Mozilla and Google — Exchange Killers At Last?

phase_9 writes "The latest version of Mozilla Thunderbird may still only be in beta but already the user community have started creating an extensive set of viable Exchange killers. One such example is the latest mashup between Thunderbird and Google Calendars, providing bi-directional syncing of calendar information from both the client and internet. How long will it be before open-source software can provide a complete, accessible office suite for a fraction of the cost that Microsoft current imposes?"

bi-directional?

Thanks, but I'll stick to girls and Exchange.

It's not going to happen

"One such example is the latest mashup between Thunderbird and Google Calendars [CC], providing bi-directional syncing of calendar information from both the client and internet. How long will it be before open-source software can provide a complete, accessible office suite for a fraction of the cost that Microsoft current impose?"

When Google builds an appliance that can host the apps locally. I am not going to put my companies email on a Google server across the Internet. Google needs to wake up and build an appliance that can be hosted locally within the bounds of a company's perimeter.

Re:It's not going to happen

We'd LOVE to be able to provide an open calendar that can be used by staff and students alike but we won't be relying on a 3rd party to host everything. Much as I'd love to see Exchange finally gone from our campus it won't happen until we get either an appliance or software that we can host in our data center.

There's not really any particular reason that you'd have to use Google calendar to host your calendar. Sunbird and the Thunderbird/Lightning thing work with the iCal format, which you can host on any webDAV server...if you want a web-accessible component, just use a PHP Calendar that also reads iCal. That's what we do at work...Using Google just makes things a little easier.

Re:It's not going to happen

Rule #1 of corporate America - Proprietary information does not leave the company boundaries unless an NDA is in place. Proprietary information is only given under NDA if strictly necessary.

These decisions are made by upper management and lawyers, not IT.

There is no way in hell that my company would EVER move to an externally hosted solution. (Disclaimer: I'm not an IT guy there, but I completely agree with them in terms of keeping things centrally hosted.)

In addition, having critical services hosted externally is Just Plain Stupid. There's not just the issue of Google policy, there are all sorts of other issues such as the hundreds or thousands of miles of fiber, all suscptible to a good backhoeing.

Re:It's not going to happen

"Proprietary information should be stored in whatever place is the best place for it. Criteria that need to be measured include security, accessability, and cost. Most corporations cannot do as well with any of these as a specialist company like Google. Most corporations should not be able to do as well with any of these as Google, since their IT departments are cost centers, not profit centers."
False. You assume that Google's IT department and a corporate IT department have the same goals.

They don't.

Google's business model depends on providing access to their services to people outside of their network, while making sure those people outside of their network only get access to what they are supposed to access.

Corporate network admins, on the other hand, typically give first priority to doing something that Google fundamentally can't without interfering with their business model - prevent outsiders from obtaing ANY access whatsoever to the internal network. This is pretty easy with a proxying firewall. Optionally, after that begin providing access to authorized external users in a controlled and secure manner, such as an IPSec VPN using RSA SecurID tokens for authentication. Google simply can't force all users of their services to go get a SecurID token and VPN in, especially since such VPN systems usually force the client machine into connecting ONLY to the network it is being connected to via VPN.

Their next priority is usually controlling what internal users get access to what, but this is an easier job than "you vs. rest of world". You can usually ensure by methods already in place (Interviews of potential employees, locked doors with badge access and/or combo locks, etc.) that the likelihood of internal users being a skilled cracker is low, although IT departments should still assume that they are. Google can't place men with guns and network monitoring devices (IDS and other sniffers) at every potential user's home to say, "You may be doing something malicious. Stop now."

Re:It's not going to happen

Especially with Googles willingness to turn over e-mail records to The Department of Fatherland Security and the FBI.

Re:It's not going to happen

What bothers me is that there seems to be a definite trend to try and move away from Microsoft controlled solutions to ones either controlled or assisted by Google.

Are we so sure that Google will always be nice? Do we want our online office and email to become dependant on yet another single vendor?

Ok, I don't know anyone but google who could help beat the Microsoft monopoly on office services, but if they do become the dominant player, who's to say that things won't change in the google camp? Anyone who gains power rarely likes to give it up, and is rarely happy for other people to threaten their position.

