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Why Open Source Matters For Sensitive Email
Jason Baker writes Can you really trust your email provider? And even if you self-host your email server, can you really trust its security if you can't see the code? Over on Opensource.com, Olivier Thierry makes three cases for using open source to power your email solution: The power of numbers, the value of trust, and the importance of leverage.
Email was flowing through open source systems for DECADES before Exchange came out. Today, the vast majority of mail is handled by open source systems.
If you're accustomed to Exchange and want to get that same bloated feeling without the six figure license fees, there are many open source packages designed,for that. Examples include OpenChange, Open X-change, Zumbra, Citadel ...
Of course the vast majority of mail is handled more in the Unix philosophy, rather than one software package that thinks it's a file server (SMB), an MTA, an MDA, a groupware calendar, an IMAP server, and six other things it does poorly, the normal Unix way is if you want IMAP, you install a good IMAP server by clicking on or typing "dovecot". It doesn't have a buggy, insecure file server sticking the out the side that you never asked for.
You've got that backwards. Exchange is the one that requires proprietary clients (it just happens that the major smartphone vendors include proprietary ActiveSync clients out of the box). The others listed use standard IMAP+LEMONADE extensions (which admittedly isn't widely supported by desktop clients, because they generally don't need it).