Yahoo has not come right out and said that Zimbra will be buried in incoherent, bureaucratic mess of confused web strategy but I am certainly cautious.

I was looking at Zimbra as a possible exchange replacement tech to flog to some smb clients but the Yahoo acquisition put the project on hold. Who knows if they just want the underlying tech or if they want to continue to support the project.

And, as I intimated above, even if Yahoo has the best intentions, I am not sure they can accomplish it due to (what is to me)an unclear web strategy.

Online/Offline

[mgooderum]

I'm in the same boat. I run a small shop with 10 folks and Exchange seems like overkill. Every year or so I go kicking around for an alternative and come back to staying put.

I'm not an MS bigot - there's FreeBSD and Linux (currently CentOS) doing the bulk of the server work here outside of groupware, but the key features in Exchange I have a hard time finding elsewhere is:

-The strong calendaring/scheduling including resource management
-The good quality web access (admittedly OWA requires IE to really shine)
-Support for mobile devices (between OMA/ActiveSync and IMAP I can almost always make it work)
-Easy to manage (at my small scale) replication
-Notes and Tasklists functionality does get used a lot in our organization
-Relatively seemless support for online/offline via Outlook
-Public folders w/support for offline and the various data items
-Rich, flexible and easy to manage ACLs on public and private folders
-We do a lot with shared calendars, notes and task lists

Various bits out there have pieces of the above but the real thing I can't seem to find is the strong calender/scheduling features with offline support. The reality is for serious road warriors the internet isn't anywhere close to 100% available. Remote areas, client sites with restrictive network access policies time in the airplane, all make 100% online solutions unworkable for us so far.

But as a small organization the only way we do this and stay legal is as a Microsoft partner through our NFR product licenses, the fact that we are 10 people makes it work. We couldn't afford the $1000s a year it would cost us to stay legal through retail or the lower volume license plans.

Like the rest of the world Exchange 2007 is on the shelf for now even though we have access to licenses for it. One is the 64 bit requirement along with overall performance loads raises the bar to deplying it. Microsoft is doing a typical MS thing and moving away from a good solution because of limitations before the next thing is ready. The de-emphasis of Public Folders and the threats to drop them completely are discouraging. Their answer is "SharePoint" which has no replication and no offline abilities currently - plus it forces me to a different tool and technology when all I need is to share access to various messaging items.

In practice I think MS is effectively priced itself out "small medium" businesses. The only way to deploy the Exchange, the required Windows server, CALs, etc. affordably is through a partner plan like us (which only scales to 10 users) or through Small Business Server - which doesn't scale effectively beyond 25-50 users and imposes deployment and licensing limitations that make it very difficult to move to the next level once you hit that ceiling.

Last but not least to that switch is data migration. I can kludge around on the messaging with various IMAP based solutions to moving the messages and but expect I'll have to write off the years of useful history in calendars. Also contact migration with LDIF still never seems to quite live up to promise, things always get munged, stripped or loose some supporting data.

There's plenty of slings and arrows at people who equate "Open" with "Free", and I agree you don't get something for nothing. Bur for many us it's a basic issue of affordability combined with legality. We work very hard to stay legal but even with our small shop licensing would eat us alive without the available partner program options and using open source in some areas. Everyone wants to grow their revenue and things creep up over time. Anti-spam, Anti-virus, office suites, server licenses, CALS, etc. Last time we ran numbers it would cost us over $2000/yr per/user to stay legal with retail licenses if we fully drank the MS cool aid. MS is getting pressure to prune their partner lists fr

Re:Online/Offline

[essh10151]

I agree with you 100%. Did you guys look at hosted Exchange? 10 users x $7.95 month = $954 yearly with anti-spam, anti-virus, backup, etc.

Re:Online/Offline

[Allador]

I'll miss the features of Exchange, I certainly won't miss the maintenance. Our Win2k3 server w/Exchange probably takes more maintenance love than our other 3 *nix bases servers combined. I know its slightly off topic to your main post, but I'm curious what the maintenance load you see is.

I've got a number of clients on Exchange whose Exchange installs dont require so much as a touch but once or twice a year.

I'm not trying to argue, seriously trying to get a sense of where this maintenance comes from. I see others post that, and I just dont see it, but you sound like a _very_ similar business to ours, so I was curious.

it's not OSS but...

[quiero_vino]

I know you have to pay for it but OS X is really the most comprehensive planning utility available. Between Mail and Calendar you can create all sorts of events and ToDos and they all automatically sync together including synchronization with your iPod and related devices so your contact list and such is always with you. Both programs are quite customizable and if you make an event in Calendar you can add a list of contacts which will automatically be mailed an invitation through Mail. It's all really easy.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

You didn't have to post anonymous

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

Even though a good portion of slashdot readers are m$ haters, we all know when we've been beat.

Outlook has been the industry standard in business for so long for a multitude of reasons. Including, but not limited to:

1. Everyone else uses it.
2. There is plenty of people to support it
3. When exchange server is up, it just works (see # 2)
4. The interface is familiar (Folder list looks like a standard directory tree), the Preview pane is handy
5. Almost any Pop3 service or ISP has instructions to set up outlook to work with email (and as a prior poster explained, outlooks supreme integration between e-mail and scheduling makes it easy to use)

There are just as many reasons why resource scheduling should be a target market and some of the reasons may also be a benefit to outlook. The #1's are the same, and while outlook has very advanced features, that can be torture to a new user who often doesn't get any kind of formal training.

Just to name a few reasons why someone would want to creat an "Outlook Killer":

1. Everyone uses it and therefore if you successfully overthrow M$, you will have a fair bit of $ or exposure on hand.
2. Search function is slow as molasses on a freezing cold day.
3. While customizeable it's not really "skin" able.
4. Advanced features can be overwhelming & you need a college level level course to understand the whole program, or be a techie who can figure it out (like most of us) but even then, you might use outlook to 1/2 it's potential.
5. Help files o.k., but an integrated tutorial would be nice.
6. Spam Filtering doesn't work so well.

This is not to look at office 2k7 because I haven't seen an office with it yet. If you use the "new" outlook, what are your impressions?

In conclusion there are a great many good things about outlook, I will publicly stand with you and say they did a good job of creating this application. Microsoft will probably hold on to this application in some evolving form as long as they are in the business of making software. Word, and powerpoint may not be so lucky...

