Exchange Comes To Linux As OpenChange

joesmart writes to tell us that new work on OpenChange and KDE seeks to bridge the gap between groupware compatibility and open source. KDE developer Brad Hards spoke at the Linux.conf.au conference and said the goal of OpenChange is to implement the Microsoft Exchange protocols as they are used by Outlook. "OpenChange has client and server-side libraries for Exchange integration and relies heavily on code developed for Samba 4. It is open source software licensed under the GPL version 3. Hards said more work is being done on the client side and 'we have code for the server,' but estimates another 12 months of development is required to produce an OpenChange server ready for production."

Comments

Re:Here we go again.....

[fotbr]

Its been my experience that IT and admin types are more open to change than end users. Sure, they bitch and moan amongst themselves, but they usually don't raise the type of hell that results when the rest of the staff has to adapt to a change.

So a business might be more open to dropping their (quite pricey) exchange server in favor of this, IF their end users don't see any difference while using Outlook, which they already "know".

Re:Here we go again.....

[wrecked]

Exchange 2007 deprecated the Outlook Web Access protocol that Evolution depended on for interoperability. As another Linux user in an Exchange corporate environment, I am anxiously awaiting the day that the Evolution MAPI plugin (which depends on the Samba4 and Openchange libraries) is functional. I've been compiling the development code for the last month, and it's been hit and miss. If anyone is interested: Evolution MAPI tarballs released and the Openchange Evolution MAPI blog.

Re:Here we go again.....

[zig007]

Hear, hear!
Actually, you don't have to have a very large network to run into issues like this.

I decided to switch to a samba-based network at home for (at least) five reasons:

1. When i had ran out of the cost-free licences i got through MSDN-certifications(i was an MSCE) i found out that even a home network would become ridiculously expensive if I wanted even the slightest bit of redundance/fail-over functionality. Which I wanted. For some reason, that's considered "enterprise level" stuff, according to MS. They are SO 1995. Also, customization and scripting support sucked extremely hard. You can't do that, was the standard conclusion.
2. I had huge and completely unexplainable performance and stability issues. I almost went insane by the lack of logging and cost of super-crappy support(first through third level knew less than me and they said the exact same stupid thing, logical reasoning did not work, "tried reinstalling?"), since I had recently started to try Linux and gotten a bit spoiled by the ease of troubleshooting and the fantastic community support.
3. For each version of windows system requirements effectively doubled or tripled, for practically NO ADDED VALUE on the server-side. I couldn't afford to buy new servers every third year for my home network. Also, I wanted it to run on cheap hardware. Yeah, i now about MTBF, but RAID and redundance helps, new drives are cheap and the other parts don't fail as often, especially in even temperatures.
4. I had started to HATE IIS and it's super stupid settings-database which got corrupted resulting in really strange errors for no reason. NOT funny that backing it up still worked. ARRGH!
5. Granted, I wanted to learn more about Linux, Apache, Postgres and LDAP. Which I now do.
6. And oh, I almost forgot. Backups. How did you do that on Windows in 2004 without getting ripped of? I first solved it using scripting and then came Bacula, beautiful and "enterprice-y". Actually, since 2007, it is ported for Windows. I almost don't like that. It must suck. :-)

What were my experiences?

1. That when I did this, things were more difficult than they are today. But everything worked the way it was supposed to.
   And continued to do so. For YEARS.
   I encountered only two or maybe three bugs during my entire transition. As opposed to the almost daily hair-tugging of the windows experience.
2. Text-file-based settings are so ridiculously superior to weird binary file-system entities (the registry) that I don't know where to start.(WHY? WHYYY?)
3. Plain-text, logically localized log files and configurable logging levels are so ridiculously superior to weird binary log-files that I have similar problem of where to start.
4. Community support is ALWAYS better than the paid MS support, since there you can eventually, and quicker, get the answer from the actual developer of the application. And, almost always, someone else have encountered the same problem, so the forums gives you the answers most of the time. Which is great in the case of ReiserFS, where the main developer is incarcerated. :-)
   There is an exception to this, though, and that is if you use really exotic software with a small user base. Obviously the number of questions and answers in those forums are less numerous. On the other hand, It might be easier to get a hold of the developer.

Of course, there's stuff that pisses you off in the Linux world. But it belong almost exclusively to the desktop part of that world.
Administering *nix servers are a dream come true in comparison to the windows server nightmare. Yup, I have nightmares about windows boxens.
Everything is so damn smart and logical. Uh, well sometime maybe not according to YOUR logic, but at least to some logic, which can then be understood.
And things are getting better all the time. Especially the communities. An now I have redundant LDAP, DNS, Backup, DC, clustered databases and so forth. On crap computers with non-crap raid controllers. Don't need much more.
What has gotten better in the MS-world? Vista? The servers, IIS? And their .NET versions?
Well, I can tell you since i am now a windows developer for a living: Not much.