There ARE NO free groupware solutions, there never have been, and I'm starting to think there never will be. The support costs are simply to brutal and impassible an issue for the open source community to deal with.
Citadel is completely open source (not a weird hybrid like Scalix or Zimbra, it is TRUE open source). Choice of web access or fat-client access. There is an Outlook connector currently in beta, for supporting legacy Windows/Outlook desktops. And the whole thing is a single, easy, automatic installation -- you don't have to mix and match a dozen different programs and integrate them manually. All of Citadel's services work seamlessly together because they were designed together, which makes it unique among open source groupware solutions.
The usual phishing tricks will work, and they'll work even better. Phisher creates a link to a phishing site, and the text of the link will point to a ".safe" domain. Naive user is as naive as ever, and thinks "Well, I know that '.safe' means that it's a genuine site, so it's safe to click on it" and cheerfully submits his/her private identity to the phishers.
A keyboard, eh? Today it's for instant messaging. Tomorrow they'll add email and web browsing... eventually, MS Office.
Microsoft is so set in their ways, they won't be able to resist turning this thing into a full-fledged PC.
And once that happens (maybe even before), all of the ugly problems of Windows will find their way into the Xbox. Worms, viruses, spyware, the whole kit & caboodle.
Brace yourselves, folks... the volume of spam which will be delivered by Xbox botnets will be overwhelming.
Forget for a moment the fact that Vista is an incredibly ugly attempt to clone Mac OS. Microsoft made its zillions selling Windows to a PC market that was logarithmically expanding during the 1990's and early 2000's. Now that market is saturated. Everyone who wants a PC has one, and they're not becoming obsolete nearly as fast as they used to. It's not unusual to see people still getting plenty of use out of a five year old PC, especially if they're only running a typical set of corporate applications (office suite, web browser, email program, maybe an in-house app or three that touch databases).
In the 1990's, Microsoft could release a new operating system and make it become ubiquitous in two years based solely upon it being preloaded. Nowadays, not so easy. The ugly ducking that is Vista will have a hard time becoming the dominant operating system -- and that's good, because it'll keep Windows DRM from becoming ubiquitous.
How will this affect other VoIP providers?
on
The End for Vonage?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm surprised no one has posted this question yet: how will this legal battle affect other, smaller VoIP providers? I get my VoIP service from my regional ISP, and I'm very happy with it. They deliver a completely unlocked SIP service to me, and my Asterisk server uses it for outside calls. Will the Vonage patent-wielding kill my local VoIP provider too?
As far as the CIS department (where I took several CIS classes but I'm actually an Electronic Media grad), the C++ and Java programming was taught on Suns, which was great, since I already knew Linux. There were two classes in Visual Basic but as I recall everything else (algorithms, all the introductory stuff, etc) used the Suns.
Suns would have been nice. Back in my day all of the programming classes were taught on a roomful of dumb terminals connected to a Unisys minicomputer... except for a few that were actually taught on the Burroughs A-9 mainframe. And they thought it was high tech.
I'm an alumnus of Kutztown University (1993), and remember the technology environment there being somewhat resistant to change, to put it mildly. If there are any current KU GNU/Linux users there, may I ask you a question: what is it like being a Linux user there nowadays? Does the IT staff give you a hard time about it? Does the current student environment require specific Windows-based programs? Are there elements of the res-net that are difficult to live with if you're not running Mac or Windows?
The only features missing for those categories are email / calendaring / scheduling (similar to Outlook/Exchange, GroupWise or Lotus Notes)
If you're looking for a good open source groupware server, you might want to try Citadel [http://www.citadel.org]. It does a lot of the same things Exchange does, and it does integrate well with popular clients (Thunderbird+Lightning, Kontact, Evolution, and there's even an Outlook connector currently in beta test).
I know we've been down this road before, but Citadel is *good* -- so good, in fact, that Linux Journal has actually declared "Microsoft Exchange, meet your replacement." Give it a try.
$ zdump -v America/New_York | grep 2007 America/New_York Sun Mar 11 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000 America/New_York Sun Mar 11 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400 America/New_York Sun Nov 4 05:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400 America/New_York Sun Nov 4 06:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000
Substitute your timezone name as appropriate. Look for March 11 and November 4 in the output.