Re:You didn't have to post anonymous

[Meorah]

"This is not to look at office 2k7 because I haven't seen an office with it yet. If you use the "new" outlook, what are your impressions?"

Nice improvement over Outlook 2003, but not 100% necessary unless you are integrating with the new version of SharePoint 2007. Emailing someone your Outlook Calendar in HTML format is rediculously simple in Outlook 2007, but I wouldn't mark it down as a huge selling point or anything.

Word and Excel actually are far more different. They seemed to have dumbed down Word so any retard will have a nicely formatted report if they just type and hit enter at the end of paragraphs, but of course it has more useless new tracking features that sync up with SharePoint. Excel seems to have gotten more advanced with additional ways to do advanced equations and pivot tables. Excel seems to be the driving app for people requesting Office 2007 in my environment, so apparently it does SOMETHING that the older versions don't do.

Insert mindless Excel display error joke here.

Re:You didn't have to post anonymous

[dave562]

Excel seems to be the driving app for people requesting Office 2007 in my environment, so apparently it does SOMETHING that the older versions don't do.

That mirrors my experience with it so far as well. My understanding from talking to the users is that it handles graphs a lot better than 2003 does.

Re:You didn't have to post anonymous

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

Thank You!

I have been looking to try 2k7 as I know businesses are now starting to migrate over. We just don't have it in the forcast yet due to several other large scale projects.

Re:You didn't have to post anonymous

[subsoniq]

Just to name a few reasons why someone would want to creat an "Outlook Killer":

1. Everyone uses it and therefore if you successfully overthrow M$, you will have a fair bit of $ or exposure on hand.
2. Search function is slow as molasses on a freezing cold day.
3. While customizeable it's not really "skin" able.
4. Advanced features can be overwhelming & you need a college level level course to understand the whole program, or be a techie who can figure it out (like most of us) but even then, you might use outlook to 1/2 it's potential.
5. Help files o.k., but an integrated tutorial would be nice.
6. Spam Filtering doesn't work so well.

This is not to look at office 2k7 because I haven't seen an office with it yet. If you use the "new" outlook, what are your impressions?

2. with outlook 2007 Microsoft threw out the search feature they developed in house and used one from a company they bought, it is much, much better and faster now, though it could still use some extra features like an advanced search options.
6. The IMF spam filtering feature of Exchange 2003 SP1 and above works quite well when properly set up. I run my own server at home (MSDN sub, so no i'm not pirating software) with a domain I've had for close to a decade. If I turn all filtering off I have an old email account that will get upwards of 300 spam a day, with IMF turned on/configured completely and Outlook Junk E-Mail filtering turned on I see about 5 a week in my Inbox.

If Exchange would run on Linux, I'd consider it.

[arete]

If Exchange would run on Linux, maybe I'd use it/recommend it. (Ditto for SQL Server.) The lack of OS-compatibility is the killer feature for me; it makes it absolutely a non-starter. And it IS a good assumption that you'll have OS incompatibility from MS products, certainly all server products.

They don't even bother having compatible crossplatform clients for their server software; Entourage has routinely had problems connecting to Exchange in several different orgs I've been involved in.

I think, btw, that while everyone COULD use it, calendaring is a very business app. Quite a few businesses have some nonWindows systems. So I think there's a substantial, realized market for crossplatform software in this area, and I think that selection of products reduces the tendency to make OSS solutions.

I believe you'll find some responses in this ASK that have OSS standalone calendaring solutions. That's fundamentally different than having unified calendaring, email, contact lists, etc, like Exchange does. To my knowledge, there isn't a smooth mature OSS solution to this.

This bundling is even more corporate - but there ARE definitely two big competitors - IBM Lotus and Novell Groupwise. Furthermore, those 3 packages (including Exchange) are all the options you have if you need the Blackberry server support, also.

-- And if anybody has any good reasons why one of those two is much better than the other in a mixed OS X / Win environment, I'm all ears --

Finally, I'd like to add that OS X Leopard has a feature where emails that contain text that seems like it might be something you might want to add to your calendar get parsed and get a little right-click menu to get added to iCal. Which is neat!

What I am looking for

[Denger256]

What I am looking for in a calender system (open or not) is to have multiple calenders (i.e one for each person on my team) and be able to have a combined view. For example each person has their own calender where they enter vacation days, project milestones , and the like. So as a manager I can have an overview of when my team members will be gone and see if they overlap. Also have an over all view of workload and possible problem spots. I have tried a few options but never found one that worked for me.

But of course... Citadel..

[wizard of aahz]

So you want something that's truly open source? You don't want to have to pay for the commercial version. You want something that's not new on the block and looking for funding. How about a software package where the leadership is devoted to the open source mindset, beliefs and methodologies?

Software that actually works. It's in use. It's actively being maintained. As new technology is released, there's a proven track record of it being incorporated into the software.

Then you're really making a mistake if you don't look at citadel.

Email, Calendaring, Contacts, multiple interfaces, multiple standards compliant protocols, instant messaging and it all can run on one server. But wait.. It scales! So if you want to run multiple servers and have them communicate, go ahead. It's built right in.

Visit http://citadel.org/ for more information and to download or there's even a vmware appliance, all set up and ready to go. All you need to do is download and run. Try http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/723. -

gratification physiology

[epine]

Very common mantrafesto indeed. Apache, Linux, MySQL, Postgres, Firefox, and too many others to name were all yesterday's "next year's choice"-of-the-year choices, some of them more than once, but it so goes. The perceptual problem is premature nomination. Motto of the premature: try, try, again. Little known fact (IIRC): for the exponential distribution, which has maximum entropy (hence corresponds to the best assumption with no information), your expected waiting time at any point is equal to the length of time you have already waited. Dang, the quality of the Wikipedia article on the exponential distribution is too high and exceeds my ability to parse in under three minutes. Little know fact: quality is inconvenient. Perhaps that explains why its imminence is more celebrated than its arrival. Given your nick, I suspect you knew this already.

Re:gratification physiology

[Xabraxas]

Very common mantrafesto indeed. Apache, Linux, MySQL, Postgres, Firefox, and too many others to name were all yesterday's "next year's choice"-of-the-year choices, some of them more than once, but it so goes.

Considering Linux, Apache, and MySQL are a part of the LAMP stack I'm pretty sure they are well past "choice".

MS must be open

[SleptThroughClass]

Microsoft interoperability is no problem. Judges ordered Microsoft to open their protocols years ago. So of course by now all the protocols are crystal clear.

