Drop-In Replacement For Exchange Now Open Source

Fjan11 writes "Over 150 man-years of work were added to the Open Source community today when Zarafa decided to put their successful Exchange server replacement under GPLv3. This is not just the typical mail-server-that-works-with-Outlook, it is the whole package — including 100% MAPI, web access, tasks, iCal and Activesync. (The native syncing works great with my iPhone!) Binaries and source are available for all major Linux distros."

Comments

Hell yeah

[cromar]

That's right, Microsoft: open source software can gun for you too, motherfuckers!

Re:Hell yeah

[darkpixel2k]

That's right, Microsoft: open source software can gun for you too, motherfuckers!

I'm sure Microsoft is trembling.
The site is so hammered I it took about 4 minutes to load, and the first thing I noticed? Two colums for downloading. The first one says "AGPL3 Only" and the second says "incl. 3 users Outlook support".

Common--you know that that means. "We open sourced part of our software to try and suck you in--but you'll really find it limited until you fork over slightly less that you would have with Microsoft Exchange."

Re:Hell yeah

[miro f]

#define PI 9999999.14159265

Hm, if this works as advertised

[pembo13]

They better start hiring support personnel, because there will likely be profits to be had with service contracts. Maybe even a Redhat buyout/partnership

Over the last few months, I've been forced to use Exchange/Outlook a lot, and for the life of me I don't get the big deal. But I know that people consider it a big deal, so I wish this company the best, and fair

amount of profit.

Re:Hm, if this works as advertised

[noc007]

To answer your question, IMHO the big deal is collaboration, productivity, integration, and a lot of features "just work"*. I'd wager to say that the majority of medium to large companies use MS Office and MS Outlook as their productivity suite and e-mail client respectively of choice.

Collaboration
Setting up meeting requests are simple. I can easily see other people's calendars so I can pick the best time and I can even set a meeting location which will automatically reserve something like the meeting room for example. Meetings automatically get put on my calendar as tentative and I'll receive a notification in case I forget to accept the invitation. Updated meeting change my calendar as well without intervention.

Productivity
I can set reminders, flag e-mails for follow-ups, create folders to organize, create processing rules to eliminate common tasks. A lot of rules will run on the Exchange server without the need of a client running and I don't get unnecessary e-mails on my phone. Outlook maintains a constant connection with Exchange so e-mails are sent and received nearly instantly.

Integration and crap just working
Obviously most MS products can seamlessly integrate well with one another. In the latest version of Outlook I can preview a number of attachments within Outlook without actually opening them up in their designated app, thus a new window. I can set a folder to actually open up a webpage within Outlook to "Integrate" a webapp or just be sly on reading Slashdot.

Phone integration really is a big one for me. Using a WM5, WM6, or iPhone with Exchange ActiveSync is almost the best thing since sliced bread. I remember the days of having a PDA and the PITA it was to do a hard-reset or get a new one. Even getting a new phone and having to manually enter in each contact sucked (I've been a CDMA whore for eight years). All my contacts are kept on Exchange and this allows me to reference and edit them via the phone or Outlook. Having to do a hard-reset or get a new WM phone is no big deal; a three minute sync with Exchange over the air gets me all my contacts back and access to my e-mail. The rare third party apps I use are kept on an SD card. Life is easy getting the execs and lusers up and running as well.

Integration with Active Directory (LDAP) makes my life as an admin easier with GPOs and groups to divvy out permissions. And for some reason all this stuff works without much hassle.

The bad
Exchange and Outlook truly do have their faults. If I were to have my own company, I can't honestly say that I would run them. I wont get too far into the bad since I'm running out of time with the wife waiting on me. If I were to have my own company, I can't honestly say that I would run them. Exchange works great with communication within itself and other Exchange servers. It does a decent job at SMTP transmissions most of the time. The big headache I have right now stems from a tech at MS telling me that "the RFCs for the SMTP protocol are merely suggestions." It's not like SMTP is overly complex; there are only a handful of commands that are exchanged within SMTP communication and Exchange even F's that up. And don't get me started with how Outlook is written in VB.

I'm glad to see some open source Exchange clones out there. I'll eventually run one of them for my server at home just so I can keep my contacts synced when I leave my current company.

To put things into perspective, I'm not a MS fanboy, but I'm not a MS hater either. I know their products well and is a part of my profession. My real passion is UNIX; specifically FreeBSD and OpenBSD. I try to introduce them where possible and applicable. Not to mention there is some stuff I can get done easier and faster with UNIX than I could with MS Windows. Other products out there are just as buggy and bloated as MS's; they just get more attention since they're more widely used.

I hope that Zarafa and others continue to innovate and make a nice profit. Competition is good for innovation and lowering prices; both of which benefits us consumers.

* Setup can be a RPITA. When something doesn't work as expected it can be an easy fix or cause suicide.

Re:Hm, if this works as advertised

[gander666]

Well, the reality is that senior executives have always had personal assistants (used to be secretaries) who really opened all their mail, sorted it, and typed responses to the mundane, and took dictation for the serious ones.

The executives typically have 100% trust in their admin's and this feature is absolutely necessary to the proper functioning of a senior management team. It may seem like a security risk, but in the cases that I am aware of, both users are aware of their status, and it rally operates like it did in the pen and paper days.

Re:Hm, if this works as advertised

[funkatron]

Having others able to act on your behalf without using your login simplifies the process of proving that you did/didn't actually do something. The information about who logged in and did what on whose behalf can easily be logged. If, on the other hand, you have a system where your login has to be used to act on your behalf then the logs can only show your username no matter who actually used your account.