I'm short on alternatives here, but it's a concern I think a few more people should be pondering.

Re:It's not going to happen

This is a two step process, right. It's more than simply switching from one overlord to another; the idea is to encourage competition between the two. Having two options is clearly better than just the one - not to mention that Apple is also stepping up to the plate with their iCal Server thingy in Leopard.

Your concerns likely have merit, but fortunately, if the market gets broken open, we'll be able to do better than just to choose between giants...

Re:It's not going to happen

>if the market gets broken open, we'll be able to do better than just to choose between giants...

Well, we have open office, but no big migration to it. We have the entire linux os, yet windows still dominates on the server and client side. I have two concerns:

1. Even if you build it, they may not come. Someone could release an outlook/exchange replacement tomorrow and it may very well have zero-effect.

2. Why is it suddenly the goal of OSS is to defeat MS? Can't we just keep making OSS for the sake of making software? This shit is too agenda-driven for me.

3. Google is a close-source corporation that is an infamous data miner. They certainly are not open-source and have little to do with OSS other than token gestures and leveraging OSS to fight MS. Again, more agenda-driven stuff but this time its corporate agenda-driven shit.

When did everyone become a google employee? The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.

Re:Careful now. Think this over carefully.

---Google has engendered nothing like this. For the love of God YES YES YES I would love for Google and Microsoft to trade places in the marketplace. All I ask is that you MIGHTILY resist the urge that all humans have to be suspicious of anything that grows big, such as Google has.

Anything big is slow to move and is an easy target. Big things usually subtract the human element due to bureaucracy. I would say that big things are generally corrupt, and that would indicate Google too.

---Yes they're a corporation. Yes they're in it for the money. But they manage to do it by embracing technology and providing it to a wider base of users for FREE. They can data mine every second of my life if thats all they ask in return.

I dont know where you live, or what you do for a living, but I'm a 25 year old. At our local mall, there's a door with a company plate on it. It idnt spiffy looking, nor are there windows or anything else. They are a marketing firm. They are the ones that Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola and many other companies go to for aggregate and specialized data.

I have participated in a few of these studies (I cannot specify product names.. nda for company name I tested only). I usually am given 10$ worth of goods to test and then do a write up and phone interview for said products.

My average payout for these interviews is ~30$, along with free products, and getting a say on a new product. I KNOW that I'm in a database somewhere and I'm properly compensated for it. When companies come along and want "free information" for "free product", it tells me that what they offer isnt worth it, and my data is worthless.

Word to Google: Tell me how much my information is worth, and Ill pay for information if your product is worth what I deem it to be. Better yet, if they are willing to pay me, I'll list product names and prices and my personal writeups. Not all companies will like what I write.

Re:It's not going to happen

Why is it suddenly the goal of OSS is to defeat MS?

The goal is to to defeat monopolies. Microsoft just happens to be the biggest one in the computing world.

Re:It's not going to happen

Exactly. The point is not to hand Microsoft's monopoly to Google, it's to have both Microsoft and Google fighting every day to be the most useful, most secure, easiest and lowest cost provider of any given service. Microsoft hasn't had any real reason other than pride or paranoia to make any of their office software any better than the bare minimum in over 15 years!

Remember how fierce the word processor market was in 1990? Good God, we had Wordperfect, Word, Wordstar, and AmiPro releasing competing new versions with fantastic new features every few months, selling them for ever-lower prices and offering all sorts of incentives to crossgrade and switch. Since MS gained a complete monopoly on the market, the only interesting thing that has been added was Clippy and the ribbon. That was a decade and a half of research?

Re:It's not going to happen

This has been the attitude in IT for years, however, what advantage do you have by hosting it in house? Most advantages I hear these days are perceived advantages such as data integrity and security that aren't fully true. Most small and medium sized businesses security and data integrity are on a scale that could never compete with Google. Google probably has a given email stored at dozens of locations around the world and can be accessed at any time with any number of simultaneous disasters occurring. In an SMB environment the server can crash because someone tripped over the cord. It's much more fragile and to get to the level of redundancy Google can provide would cost you more than you could ever afford.