/me ducks...into an undisclosed secure location

Sun's JES is worth evaluating

[Arrogant-Bastard]

It makes my short list, along with ZImbra, Scalix, and Openchange (so far).

The nice things about JES are (a) it's rock-solid (b) it works well with many mail clients, even horribly broken ones like Outlook (c) while it doesn't have every possible calendar feature in the world, it has all of the ones that people actually use (d) it scales amazingly well -- it's really no problem to get it to support millions of users (e) because it's been around for a while (including a prior incarnation as a Netscape product) there's a pretty solid support community for it (in addition to Sun) (f) it's flexible enough to support integration with other products.

The bad things about JES are (a) the install is complicated, even if you're very accustomed to complex installs (b) the documentation, like much of Sun's documentation, is poorly written, verbose, uses opaque terminology, and lacks cohesion (c) the log files are inscrutable (d) it's somewhat bloated (somebody needs to trim all the legacy code out of it) (e) it's overkill for anyone who just needs a mail server (i.e., no calendaring).

But...given that you get mail, calendaring, LDAP, all rolled up in one package -- it's at least worth looking at. I'm aware of any number of places that have migrated from Exchange to JES, so at least their requirements were met.

Re:Haven't found much - Actually...

[bmzf]

Actually, yes... perhaps. For whatever reason, Novell decided to let go of the Hula project but, being open source, others took the project on and it's alive (although it seems to be progressing forward slowly due to lack of man power). It's called Bongo, and it looks pretty nice. Go check it out.

Apple

[TheDrewbert]

What about .Mac? Yeah, you pay for it, but it seems pretty reliable and is compatible with most email clients.

Category:Free groupware

[SleptThroughClass]

[[Category:Free groupware]]

Citadel

[wthanna]

Citadel is absolutely awesome. It takes minutes to install. They even have a virtual machine you can download from their site, built on CentOS, that you can try. I have been using it for a few months now and have had a great experience. It has shared calendars, email, bulletin boards, and more.. and a nice web interface to all of the above (a text only client is even available). All of the features are available in an open source package. There is no seperate "enterprise" version with features that the "open source" version doesn't get. I am running it in a virtual machine based on Ubuntu 7.10 server, and currently testing it in a virtual machine based on Ubuntu "jeos" (Just Enough Operating System). So far it has been great. The "community" has been great about answering questions that have come up. I highly recommend it. It has greatly simplified my job with regards to managing my mail server and calendars.

Re:Citadel

[Anonymous Coward]

Yours truly, Citadel employee.

Re:Haven't found much - Actually...

[Crispin Cowan]

One of my big problems with Hula was the refusal to embrace existing standards. They should have used Postfix instead of Netmail as the hub, and they should have built plugins for all the popular mail clients (Thunderbird, Mutt) instead of just Evolution.

Now we have the Bongo and Chandler projects. Both leave something to be desired in rate of progress. Hula was announced in 2005 and still is not usable, Chandler is almost a joke having been announced in 2001 and just now reaching Preview stage. They both leave something to be desired in features as well, mainly in the "works with $my_favoite_MUA" area. Is there a possibility of merging the projects? Or are the philosophies too different?

phpGroupWare?

[Cut'n Paste]

Does anyone have any experience with phpGroupWare? Is it mature? Applicable to OP's needs? Just thought I'd add it to the discussion since I didn't see it mentioned yet, and thought it might be worth considering. But I don't know how capable, full-featured an effort it is. They do provide a list of references/users. http://www.phpgroupware.org/

Re:phpGroupWare?

[jag7720]

I tried it a few years ago... not that great. Plus getting non-techies interested was a PITA

Are you sure FOSS is to blame?

[DrJimbo]

tzanger said:

... one of the things I dislike about OSS: Interop.
...
It's nice that the source is out there ... but ... nobody wants to interoperate in any meaningful way.

I'm pretty sure that if everything was FOSS then it (calendaring, PIM) would be all be interoperating now. IMO it is the proprietary software that was intentionally made difficult or impossible to interoperate with. Take a look at the history of the Samba project for just one example. Or WinModems. The FOSS people want to interoperate. I think your blame is misplaced.

Horde Webmail Edition

[tys42]

I can't believe noone seems to use it, it's fast, modular , got a good email client, calendaring and notes and just works. http://www.horde.org/webmail/

Re:Horde Webmail Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Horde may not be too everyone's liking, but the more I use it and admin it, I realize it's the best thing going in FOSS groupware. The big issue is keeping up with Google's offerings. That's killing FOSS self-hosted groupware right now, I think.

Re:Horde Webmail Edition

[Allador]

Horde's web UI is pretty terrible.

Even Thunderbird, with all of its rough edges, is an order of magnitude better than the Horde UI.

I understand there are some folks (must not do much email) who prefer web based clients, but I just dont get it. They're slow, keyboard shortcuts are slim to none (forced to use the mouse), do a crappy job of remembering non-addressbook emails, and have no offline capability.

Sorry, didnt mean to go on a rant there, but I just dont get the love of web-based emails. They're just, IMO, very primitive.

Not a real need

[darkat]

When I have a problem and I google for a solution and find nothing I think that my problem isn't really a problem. The reason could be my inexperience or my need for more rest! I think the same logic could be applied to the lack of a quality oss "calendar". The people using oss just do not care very much about that. This kind of software is more for the "suites" spinning around chewing air in the big corps.

Cal App from OSAF ( fndr-Mitch Kapor-Lotus fame)

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the alternative:

http://chandlerproject.org/

This comes from the Open Source Applications Foundation; OSAF was founded in 2001 by Mitch Kapor. They are building a PIM but the calendar is an integral part of the software.

Here is what that software has to offer;

Calendaring with Chandler Desktop

        * Overlay multiple calendars
        * Get a summary of what's on your schedule in the Preview Pane
        * Navigate the calendar with the Mini-Calendar
        * Get a sense of how full your days are with the mini-calendar Busy-Bars
        * Use the Quick Entry field to create events, type event dates in plain English
        * Create recurring events
                    o Daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly events
                    o Manage recurring events in the Triage Table
        * Set alarms for before or after events
        * Use time zones; or
        * Manage your calendar without time zones

Re:If Exchange would run on Linux, I'd consider it

[Blakey Rat]

Finally, I'd like to add that OS X Leopard has a feature where emails that contain text that seems like it might be something you might want to add to your calendar get parsed and get a little right-click menu to get added to iCal. Which is neat!