To see if you're all set, do this:
$ zdump -v America/New_York | grep 2007
America/New_York Sun Mar 11 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000
America/New_York Sun Mar 11 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
America/New_York Sun Nov 4 05:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
America/New_York Sun Nov 4 06:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000
Substitute your timezone name as appropriate. Look for March 11 and November 4 in the output.
Not so fast. There's more to Linux than just its license. Solaris may be going GPL but it's still built in cathedral mode. And it's not quite as lightweight as Linux.
I think what will be truly interesting to watch is that with Solaris potentially moving to GPLv3 and Linux sticking with GPLv2, Solaris will have FSF/RMS backing it.
What's sad about this is that Fedora people (particularly Alan Cox) are responding by emulating the less attractive part of Richard Stallman -- an assertion that 100.0% ideological purity is more important than actually having people *use* the software.
Both ESR and Mark Shuttleworth have a very realistic and very respectable position: compromise just a little bit on the ideological purity, not to the point of letting anything obnoxious through, but just enough to make the software *useful* to non-hackers. And even that is done with the goal of making it a temporary situation so that we gain enough influence to have those proprietary bits removed eventually.
The Stallman/Cox purist types seem to have conveniently forgotten that the GNU system was bootstrapped by proprietary software. It didn't just emerge fully formed on day one.
Remember folks, Ballmer was talking to financial analysts, not technology people. Ballmer loves to grandstand when he's talking to money. And someday his big mouth is going to get him in trouble.
There's little doubt that there's significant interest in getting out from under Microsoft's thumb. Most people seem to know it, too. Why do people insist on running Windows even though they know Microsoft is hurting them? It is the classic profile of an abusive relationship. The abused party has trouble ending the relationship, even though he/she knows it's the right thing to do.
Come on people, we've seen this game before. Disney/Pixar are conveniently "evaluating" Google Apps so that Microsoft will be pressured to lower their prices on MS Office.
This is the same thing that happened with Linux in the late 1990's. Companies would leak and/or hint that they were doing a serious evaluation of Linux, and Microsoft would suddenly swoop in with deep discounts. In the end, though, Linux actually did take a chunk of that market away from Microsoft, which is why Microsoft now goes to such great lengths to publish a bunch of lies about TCO.
I think the MS Office alternatives are now where Linux was in the late 1990's -- some serious evaluations, some early adopters, but the big migrations are probably still a few years away.
The single biggest fallacy one can make while critiquing the open source community is to think of the community as a single entity with a single set of goals -- or even to think of it as having a top-down management structure. We don't think of the proprietary software industry as a single organization, so why should open source be expected to behave differently?
The second biggest fallacy one can make is to assume that open source intends to attack Microsoft's desktop stronghold head-on. We'll get there eventually, but in the meantime, you *must* remember that in software, as in conventional world domination games, empires begin crumbling on the outside and work their way inwards. Considering that in the late 1990's it was considered a fait accompli that Microsoft had the entire software world sewn up, and in 2007 Microsoft is struggling to stay relevant in everything but the core desktop, it seems we are well on the way to taking down the monster. It won't happen tomorrow -- it probably won't even happen within the next couple of years. But it's happening.
Thank you for stating so eloquently what so many people just don't seem to grok. Linux wasn't designed to be a "Windows Killer" -- it was designed to be a better and free-er Unix. It has succeeded admirably in that goal, largely displacing most of the problematic proprietary Unixes.
Linux has also become *the* operating system with which the plumbing for the next generation of Internet-based apps are built. Why take down the desktop monopolist when you can simply be the technology leader for what comes *after* the inevitable decline of the desktop?
Meanwhile, far more than $450 million would be spent on IT support services, troubleshooting problems created by computers that keep changing their link speed.
Be glad if you've never had to cope with a corrupted Information Store in 5.5.
Been there, done that. More times than I care to remember, actually. Undoubtedly, Exchange 2007 is far more stable than 5.5 ever was. My point is that its complexity has exceeded the ability of a junior sysadmin or "computer guy" to install and maintain it.
He's right about those "largest enterprise customers." The example I've been following is Exchange. If you've installed Exchange 5.5 back in the 1990's, you'd remember a relatively easy installation. Set up Windows NT, pop in the Exchange CD, and you basically had a working system. (It'd be an open relay, but that's another story.)
Fast forward to 2007. In order to install the current version of Exchange you pretty much have to become a directory services expert. You need to know Active Directory pretty well, and basically be at the MCP level of Microsoft-brainwash. Sure, this is great if you're running something like Ford Motor Company and you have 100,000 users at dozens of locations, but what if you're a small to medium business and you just want to set up a basic mail and calendar server?