Re:It's not going to happen

But if *your* connection to the world is not working you won't get access to you email on Google's servers.
I'm not advocating putting everything local, but it's difficult for one person to foresee the needs of many others.

$PRODUCT killers is a continuum

One end of the continuum, I'll call "type 1:"
Replaces important functionality of the product

The other end, I'll call "type 2:"
Replaces the product

Type 2 means among other things your users won't notice any functional differences and the new product can read and write the old product's files perfectly and/or there is a perfect two-way file-translator available.

Type 2 is rare unless the product is designed around an open specification. For example, some implementations of "gzip" or "cat" are type-2 replacements of each other.

My issue

I used to hate webmail. Thunderbird (Netscape mail before this) was a staple on my desktop. Today, I hate mail apps. Why have a mail app using resources when your browser is open already and webmail (today) works great already?

I have Outlook/Exchange at work, but I use Firefox/OWA instead.

If my browser is open, I prefer to use it.

Re:My issue

The idea of replacing Exchange is not targeted at home users, it's targeted at companies.

Well...

I for one welcome our new spellcheck-less Exhchange overlords.

why just aim for exchange?

next generation PIM suites should be the goal, which exchange falls far short of.

is anyone from the Chandler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandler_(PIM)) team looking into integrating efforts here?

nope

Until my boss can set appointments on my calendar for me, and until anyone in my company can view my calendar (but not anyone outside my company...), I'll still (unfortunately) be forced to have a PC running whose only purpose is to run outlook.

Re:nope

Doesn't google for domains (Google Apps) allow for exactly this type of thing....?

no bloody chance

Speaking as someone at a company who tried very hard for a very long time to 'replace' exchange with OSS, i'll tell you it can't be done. Any kind of mix&match of software and jerryrigging of protocols may, kinda, sorta come close to offering approximately the same sort of capabilities of exchange. However, there will be caveats and gotchas, and all sorts of limitations that joe-users won't put up with or understand having to put up with.

Remember, you have exchange for the company environment, not for just your dev team. And as hard as it may be to admit, exhange+outlook actually functions very well when it's set up and admin'd properly.

One other thing: i know the whole setup is expensive, in terms of hardware and software and licenses. One can argue, that if your company can't afford the outlay for a working exchange environment, your company doesn't need it, and it would probably be a waste of time trying to replicate its features. So call a spade a spade; say you want OSS shared calendars, tasks, e-mail, whatever. But that alone is certainly NOT an exchange replacement.

Re:no bloody chance

One can argue, that if your company can't afford the outlay for a working exchange environment, your company doesn't need it, and it would probably be a waste of time trying to replicate its features.

Until he's proven wrong, this statement is true. 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.

In the distant future there may be a commercial groupware solution based on open source, but it will almost certainly cost as much or more than Exchange.

Re:no bloody chance

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.

Not true.

http://www.citadel.org [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. [linuxjournal.com]

Please don't flame me ...

Once upon a time Lotus Notes was available for Unix. It did all the stuff tfa talks about. (I realize that lots of people don't like Lotus Notes and thereby I don my flameproof suit) What would it take to get IBM to open source Lotus Notes? I haven't used it in ten years but my rememberance of it was that it could do amazing things. Certainly if it were open sourced we wouldn't have to worry about whether Mozilla could produce something with the capabilities of Microsoft's products.

Notes

If my employer is any indication, Notes is still a big source of revenue for IBM, so I can't see them giving that up. My guess is that there is also a good deal of code in there with various copyright owners.

And of course, Lotus Notes is what software would be like if it was written by Satan.

Google is open source?

Although much beloved here at Slashdot, Google is not open source. They are a private, for-profit corporation that happens to have some free APIs. Putting Google and Mozilla in the same category is disingenuous.

Won't happen

...unless those apps are going to also integrate with MS Office.

This is all very clever and wonderful

but until stuff syncs with Outlook, it has no change of defeating it.
I'm not a huge fan of MS, but it's nice that external people can send you stuff (as they use Outlook) and it'll appear in your company outlook calendar.
Sooo if you want to defeat Outlook you've got to produce something that replicates outlook's functionality. I don't care what the other company is using, I just care it works with my outlook (or vica-versa).
Basically my point is we live in an Outlook eco-system. If you want to displace it, then you can't just ignore it and do your own thing (e.g. Mozilla+Google).