Gmail's been doing that for like a solid year now. I don't get the excitement now that Mail.app does it in OS X... it's not a new feature, they ripped it from Google.

CommunIGate Pro is better than Exchange

[marsaro]

Hi;

if you are looking for good calendaring, (that now has CalDAV) with Outlook support + can use AirSync for the mobile, look at CommuniGate Pro. But it does not stop there; it has an IM server, both Jabber and SIP/Simple, and can talk to external XMPP servers. If that were not enough, it has VoIP, PBX, Vmail etc.

Best of all it is free for 5 users. Yes, it is paid after that, but if you want quality, that just runs and runs, it is worth it in a bigger company to pay.

You should try OBM

[Anonymous Coward]

OBM is a great contender. It has been selected by big companies, the french parliament, finance, culture and interior ministry,.. It offers a scalable messaging and groupware platform, and many advanced functionnalities

Mozilla Lightning?

[CompMD]

For a small company, the calendaring and scheduling abilities in Mozilla Lightning (a Thunderbird plugin) work very well. There are no problems working with Outlook users either. An Outlook user can invite a Thunderbird user to a meeting, and Lightning will schedule it in the calendar, and vice versa.

Server or Client?

[thsths]

I think you have to separate your question into server and client. Because if you look at what the Exchange server does, it is virtually nothing. All the scheduling functionality is in the client (Outlook), and to be honest, apart from that it is a pretty bad calendar program.

Evolution is pretty similar to Outlook, but I don't like either. The KDE approach of having several applications for different purposes seems nice, but I couldn't really get it all to work. Plus there is no Windows version, which is often a no-go.

I for myself prefer Google Calendar. Obviously it does a lot more on the server, but in the end you get nearly the same functions. You can send invitation, and you can respond to them either by email (it talks to Outlook) or with a web interface, which also shows you a discussion page for each appointment. The two advantages over Outlook is that it works with any email client, and that you can seamlessly integrate several calendars. Scheduling is possible, but only via shared calendars, so it only works for a small group of people working together.

If all you are missing is a scheduling function, it should be possible to integrate it.

Zimbra!

[alexborges]

Zimbra does it, does it very well and can be made compatible with full fledged outlook.

You dweebs cant even do a google search before just saying "no", can you?

Re:Zimbra!

[michrech]

No.

Zimbra does it, does it very well and can be made compatible with full fledged outlook.

You dweebs cant even do a google search before just saying "no", can you?

Re:Zimbra!

[stacey7165]

Zimbra is a great alternative to Exchange. I have also used Doodle http://www.doodle.ch/main.html to schedule/suggest meeting times that work for people through a poll mechanism, however it doesn't integrate to your calendar to remind you that you have the meeting...

...shameless plug: if you're looking for open source monitoring software either your Exchange or Zimbra installation, you should check out Hyperic. Its open source and manages both of them right out of the box. :)
Stacey Schneider
http://www.hyperic.com/

Re:Zimbra!

[lazybeam]

I used to work at a church where the previous IT guy had setup a standard Fedora box as a server. Everyone used Outlook with POP3 mail over the LAN. It was only a Celeron 600 that also did file serving, spam/virus scanning and web filtering. With 35 users it was seriously underpowered.

I upgraded them to two servers: RHEL with Zimbra for everything mail-related and CentOS for fileserving. They were even considering Evolution for the client, which I found funny for a church! Anyway, they've been like this for over a year and there has been no major problems. The new servers even had Gigabit cards so people could get full speed from the gigabit switch!

They were a little against Exchange because their neighbouring retirement village used Exchange on SBS and had no end to problems. Last I heard they linked networks and migrated the retirement village accounts to their Zimbra server.

Re:Zimbra!

[mac123]

Zimbra is fine, as long as you don't need many of the little missing features...like return receipts and such.

Re:Zimbra!

[fwarren]

Zimbra is fine, as long as you don't need many of the little missing features...like return receipts and such.

I am not sure I know of a more overused and unneeded feature in email.

Most of my users have it set so all messages ask for return receipts. You are constantly prompted that the sender wanted a receipt. Remember folks! One of the answers is "No". So just because you ask for a receipt, there is NO guarantee that you will get one.

It is abused because 90% of the time it is used it is not needed. Then for the 10% of the time where it is needed. You can not be sure that it will work because of the user at the other end (in your company) or that the mail client will handle it (for users outside your company).

Re:Zimbra!

[LWATCDR]

So why RHEL for one server and CentOS for the other?
Was the support for the RHEL on the mail server worth the cost to you?

Re:Zimbra!

[lazybeam]

That was actually a management decision: Zimbra is only "supported" on certain paid distros so they figured they'd want to make use of that support. We had a Zimbra test server on CentOS for a month before we replaced the Fedora server.

CentOS for the other as it didn't need support.

Scalix

[Dunkirk]

There's a lot of comments for Zimbra, but I've tried it, and it's very difficult to install. So I went with Scalix. The bonus is that it's totally free for the size of my organization (a church). We've used OpenGroupware (with the Outlook plugin), but Scalix has been a lot better for us. I highly recommend it. Their forums are great too!

Kolab

[geggam]

http://www.kolab.org/about-kolab-server.html

Depending on your

[setchell.dave]

love of emacs. This is either ideal or terrible. You can run one emacs server. windows, mac and *NIX emacs clients can connect to it. run, calendar.el, remember.el, planner.el, and org.el They all work very well together -> planner can link to the calander for meetings and grab todo's from org.el if desired. Remember can cause any of these files to link each to each other or some arbitrary file [ say tcp report ]. Permissions are controlled by file permission such that i would have a planner page called "DaveSetchell.muse". So, Admins could have direct access to core .org files and the employees planner.el would suck the relevent TODO's from those files to dynamically generate "Task Lists" and mark the calander. just use group permission files for "public stuff" and use the Muse [ which is planner's backend ] for web publishing, if desired.

Yet another remark about you last sentence...

