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After 19 Years CMU Discontinues Cyrus IMAP In Favor Of Microsoft Exchange And Gmail (cmu.edu)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the mail-migrations dept.

Long-time Slashdot reader Hobart writes: The Cyrus IMAP server, created by and for Carnegie Mellon University, has lost support of its founding institution. As of last fall, they announced that student and faculty email will be run on Microsoft Exchange, or Google's Gmail suite of apps. The company FastMail seems to be the primary driver of Cyrus IMAPd software now, per their December blog post. Are any Slashdot readers migrating their Cyrus-based services, or are there compelling reasons to chose it over the competition?

14 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. I already left.. by Ostrich25 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I migrated off Cyrus years ago (to Dovecot) because for my small installation needs, Cyrus was obscenely overcomplicated. I also hate Cyrus SASL with the heat of a thousand suns.

    1. Re:I already left.. by Alain+Williams · · Score: 2

      I agree with this. I have installed & maintained some largish Cyrus installations (10,000 - 20,000 mail boxes). It works well but is complicated. Dovecot is what I have used for my more modest recent uses.

    2. Re:I already left.. by UPi · · Score: 2

      Similar story here. I used UW IMAP server and migrated to Dovecot when support for it was dropped by Debian. I tried Cyrus briefly. I don't remember what the exact issues were, I recall not being able to tweak the configuration to mimic UW's operation closely enough. Don't cite me on this, first because I'm completely unciteworthy and second because this happened years ago and my memories of it have faded some.

      I love IMAP and use it exclusively for my e-mail servers. I can connect with multiple clients on multiple devices, organize my folders and keep my inbox tidy. Well as tidy as inboxes get with developers.

  2. CMU Confirms: IMAP Is Dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft

    RIP

    1. Re: CMU Confirms: IMAP Is Dying by Type44Q · · Score: 2

      Now that CMU sold their entire robotics division to Uber, maybe they can develop their AI in an Excel macro.

  3. Meanwhile at the University of Washington by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Funny

    IMAP server support continues. The sole remaining developer, Darrin, recently attempted to escape - but he was quickly apprehended by UW Police and returned to his closet.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Meanwhile at the University of Washington by Nethead · · Score: 3, Funny

      I hope he's not pine-ing away.

      --
      -- I have a private email server in my basement.
  4. So... by cheesybagel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Which administrator is getting the kickback from Microsoft for this particular choice?

    1. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Could very well be nobody did. Like a certain other university I could mention, they might've hired "business managers" to make the university run more like a "business", which to such small minds means that every computer must run windows and all other software must come from the same vendor. "Standardisation", see?

  5. Re:It's complicated. by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Everything it does, dovecot does better.

    Yup - switched a decade ago and never looked back. Thanks for '04-'07 tho.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  6. Re:Hope they look close & rule out GMail... by OrangeTide · · Score: 2

    1: It's ugly and cumbersome to use by default. An Outlook-like interface has proven itself. To make GMail look like Outlook, one must install and enable some 3rd party add-on.

    Please do not mix subjective terms like "ugly" with objective terms like "proven". You're confusing yourself when you do.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  7. Monoculture by manu0601 · · Score: 2

    With many institutions moving to MS and Google cloud mail service, it seems we head toward a dangerous monoculture, or duoculture, at least.

  8. Not quite dead yet by Mostly+a+lurker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While FastMail is based on Cyrus IMAP, and is providing resources for its development and documentation, I think it is to early to declare Cyrus completely finished. In terms of collaboration features, the addition of CardDAV and CalDAV support a few years ago helped somewhat. Lack of its own file sharing tools is a serious limitation, but FastMail has managed a degree of integration with Dropbox.

    Hold off on a variation of the dead parrot sketch for the time being!!

  9. Exchange IMAP by nyet · · Score: 2

    Exchange IMAP performance is atrocious, not to mention completely broken from a standards point of view.