Re:This is all very clever and wonderful

but until stuff syncs with Outlook, it has no change of defeating it.

I think this is what you are looking for? http://remotecalendars.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] Provides a bi-directional sync from Outlook to Google Calendar.

Thunderbird? Bwahahaah dont think so!

I give it a chance, then eventually god fed up with it. I went back to Office. ActiveSync is a MUST.

Alternative open-source solution

As a few have already stated, this is a good idea for a single user, but it may be tricky for collaborative scheduling.

Another opensource solution that has piqued my interest is zimbra [zimbra.com], which includes collaborative e-mail, scheduling and many other groupware functions. All the functions work through a web interface as well, but they're now developing zdesktop [zimbra.com] to allow on- and off-line sync/viewing of e-mail, scheduling as so on. It's in alpha, however. There are also programs to use on your mobile [zimbra.com] devices.

I haven't used this system myself, but I'd be interested in any thoughts from sys admins that have successfully (or unsuccessfully) implemented this.

Exchange-replacements

I've for years been eying the open source Exchange replacement projects. The main problem is MAPI-support for Outlook.

Products like Zimbra [zimbra.com] and Scalix [scalix.com] are mostly open source, but their MAPI/Outlook components aren't. OSER [sourceforge.net] was a grass-roots project aimed at developing open source MAPI-support, but has recently been put on hold by the developers.

It might be fair to say that if you have clients using Outlook you shouldn't complain about coughing up cash to have them connect to your exchange-replacement, but after all these years there (to my knowledge) isn't a fully-compatible server-side open source Exchange replacement.

Mozilla and Google? Yeah right. Tell that to a manager with 500 Outlook-using drones.

Possible as of...

About 5 years ago. While it's true that there's no one stop solution, with some poking around sourceforge you can easily replace every app that MS Office comes with (Save for PowerPoint; there may be some PP alternatives out there, but I never use PP anymore, Flash is much more effective for presentations at the expense of it taking slightly longer). Open source stuff is a little bit harder to come by than just normal freeware, though if you keep on digging you'll eventually hit gold.

Sunbird

Why use Thunderbird instead of Mozilla Sunbird? I use Sunbird all the time...I really like it.

GTDmail

I find GTDmail (www.gtdmail.com) a far more interesting mash-up, giving me functionality that I currently can't easily get in Thunderbird.

Maybe TB 2.0 will have sufficient tagging capabilities, but what TB really needs is far easier user-scripting and a built-in script editor. You know, like Greasemonkey only better and specifically for Thunderbird.

Thuderbird's calendar has a way to go

TFA is a bit premature. Thunderbird's calendar has quite a way to go before it'll become a serious threat to anything. This is nothing against Thunderbird (it's been my mail client for years) or the calendar project, just an observation that they are pretty early along with calendars and the UI still doesn't fit really well with the application.

--Pat

Mozilla + Google

I shall call it Mozoogle. Or Googzilla.

Make a clone instead

If you want to kill Exchange as a product, you have to make a clone, not a replacement. This is how we got $500 PCs only a few years after a time when three manufacturers sold them for $2500 each. First they made a clone, and then they branched out. If you make an Exchange clone, Microsoft should welcome the competition as it's good for the economy as a whole. I'm not anti-Microsoft by any stretch, but I like the "people power" of Open Source Software and the added security, comfort and conscience-free use it brings.

Did I miss something?

How long will it be before open-source software can provide a complete, accessible office suite for a fraction of the cost that Microsoft current impose?

Since when is Google "open source"?

Open-source friendly, undoubtedly. Less secretive about (some of their) proprietary code than Microsoft? Sure, though that's not saying much. There's only so much secrecy obfuscated Javascript can buy you, so it's not as if they had much choice. Still, kudos to them for not only accepting that fact, but providing official APIs to some of their services.

But "open source"? Show me where I can go to submit patches to any of their core products, and maybe then I'll agree to that term. Until then, Thunderbird + Google Calendars is no more "open source" than Evolution + Exchange.