[alexhs]

If we're not coming up with something new and innovative we're stuck making outlook clones. People don't like writing software like that. Ever heard of Miguel de Icaza ? :)

Kerio

[belligerent0001]

I am using Kerio Mailserver for 3 of the business that I represent. It has calendaring and syncing capabilities that work with MS Outlook with a couple of free add ons. The cost is very reasonable and the few times that I could not find solutions in their forums, the tech support staff has been excellent. We eve started running their Winroute product for proxy, firewall, filtering and VPN. Unfortunately, in regard to the integration of Outlook, we don't use it here and there are no add-ons for Thunderbird or Lightning that have bidirectional capabilities. I will probably check out their forums again as it has been a few month, it may be more capable now.

Well, let's add another one to the mix... Scalix

[florianscalix]

I might be a bit biased, as I run product management here, but you should also have a look at Scalix (www.scalix.com) - there is a free version available, commercial options as you like it, richest non-Microsoft Outlook connector on the market, AJAX-based Webclient, and CalDAV support is in 11.3, coming in 2 weeks. Won't say much more, please try yourself and tell me what you think! :-) Florian.

Chandler

[foniksonik]

Has a client and server, open source, server runs on Tomcat... http://chandlerproject.org/

Compatible with OSX, Windows, Linux (I believe the client is Java based)

You can also use the client with a Darwin calendar server... or you could use a CalDav client, like iCal or Sunbird w/ the Chandler server.

So far MeetingMaker is still top dog

[tlambert]

So far MeetingMaker is still top dog; I give it a 2 out of 5 (5 being the best).

There really is no really good group calendaring/scheduling software, period.

All of the iCal based systems suffer from not having notifications, other than active data, and the server based systems (like MeetingMaker) tend to have connectivity problems (this is fixable, but the various vendors never fix it).

Connectivity is more or less required for real time notifications of schedule changes from the central calendar store to the calendar viewing application. Without a real time notification mechanism, high latency mechanisms tend to be used instead (this is the iCal method). But unfortunately, Lucent locked up the very obvious LTAP modifications to LDAP servers very early on with a patent, and since then, everyone has routed around the Lucent damage by adopting "push model" mechanisms with high latency.

The most common iCal push model implementation is via email with active message content. Like OutLook, the email you receive of this type causes code to run on our computer, and when that happens as a result of receiving data, and then the code *acts* on the *content* of the data received, you are just opening yourself up to exactly the same kind of exploits that have plagued OutLook forever.

So the best-of-breed out there right now is a client-server model, aand the least heinous of these is unfortunately still MeetingMaker.

Which is really, really sad, since I first used MeetingMaker some 15 years ago, and it really hasn't gotten much better since then.

-- Terry

Bedework

[chasd]

This question came up on the Fedora Dev list. Of the suggestions offered there, Bedework was not mentioned here.

DAViCal

[Anonymous Coward]

(relatively) simple and effective WebCal solution: http://rscds.sourceforge.net/

Re:If Exchange would run on Linux, I'd consider it

[klubar]

Actually you can do that in Outlook. Drag an email to the calendar tab (usually in the lower right) and it turns into a calendar entry. Set the time and date for the event.

You can do the same thing to turn an email into a task, contact or note. Pretty neat.

I actually learned this tip from some new-age time management guy at a seminar.

OpenChange

[digitaltraveller]

Dear Jim R. Wilson,

Contact openchange. Give them money. That is all.

Kontact?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried Kontact? (kontact.kde.org)

What Leopard is doing is different than Outlook...

[arete]

gp's post about them swiping it from Gmail might be correct, I have no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised.

But your description of Outlook isn't at all the relatively cool part what Leopard does. Leopard finds dates/times in your emails so it'll use those dates/times in the actual event. The whole point is that you _don't_ set the date/time for the event - it can parse them out of a bunch of text for you.

Zimbra and Alfresco

[JimDaGeek]

Zimbra and Alfresco both look nice. Check out the Alfresco demo.

Re:If Exchange would run on Linux, I'd consider it

[Blakey Rat]

That's been a feature in Outlook for ages, I knew about it. Good tip for those who don't, though.

But what I'm talking about is the email client looking into the text of your email and finding bits of text that look like locations or dates, then linking to the appropriate actions for them. If Gmail sees something in your text that looks like an address, it can add a "view this in Google Maps" link that will locate the address on Google Maps. Additionally, if it sees text like "this friday at 4:00 we'll have a BBQ" it'll ask if you want to add an event named "BBQ" on friday at 4:00 to your calendar. Outlook doesn't do this.

Calendar program

[Anonymous Coward]

A nice free calendar program is called Rainlender, it has an option of syncronizing with outlook.

Citadel employee?

[WebCowboy]

The Citadel project is not the product of a for-profit venture. In 1981 as electronic bulletin board systems were starting to take off a BBS guy going by "CrT" wrote software to run a BBS on CP/M computers called Citadel. A year or so later there was some big soap-opera personality conflict and the original author walked away from the program and left the source code to float in the public domain. This code was picked up by dozens of different people who made an equal number of forks (forking was more apt to happen in the days before widespread internet and in the culture of strong personalities of those early days of the PC).

A few years after the original Citadel was released into the wild as public domain, a guy named Art Cancro (I. T. Foobar--he still maintains it today and posts on slashdot, understandably plugging it whenever he can) re-wrote the original CP/M Citadel to run on Unix for his hobby BBS called "Uncensored" (it ultimately ended up sharing no source code at all with the CP/M version; it was however a faithful work-alike). Cancro's version was referred to as "Citadel/UX" to distinguish it from the unrelated CP/M codebase. The UX part was later dropped since all the other Citadel variants with similar names (Citadel, Citadel/86, Citadel+, etc) have dropped out of active development and use.

There was a forked version called DOC (Dave's Own Citadel) that was somewhat popular but as the BBS scene died out so did DOC (there hasn't been a release for over 5 years). Cancro's Citadel persisted because it adapted to new technologies while other Citadel-variant BBSes remained steadfastly text-oriented BBS-style systems. Citadel(/UX) now appears to be the only Citadel variant BBS platform under active development (though others remain in use in a few places).

It's BBS heritage is quite evident in its architecture despite the fact that it has evolved significantly into a real "groupware" system. The original text-based Citadel client is still present, alongside the "webcit" AJAX client. The data store is still centered around the classic "Citadel Host/Floor/Room/Message" system and the instant-messaging and chat through webcit is a front-end to the tried-and-true chatroom system. Mr. Cancro and the other developers have done a remarkable job of bringing in new features and connectivity around this BBS "engine" without compromising the elegant and simple architecture.