Disclaimer: the reason I know about this is because I'm involved in the development of Citadel, an open source groupware server. One of the things we focused on was making the installation as easy as Exchange 5.5 used to be. That's my "full disclosure".:)
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.citadel.org
Citadel is completely open source (not a weird hybrid like Scalix or Zimbra, it is TRUE open source). Choice of web access or fat-client access. There is an Outlook connector currently in beta, for supporting legacy Windows/Outlook desktops. And the whole thing is a single, easy, automatic installation -- you don't have to mix and match a dozen different programs and integrate them manually. All of Citadel's services work seamlessly together because they were designed together, which makes it unique among open source groupware solutions.
Don't believe me? Linux Journal reviewed Citadel in the February 2007 issue, and declared, Microsoft Exchange, Meet Your Replacement.
...when you can have both?
The usual phishing tricks will work, and they'll work even better. Phisher creates a link to a phishing site, and the text of the link will point to a ".safe" domain. Naive user is as naive as ever, and thinks "Well, I know that '.safe' means that it's a genuine site, so it's safe to click on it" and cheerfully submits his/her private identity to the phishers.
Dumb idea, game over. Next...
A keyboard, eh? Today it's for instant messaging. Tomorrow they'll add email and web browsing ... eventually, MS Office.
... the volume of spam which will be delivered by Xbox botnets will be overwhelming.
Microsoft is so set in their ways, they won't be able to resist turning this thing into a full-fledged PC.
And once that happens (maybe even before), all of the ugly problems of Windows will find their way into the Xbox. Worms, viruses, spyware, the whole kit & caboodle.
Brace yourselves, folks
Forget for a moment the fact that Vista is an incredibly ugly attempt to clone Mac OS. Microsoft made its zillions selling Windows to a PC market that was logarithmically expanding during the 1990's and early 2000's. Now that market is saturated. Everyone who wants a PC has one, and they're not becoming obsolete nearly as fast as they used to. It's not unusual to see people still getting plenty of use out of a five year old PC, especially if they're only running a typical set of corporate applications (office suite, web browser, email program, maybe an in-house app or three that touch databases).
In the 1990's, Microsoft could release a new operating system and make it become ubiquitous in two years based solely upon it being preloaded. Nowadays, not so easy. The ugly ducking that is Vista will have a hard time becoming the dominant operating system -- and that's good, because it'll keep Windows DRM from becoming ubiquitous.
I'm surprised no one has posted this question yet: how will this legal battle affect other, smaller VoIP providers? I get my VoIP service from my regional ISP, and I'm very happy with it. They deliver a completely unlocked SIP service to me, and my Asterisk server uses it for outside calls. Will the Vonage patent-wielding kill my local VoIP provider too?
Wow, what an original an innovative idea! It's too bad that Google didn't think of this. Or I'd really expect that Sun would have come up with something like this by now. But it took those geniuses from Redmond to deliver true innovation!
I'm an alumnus of Kutztown University (1993), and remember the technology environment there being somewhat resistant to change, to put it mildly. If there are any current KU GNU/Linux users there, may I ask you a question: what is it like being a Linux user there nowadays? Does the IT staff give you a hard time about it? Does the current student environment require specific Windows-based programs? Are there elements of the res-net that are difficult to live with if you're not running Mac or Windows?
Note to NBC and News Corp: it's not a YouTube clone unless you deliver the goods in an easily viewed format (such as Flash) and with no DRM.
I'm pessimistically expecting Windoze Media with lotsa DRM.
"All your installed base are belong to us."
I know we've been down this road before, but Citadel is *good* -- so good, in fact, that Linux Journal has actually declared "Microsoft Exchange, meet your replacement." Give it a try.
To see if you're all set, do this:
$ zdump -v America/New_York | grep 2007
America/New_York Sun Mar 11 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000
America/New_York Sun Mar 11 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
America/New_York Sun Nov 4 05:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
America/New_York Sun Nov 4 06:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000
Substitute your timezone name as appropriate. Look for March 11 and November 4 in the output.
To see if you're all set, do this: $ zdump -v America/New_York | grep 2007 America/New_York Sun Mar 11 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000 America/New_York Sun Mar 11 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400 America/New_York Sun Nov 4 05:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400 America/New_York Sun Nov 4 06:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000 Substitute your timezone name as appropriate. Look for March 11 and November 4 in the output.