When?

I doubt it will ever really happen.

There is too much integration ( vendor lockin? ) of exchange ( via outlook ) with the rest of office ( and AD, and document DRM ) for a 3rd party to ever be considered a 'killer'.

Will OSS choices be an option for a small market share that can do without the integration, sure, but not a 'killer' by any stretch of the imagination.

I'd settle for a MM killer

As in Meeting Maker...Ick.

We schedule our data center jobs etc in MM 7.5 using the colored labels to show who did what. The 15 min intervals & large-ish daily/multi day view keep the app still in use. Add in the goofy MM formatted files & we seem to be stuck using an app that's meant for lightweight use in totally different market.

The ver 8.+ vers for MM choke on 100+ events a day & when they're scheduled to "continue forever" it makes life interesting if you try to replace the app :-(

Outlook's add-in products are important to me

There is a long list of add-in products for Outlook (e.g., at slipstick) that are invaluable for me. And there are important (to me) applications that know how to work with Outlook but not other email clients. So despite all its warts, Outlook is here to stay on my PC's.

Plenty of solutions, not enough adopters

There are great solutions out there for cheap or for free that replace a lot of functionality of Outlook/Exchange. The problem is, compatibility to migrate and user adoption.

The compatibility to migrate is: you can't just copy the data from one server to another because of it's proprietary layout. It was a bad choice in the past and it's now rearing it's ugly head.

The other, user adoption is simple: people don't like change. I've been fired before because I implemented changes in security according to SoX! That company still is not SoX compliant and won't be for a long time, just because the policy changes (disabling auto-login on workstations, locking up after the workday, separating and securing financially sensitive data) are not according to what users want. And it's not the end-user drones, they will accept ANY change, it's the middle-management, people that have been there for 30+ years, micromanaging 10 people, and don't want to change because that would imply that they will actually have to manage something.

I have my personal e-mail and calendar on IMAP, have done it for years. It works on my Mac, Windows, Linux and it works on any system I come. I just point my mailbox to the server and point my calendar to another IMAP folder. Most clients support iCal (Outlook, SharePoint etc. also use iCal, just the wrapper to store it and server-client communication is proprietary). I have implemented similar solutions and it all works, they have shared calendars, e-mail and all the works you can get from Exchange it's open so they can change systems whenever they want, it's cheaper than Exchange and requires less resources.

wise old saying

power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely the more google grows the less i trust it

It doesn't matter, that's not why it gets bought

Exchange is not only purchased for technical reasons. Exchange is purchased so upper management can brag that they're running a company that's all grown up. I'd just successfully tested shared calendars using Sunbird and WebDAV when I got the call that we had to move to Exchange. There was no debate, the issue was not technical.

Must be Blackberry enabled

In order to be succesful Exchange replacement, it has to be Blackberry enabled.
Senior managers, CEOs don't care about the cost saving, they care about their Blackberry.

WebCalendar + Thunderbird/Lightning

I wouldn't consider giving my data to a third party like Google. Sorry but all my business information is confidential and while Google might be able to have more guards, firewalls, and backups if I give Google information that information has already been compromised by Google.

I already run WebCalendar on my local server and it is an excellent program. But I would like to be able to tie it into lightning for calendar sharing. It doesn't work. First, the stable version of WebCalendar doesn't support publishing. The CVS version supposedly does, but while you can import a calendar into lighting, any changes you make there doesn't get published to WebCalendar. Lightning flashes a little bar, gives no errors but reloading the calendar or logging into webcalendar will show that the new changes were never uploaded.

I've never understood what is so difficult about combining email with a shared calendar. That solution alone would prevent the need to setup new exchange configurations. Most small and medium business only need integrated email and calendaring this leads them to Outlook, then they want to share calendars. That leads them to exchange.

As a developer I can't think of any great challenge involved in this (beyond not having time to write a solution myself). I have trouble believing that with (according to some EU state of FOSS paper) 2,000,000 OSS developers nobody has managed to come up with a solution for this basic fundamental and common need.

What about Citadel?