Citadel started as, and continues to be, driven by enthusiasts as a hobby, and as such there are no "employees" with anything to gain financially from plugging Citadel. When a Citadel developer does pump Citadel, it is largely out of pride for a job well done. Citadel is older than Linux itself and remarkably remains almost completely free of commercial sponsorship.

Kolab KDE

[Britz]

Kolab server
KDE client

kolab.org

Re:Kolab KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for the pointer. Please increase its value by adding some characterization (e.g., your familiarity w. the s/w, app context, history of use, probs).

Re:Kolab KDE

[Britz]

No experience. Sorry. You will have to trust their web site.

IMAP, iCal?

[SanityInAnarchy]

There are protocols for interop, they just require you to have a cooperating server.

I realize that's a bit of a big requirement...

EGroupware, Thunderbird, Lightning

[John Goerzen]

We currently are using Novell Groupwise and are very unhappy with it for a number of reasons. We are beginning a migration to Egroupware.

It is standards-based, speaks all sorts of protocols, syncs with everything important, and is stable, fast, and reliable.

You can sync it with Outlook, Evolution, Thunderbird, Sunbird/Lightning, Palm devices, phones, other PDAs, etc.

Its documentation isn't great, but then again it's better than Groupwise, plus you have the source. We are excited about it.

Re:EGroupware, Thunderbird, Lightning

[John Goerzen]

Forgot to add: Thunderbird+Lightning gives a very nice unified platform across Linux, Mac, Windows.

Something im working on...

[pjr.cc]

Well, i say im working on it, but its a big project and im working alone.. I started a project called "Tag-Based colaboration machine". The idea being to remove folders as an organizational structure for mail.

But i wanted to do alot more with it like:
1) hierarchical storage (primary, secondary, archive, etc)
2) fully self-contained (i.e. can use auth off any system, but stores all mail in its own store, not in the user home directory)
3) imap backward compatible.
etc

The idea would be you'd have 4 tag types, group, public, status and personal which you could create and you'd then have tag groups. Tag groups would be a set of tags that should show you either every mail with all of those tags, or every mail with one of those tags.

So in your email client your "inbox" might just be showing tags of "status: unread", then you might have a tag group like: "group: linux, faults, personal: linux, etc" and so this would allow anyone in your group to see it (a group being some logical collection of people in a company). And of course, finally "public" tags which would allow anyone who can conect to read it.

On top of that, connecting with an imap client would show you a folder structure based on your collection of tag groups and logical operations. like "inbox" wwould shot "status: unread, read + no other tags" or something like that, and when you moved a mail from one folder to another, it would be retagged according to that tag group.

But anyways, i've not gotten far past the storage mechanisms yet and it'll probably never be finished, but i'd love the idea of working/using a tag based mail system and I think this is one area where linux is falling behind a bit - not mail specifically, but innovation in general. Everything we're doing seem to be about what someone else is going and how to make our systems work exactly like those. its a bit tiresome.

Re:If Exchange would run on Linux, I'd consider it

[klubar]

I'm not sure how useful it is... The "artificial intelligence" to make it smart is probably beyond most email programs. A message like "meet you wednesday at noon" would probably confuse is... as would let's get together around three...

WIth oulook, sending a meeting notice is as easy as sending an email. It's unfortunate that many email clients can't deal with outlook invites....

At a recent seminar, I pointed out that shared calendars aren't useful unless everyone is on the same system... having one calendar for project A, a different for B and yet another for personal events is really a pain.

Within the corporate world, Exchange really does rule. There's nothing like it that can scale to 10,000+ users, be centrally administered and has such a wide variety of client access---outlook for the web (or whatever it's called) is really slick. I haven't seen anything even close to it.

Haven't tested it, but I think that exchange is reasonably secure -- and has good capabilities for email archiving and monitoring.

That said, at every client I've seen exchange, users always complain about email storage limits. Don't know why.

Re:If Exchange would run on Linux, I'd consider it

[Blakey Rat]

That said, at every client I've seen exchange, users always complain about email storage limits. Don't know why.

Because it takes me several hours to clean out my email during which I'm not getting any actual work done, when IT could have just added more space to the SAN in the same amount of time for much less money than my lost productivity cost the company.

Having users waste time cleaning out their email is IT failure, plain and simple-- either IT needs to make some kind of automated 'old mail' purge, or they need to add more storage, but if I, as an end user, have to even THINK about email storage limits, you've failed as my IT support.

Re:If Exchange would run on Linux, I'd consider it

[klubar]

I guess my comment was ambiguous. What I meant to say was, I wonder why it's so hard for IT to add more storage to an Exchange Server. I complete agree with you... end users managing to an email limit is a complete waste of time.

Perhaps some exchange expert can help us out by explaining why it's hard to add storage. Disks are cheap --- especially if you're in the corporate world that can afford exchange and quality hardware to run it on.

No one has mentioned

[/dev/trash]

Calcium

Kolab works

[Anonymous Coward]

Kolab http://www.kolab.org/ works very well with several client alternatives.
The upcoming 2.2 release will have a fully functional webclient based on Horde as well.

Because *programmers* create OSS solutions...

[ahooton]

... and, how many programmers do you know who actually use or care about enterprise calendaring systems? Sure, there are a few, but the vast majority of programmers despise meetings, don't need to go to many of them, and don't have any real use for calendaring systems in their "real" jobs. Only managers (like me, old ex-coder for years but been in management for about a decade or so) can't live without our enterprise calendaring systems. But see, we don't count in this case.

So, if it's not of interest to programmers, it's not gonna get created in any real, stable and solid way through OSS channels...

Re:If Exchange would run on Linux, I'd consider it

[generica1]

Actually, Apple was doing Data Detectors in 1998, which is this feature in an early form, but essentially could do the same thing. Here's a link: http://web.archive.org/web/19980128233606/http://applescript.apple.com/data_detectors/index.html

Re:If Exchange would run on Linux, I'd consider it

[Allador]

Perhaps some exchange expert can help us out by explaining why it's hard to add storage. Disks are cheap --- especially if you're in the corporate world that can afford exchange and quality hardware to run it on. Just because disks are cheap doesnt make storage cheap.

First, in large organizations, the mailbox sizes scale faster than most people expect. If you have 10k people, and want to give them all 2GB of space, thats 20TB.

Now 20TB in low end JBOD sata disks is cheap, but that wont work well for an exchange environment.