Not so fast. There's more to Linux than just its license. Solaris may be going GPL but it's still built in cathedral mode. And it's not quite as lightweight as Linux.
I think what will be truly interesting to watch is that with Solaris potentially moving to GPLv3 and Linux sticking with GPLv2, Solaris will have FSF/RMS backing it.
What's sad about this is that Fedora people (particularly Alan Cox) are responding by emulating the less
attractive part of Richard Stallman -- an assertion that 100.0% ideological purity is more important than
actually having people *use* the software.
Both ESR and Mark Shuttleworth have a very realistic and very respectable position: compromise just a
little bit on the ideological purity, not to the point of letting anything obnoxious through, but just
enough to make the software *useful* to non-hackers. And even that is done with the goal of making it a
temporary situation so that we gain enough influence to have those proprietary bits removed eventually.
The Stallman/Cox purist types seem to have conveniently forgotten that the GNU system was bootstrapped by
proprietary software. It didn't just emerge fully formed on day one.
Remember folks, Ballmer was talking to financial analysts, not technology people. Ballmer loves to grandstand when he's talking to money. And someday his big mouth is going to get him in trouble.
There's little doubt that there's significant interest in getting out from under Microsoft's thumb. Most people seem to know it, too. Why do people insist on running Windows even though they know Microsoft is hurting them? It is the classic profile of an abusive relationship. The abused party has trouble ending the relationship, even though he/she knows it's the right thing to do.
Come on people, we've seen this game before. Disney/Pixar are conveniently "evaluating" Google Apps so that Microsoft will be pressured to lower their prices on MS Office.
This is the same thing that happened with Linux in the late 1990's. Companies would leak and/or hint that they were doing a serious evaluation of Linux, and Microsoft would suddenly swoop in with deep discounts. In the end, though, Linux actually did take a chunk of that market away from Microsoft, which is why Microsoft now goes to such great lengths to publish a bunch of lies about TCO.
I think the MS Office alternatives are now where Linux was in the late 1990's -- some serious evaluations, some early adopters, but the big migrations are probably still a few years away.
The single biggest fallacy one can make while critiquing the open source community is to think of the community as a single entity with a single set of goals -- or even to think of it as having a top-down management structure. We don't think of the proprietary software industry as a single organization, so why should open source be expected to behave differently?
The second biggest fallacy one can make is to assume that open source intends to attack Microsoft's desktop stronghold head-on. We'll get there eventually, but in the meantime, you *must* remember that in software, as in conventional world domination games, empires begin crumbling on the outside and work their way inwards. Considering that in the late 1990's it was considered a fait accompli that Microsoft had the entire software world sewn up, and in 2007 Microsoft is struggling to stay relevant in everything but the core desktop, it seems we are well on the way to taking down the monster. It won't happen tomorrow -- it probably won't even happen within the next couple of years. But it's happening.
Thank you for stating so eloquently what so many people just don't seem to grok. Linux wasn't designed to be a "Windows Killer" -- it was designed to be a better and free-er Unix. It has succeeded admirably in that goal, largely displacing most of the problematic proprietary Unixes. Linux has also become *the* operating system with which the plumbing for the next generation of Internet-based apps are built. Why take down the desktop monopolist when you can simply be the technology leader for what comes *after* the inevitable decline of the desktop?
Meanwhile, far more than $450 million would be spent on IT support services, troubleshooting problems created by computers that keep changing their link speed.
He's right about those "largest enterprise customers." The example I've been following is Exchange. If you've installed Exchange 5.5 back in the 1990's, you'd remember a relatively easy installation. Set up Windows NT, pop in the Exchange CD, and you basically had a working system. (It'd be an open relay, but that's another story.)
:)
Fast forward to 2007. In order to install the current version of Exchange you pretty much have to become a directory services expert. You need to know Active Directory pretty well, and basically be at the MCP level of Microsoft-brainwash. Sure, this is great if you're running something like Ford Motor Company and you have 100,000 users at dozens of locations, but what if you're a small to medium business and you just want to set up a basic mail and calendar server?
Disclaimer: the reason I know about this is because I'm involved in the development of Citadel, an open source groupware server. One of the things we focused on was making the installation as easy as Exchange 5.5 used to be. That's my "full disclosure".