Re:Hm, if this works as advertised

[DragonWriter]

If others can act on your behalf without actually logging in as you, what proof is there that e-mails allegedly sent by you were actually sent by you?

If others can be delegated permissions to act on your behalf in specifically designated manners without logging in to your account, then, if the system logs who did what under what account, there will be accountability.

OTOH, if others can't act on your behalf without logging in as you, and you have a business need them to act on your behalf, you have no choice but to give them your access credentials (dongle, password, whatever) and then there really is no accountability, and no control over the manner in which they can act on your behalf.

So, rather than destroying accountability, supporting delegation enhances accountability (and security).

Re:EAT SHIT FAGGOTS!!

[oahazmatt]

Linux is for the garbage can!

Sweet! What won't Linux run on these days?

GPL'd community edition has limited MAPI clients?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I looked on the Zarafa website, it looked like the free community (GPL) edition had a limited number of MAPI clients. I guess this is still the case? If so, it's not really a practical replacement for Exchange unless you pay for the commercial edition.

Re:If it works as advertised...

[JohnFluxx]

DEFINITELY

(If you're gonna write a word in all caps, spell it right :-) )

Re:Aren't there others like this?

[fishbowl]

>[A]n open source alternative to Exchange would not have Exchange's arbitrary limitations

Oops... if it's not bug-for-bug compatible, it's going to be a problem with some PHB.

Re:Not GPL, maybe not Free Software

[gamanimatron]

Hey, look! FUD!

Umm... and why does this matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former MAPI programmer (don't worry - I've largely recovered) I have to point out that this is utterly irrelevant.

The only compelling reason to use an Exchange compatible server is to support Outlook. The issue is that Zarafa charges for the Outlook connector. This is not a new business model, people, and truth be told its been a fairly common paradigm of 'Exchange-killers' for quite awhile now. Nothing is killed until the connector is free. Full stop.

So why doesn't anyone offer a free connector? Because it is ridiculous amount of work to build and it is something corporations are willing to pay for. It's not that replicating the server functionality is difficult, it's that Microsoft twisted and violated open standards into something utterly unholy known as Exchange to ensure that nobody but Microsoft could communicate with it. MAPI is Microsoft's obfuscation of traditional messaging protocols and is infamously poorly documented.

I wrote about this issue for Redmond magazine about 2 years ago and nothing's changed. The connector is still the kicker and, regardless of how nifty the back-end is, until an open-source Outlook connector appears Exchange will remain one of MS's top 5 products.

Nothing but PR to see here. Move along...

Re:Aren't there others like this?

[hairyfeet]

Xandros with Scalix also works as a drop in,with the added bonus of being able to be either a member or a domain controller in an AD forest. Really nice if you need to support a mixed environment. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Re:Aren't there others like this?

[theshowmecanuck]

Jesus H. Fucking Christ. 99.9999999% of all companies just want to buy a tool that works. They don't want to build the fucking thing. They don't even want to fix it. That's why they buy the support license. This whole 'we can customize the code if we want' is a huge stinking load of specious crap. Companies of any size BUY their software because they don't want to customize software they don't have to. Like office software. Customizing a huge billing system is one thing (if you are a big enough company to warrant doing that), but why would an insurance company, or a local widget maker, or a medical clinic want to become an email server programming company???? Get a grip. They'll go out and buy exchange or lotus notes or whatever because they just want the frickin tool. And if it is buggy so what? It works for the most part and they don't have hire programmers or keep programmers around to fix bugs that said programmers introduced when they screwed around with the source code. It's cheaper to pay for the licence for a year than to pay for an unneeded programmer for a year.

Re:Aren't there others like this?

[theshowmecanuck]

OK ... I'm better now.

Re:Aren't there others like this?

[mistermocha]

Well, there are some of us who work at mom & pop software shops that do have a clatch of intelligent developers on site but don't have a huge budget to buy an email solution.... and we're a lot more than 0.0000001% of all companies.

A week??? You need new employees

[baileydau]

it's around 2,400-- but then you also require 25 outlook licenses.

once again, the price of the software is negligable compared to the cost of 25 employee's salaries...

go ahead, waste a week of each one's time teaching them whats different about the new program.

This is server software we are talking about here. The end users don't change their software (that's the entire point). So there is no cost for retraining end users.

You would obviously have to train the server administration staff, but even if you did put in a "Genuine Microsoft" Exchange server, you would probably still have to do this.

Besides, even if the front end did change, a week of training is a LOT. As it would be replacement software, the concepts are the same, it's only which button you push to do it that changes. So if you can't train them in a matter of hours, if not minutes, you really do need new employees.

Where I work, we use a non-MS stand alone calendaring solution. Our end user training takes a couple of hours.

How long do you think it would take to train users to use the new version of MS Office?

Re:Aren't there others like this?

[Eric Smith]

The MS protocols tend to be crufty because they are developed in secret, don't get any public review, and are allowed to evolve in a completely ad-hoc manner.

That's not to say that all protocols developed by open processes are wonderful, but on average they seem to be better.

Re:Aren't there others like this?

[that this is not und]

The MS protocols are crufty because the direction of the design of them is left up to middle managers.

That should explain it fully to anybody curious.

Re:Aren't there others like this?

[vawarayer]

That's a nice long explanatory answer... for the first question! ;). Do you have an answer for the 2nd?

I might even add... do you have suggestions?

I have already checked out a few of 'em (not necessarily OSS):

• Zimbra
• Scalix
• eGroupware
• PHP Groupware
• Communigate Pro
• Citadel
• Kolab
• Open Groupware
• Open xChange

...of which many of them have a great potential, but I always end up having some trouble somewhere or find 'em not user-friendly/admin-friendly enough.