The ideal is to have the exchange mailbox stores backed by a SAN. This is because you often end up re-balancing mailboxes from one server to another, or some store servers (that handle some fixed subset of users) grow faster than the others.

Also, the mailbox stores in large orgs are often run as clusters. Not load balanced, shared-nothing boxes, but real live, expensive clusters. That means shared disk storage, heartbeat monitors, all that stuff.

And then there's backups. Backups are what really kills you in enterprise storage. As an example, a company I've dealt with did the analysis with a consultant, and they determined that their tier-1 san storage costs ~$1.25 per gigabyte per year. But full staged tape rotation backups cost almost $4.00 per gigabyte per year. That puts total storage costs at ~$5.00 per gigabyte per year.

(BTW, I think these numbers were per year, but they could have been per-month ... I dont remember for sure.)

That adds up to $100k per year just in storage costs, just for the email servers.

Now there are some things you can do ... most businesses dont really want long-term storage of email stores, they just want disaster-recovery backups. You can do this with san replication, or other forms of simpler backup. That brings the backup price way down.

You can also mount your mailbox stores over iSCSI and use not-so-insanely-expensive high-end san storage.

But the bottom line is that storage is much more expensive that disc, and Exchange storage is more expensive than typical file-server storage, because of its particular needs.

Exchange is also hard on disk subsystems, and large Exchange stores are almost always permanently disk-bound, and constantly, always, 24-hours a day, thrashing the disks.

Understanding and Replacing Microsoft Exchange

[Anonymous Coward]

Understanding and Replacing Microsoft Exchange

YES

[corigo]

Zimbra actually beats Outlook and Exchange server hands down. The first solution I have seen to do so. Still waiting for a completed off-line client though. Web based email and calendaring the surpases Exchange is a great start though!

Now Up-To-Date & MeetingMaker

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used Now Up-To-Date for many years & it is a mature product & works well.
I have not used MeetingMaker, but I have seen it in action & it works well & should be included in this list.

my setup

[martinlindhe]

Hello all, this is how i use networked calendar.
I am using a webdav setup under apache for this.

You need to enable the apache2 modules "dav" and "dav_fs"

It allows you to publish iCal file on your website behind ssl if you wish, you can also configure user rights access like this

<Location /webdav>
    DAV on

    AuthType Basic
    AuthName "webdav"
    AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/.htpasswd
    # only authenticated users may access /webdav
    Require valid-user
</Location>

<Location /webdav/martin/>
    Require user martin
</Location>

Then finally, you use Mozilla Thunderbird with the Ligthning addon, which adds calendar & iCal features. then you can recieve & send invitations to outlook, have both a private & public calendar, share calendar with your employees and so on.
It works in Windows, Linux & Mac OS X.
Right now i am looking for a cellphone that reads iCal too so i can auto-sync the calendar there. I haven't found one but i'm sure there is some.

eGroupware

[ukinfidel]

I've deployed it for 150 users. Works great.

Bongo?

[whichpaul]

Apparently the Bongo Project inherited the old Hula code. Has anyone had experience with this permutation? http://www.bongo-project.org/

That doesn't seem accurate; educate me.

[arete]

Educate me - because right now, this sounds like FUD to me.

>> Within the corporate world, Exchange really does rule.

By monopoly, yes. This I don't contest at all. Nor your point about uniformity, but I don't think that always means you should jump to the most popular system.

>> There's nothing like it that can scale to 10,000+ users, be centrally administered

I'll admit I haven't PERSONALLY tried, but I know of 10,000+ sites that have moved to Groupwise or Lotus. I doubt either of those solutions doesn't scale, considering the vendors. Novell has been in this business LONGER than Microsoft has, but they don't have Windows to leverage.

>> and has such a wide variety of client access---outlook for the web (or whatever it's
>> called) is really slick. I haven't seen anything even close to it.

Maybe Outlook Web Access is much cooler than the competition; I haven't compared that feature.

But, are you actually saying you should use Outlook because it's more PLATFORM COMPATIBLE? Certain of the most fun features of OWA don't work quite right if you're not using IE on Windows, but I can't fault them for taking extra advantage of what they know. But you're talking about the only major system without a reliably functioning OS X client (Entourage is reliably problematic when you actually try to use it with Exchange), the only one without any support at all for a Linux client, and the only one where the server will only run on Windows. You realize Novell and IBM actually MAKE Linux and OS X clients for their solutions, right? It's not only that some enterprising Linux dev reverse engineered the API, like for Evolution.

If you're going to say we should all adopt a single collaboration environment (why can't we just get along) then why would you choose one that's just not possible, on the server, to use for a place that's a mac shop or a Linux shop - perhaps a place that's afraid of the BSA after all the nasty things they've done.

And if you're going to say we should all adopt a single standalone _calendar_ format, and not a collaboration suite, then I think when Mozilla and Google and Apple are all using the RFC 2445 iCal format, the battle for the _compatible_ calendar format is settled. Guess what? Of the above major collaboration suites, Outlook seems the only one with iCal support that is limited, at least per Wikipedia. (No TODOs, Journals, etc.) Historically, Microsoft is consistently slow to adopt standards, and routinely has only limited support for them. At least some of the time this seems to be to encourage vendor lock in... The opposite of the product we should "all" use if we're "all" going to agree on something.

Re:If Exchange would run on Linux, I'd consider it

[Anonymous Coward]

IT could have just added more space to the SAN in the same amount of time for much less money than my lost productivity cost the company.

Man, you must be massively overpaid! You're not even competent enough to keep your mailbox in order and several hours of your time costs more than paying IT technicians' wages whilst they add new storage, backup capacity, testing, etc. etc.

If I'm your IT support, you've failed as an end user.

Has anybody defined the Exchange problem?

[hey!]

Exactly what is the set of use cases supported by Exchange that the others are missing?

Even if it the difference wasn't what people really need, at least it would be a starting point.

Perhaps not OSS, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Zarafa (dot com). Compatible with MS Outlook with a plugin. Excellent web interface (MUCH better than the craptastic OWA). Closed source, but runs on Linux and uses MySQL/Apache/Postfix as a backend.

Re:If Exchange would run on Linux, I'd consider it

[Blakey Rat]

You're not even competent enough to keep your mailbox in order

My email box *is* in order. It's just 500+ MB of "in order." I happen to be in a field where if a client discovers a new "problem", it's nice to be able to dig back a year and a half and send a reply like, "we discussed this during scoping in 2005, here's a copy of that thread I hope it answers your questions."

and several hours of your time costs more than paying IT technicians' wages whilst they add new storage, backup capacity, testing, etc. etc.

Considering that the IT people working on this will benefit all 250+ users on the same email server, you should divide the value of their time by 250 or so. And yes, that would make my time worth more.

If I'm your IT support, you've failed as an end user.

I have 3.5 GB of email on my home computer, and it runs just fine. If my work computer with IT support doesn't run at least as well as my home computer with just me fumbling around on it, then something is terribly wrong. (And yes, my 3.5 GB of email is backed-up to a remote location.)

eGroupWare

[8083]

eGroupWare is a solution I use in a 1.000 users organization for Calendar, Email, ToDo, News, Addressbook, Wiki, Knowledgebase ... It works with LDAP backend and runs nise.

Covide

[El Jynx]

I disagree. There is actually a webbased, cross-platform, open source CRM/CMS system called Covide which integrates tightly with Asterisk VoIP server. We installed both at our office, and although we're still getting the hang of it, hitherto its functionality has been outstanding. For more info:

http://www.covide.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/covide/
http://asteriskathome.sourceforge.net/
http://www.asterisk.org/

Strange... I posted this yesterday, but it seems to have disappeared into Limbo. Computers are weird, and the programmers are even scarier.

Re:If Exchange would run on Linux, I'd consider it

[JimFive]

Because it takes me several hours to clean out my email during which I'm not getting any actual work done,
...
Having users waste time cleaning out their email is IT failure, plain and simple Several things.

Personal folders are your friend. Get it off of the mail server.

Email was not created to be a file system. If you need that attachment save it somewhere and get it off of the mail server.

Email was not created to be a filing cabinet. If you really need to look back 3 years for meeting minutes those should be in a document store somewhere in a fixed form that can be accessed by anyone who needs it, not in your email folders.

But the real issue for Exchange (at least in the past, I haven't administered Exchange in >5 years) is that it stores everything in these huge files that make it incredibily difficult to administer a reasonable backup and restore process.

--
JimFive

Apache Project's Open For Business

[LiveFreeOrDieInTheGo]

The Apache OFBiz (http://ofbiz.apache.org/) contains a calendar with project management to boot. It's actually a lot more that just a calendar, including open source enterprise automation software (ERP, CRM, SCM, SCM, MRP, EAM, and by adding http://www.opentaps.org/, financial accounting. I just started testing, but it looks good at this early stage.

Why we don't use Exchange

[Roadkills-R-Us]

We never used Exchange. But there are valid reasons beyond being Slashdot reaers (as if that weren't enough).

1) We're a heterogeneous shop with 10% Win, 10% Mac, 80% Linux. The Linux users include people who still use text-based mailers (elm, mutt, etc). Exchange is useless for the latter.

2) We spoke with three consultants. All told us Exchange would need *serious* hardware compared to what we were used to. All told us we'd need to have someone available to spend a lot of time managing it (they know we wouldn't be retaining them for daily operations and maintenance, so that wasn't it). Every last one of them came in with a total package cost well over $10K for hardware and software. At the time, we were a 50 person company.

egroupware

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using something called eGroupware2... http://www.egroupware.org/

It's pretty full-featured if you add all the modules.. Calandar, eMail, wiki, knowledge base, project management (with Gandt charting, etc)....

Airset

[blueup]

You mentioned Google Calendar, so I figure web-based stuff is fair game.
Check out Airset.com; it is Extremely powerful, and its item schema seems to be as complete or better than Outlook's. A sync tool is available for Outlook if you wish to use that for an offline client, but it's a little weak, partly due to Microsoft's data model.

Speaking of which, rather than Outlook's "folder" view, Airset has "groups", which fairly match up with the concept of "tags". You can filter out, filter in, do most things short of an SQL query among your groups to see a particular subset of calendar entries.

It also contains one of the best online contact managers I've been able to find, which also syncs to outlook. (once again, I'd like to bring up the completeness of the item schema/elements)

I don't use the other parts, (I think it has ten or so other services these days) but the calendar and contacts Rock.

Online Calendar

[Anonymous Coward]

Kalooza (www.kalooza.com)does some of what you are asking about. It is free and not integrated with Outlook yet, but I'm sure they will soon.

They're all bad.

[punkrockgeekboy]

Three years ago my company did a comprehensive evaluation of 12 different exchange alternatives, both open source and proprietary. This included OpenXchange, Novell Open Exchange (same thing as OpenXchange but packaged by novell), Bynari, mirapoint, Stalker Communigate Pro, Scalix, KerioMaiLServer6, and another handful of bad pieces of software I've long since forgot. The only one we didn't evaluate was Zimbra. Long story short, they all sucked. It was a two month waste of time. Worse, however, was we ended up purchasing the Mirapoint, which to this date is the worst purchase I've ever made. My parents owned both a Pacer and a Pinto when I was a child. The Mirapoint was worse. That's $30k I want back. It's a brick now, we use it to prop open our cage door. Go with exchange. It's the right tool for the job when the job is "Something that outlook syncs it's free and busy data with properly".

I'd rather just not have those problems.

[arete]

I've heard that about Exchange's monolithic mail stores, which are obviously a huge problem for any kind of size or traffic. But obviously, it doesn't have to be that way... use maildir. I used to agree with your "get it all off the mailserver" philosophy, but now I think it should be "use a better mailserver"

In more details:

I think email is a clearly inferior file _transfer_ mechanism to, say, Subversion, which is what we use to share files we're collaborating on. But if you _don't_ have something like SVN/CVS to use for this, email is perhaps the most accessible system that has offline viewing for all participants, redundant local backups on everyone's machine, and most importantly versioning.

But there's no better way to archive and index email than to keep it as email. If that's how someone DID send you the file, you should be able to look it up there and retrieve it... even if you're going to move old mail to some kind of read-only storage. Moving it all locally onto a not-necessarily-backed-up workstation... and making it difficult to sync to a new workstation - just is not as good as a serverbased solution.

Who'd I piss off? Holy!

[iago-vL]

Haha, somebody seems to have went down my list of recent posts and moderated them all negatively. Was that really a valuable use of 5 modpoints?

That's 5!

[iago-vL]

That's 5 modpoints somebody's blown on me. Unless I've managed to piss off more than one person, life's good! :D