I have seen Citadel mentioned in the past: http://www.citadel.org/doku.php [citadel.org]

I don't know much about it - can anyone comment on whether this could work in place of Exchange?

What are the deployment goals?

Replacing Exchange for which reasons, exactly? Because it it's just in terms of features, security and stability why not Lotus Notes + iCal? Of course you have to pay for Lotus code. By in terms of shared calendars with email and application integration, there aren't many better products I can think of. The iCal piece is for web publishing if you want to go that route.

Old news

I wrote about this [glasgownet.com] over a week ago. Welcome to April.

Anyone thinking this is what Apple is working on..

With the iPhone drama and now the delay in 10.5 plus iCal server, I pray this is a replacement to Windows Mobile, Outlook, and Exchange. Please, please, please.

I won't even read the comments

I am so sick of this drivel. It is always the same. Someone comes up with some 'solution' that is the perfect "insert you own MS product" that will be killed by open source. Think about it people. If it so good, guess what, MS is going to either steal it or buy it. Look at Hotmail. They are the borg, and I have had too much vodka. enjoy.

DKone

mashups?

I'm getting tired of "mashups". Can't we do some "mashdowns" for once? Or how about a "mosh between"? Or maybe a few "mash reruns"?

I think it's time for another "bubble over", myself.

(where's the "-1 Not Actually Funny" rating?)

SyncML

It would be good news if Google used a proper open synchronization protocol like SyncML. Then alternative servers using the same protocol could be used instead of Google. But that's not really in Google's interest, is it?

FYI there are lots of smartphones that support SyncML, in fact anything by Nokia or Sony Ericsson running Symbian OS will do. A good Open Source server and desktop client is needed. I use http://www.mobical.net/ [mobical.net] for synchronizing (over the air) with my Nokia 9300 and that works great. But mobical is only free as in beer and the Nokia is not free at all... The standard is, though...

A widely supported open protocol is the way to beat the MS calendaring stuff, not just moving to another proprietary protocol.

X.

Setting up thunderbird and webdav

Some links here* to get it setup. I just set it up and it's not too bad.
steps:
1) edit httpd.conf and configure webdav (uncomment these):
    - LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so
    - LoadModule dav_fs_module modules/mod_dav_fs.so

2) add a location under web server root to save the calendars to.
Replace parenthesis below with arrowheads per usual apache conriguration.
slashdot strips my arrowheads in the post. Define the calendar user
authentication as the 'cal' user:
(Location /calendar)
      Dav On
      AuthType basic
      AuthName cal
      AuthUserFile calendar

      (LimitExcept GET HEAD OPTIONS)
            require user cal
      (/LimitExcept)
(/Location)

3) create the calendar directory under the web root with write
access for web server. (note: web servers with write access are
potential security holes to watch your logs). On fedora, apache
is a member of the apache group. I give root ownership of the
directory and give write access to the apache group. Adding the
sticky bit to the directory assures users can only delete files
they own, not someone elses.
    - mkdir /var/www/html/calendar
    - chown root:apache /var/www/html/calendar
    - chmod g+w /var/www/html/calendar
    - chmod o+t /var/www/html/calendar

4) create the cal user for httpd and give him a password:
    - htpasswd -c /etc/httpd/calendar cal
    - New password:
    - Re-type new password:
    - Adding password for user cal

5) restart httpd and watch httpd message logs for errors or sucess:
    - /etc/init.d/httpd restart
    - tail -f /var/log/httpd/access_log /var/log/httpd/error_log

6) create new calendar in thunderbird using webdav
    - calendars -> new -> on the network
    - format == caldav
    - location == http://localhost/calendar [localhost]
    - Next
    - name == test
    - Next
    - (Web authorization popup should come up)
    - username == cal
    - password == see_step_4

You should see something in your apache messages logs similar to this if calendar is working:

127.0.0.1 - - [15/Apr/2007:15:12:26 -0500] "REPORT /calendar/ HTTP/1.1" 401 475 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070326 Thunderbird/2.0.0.0"
127.0.0.1 - cal [15/Apr/2007:15:13:08 -0500] "REPORT /calendar/ HTTP/1.1" 405 307 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070326 Thunderbird/2.0.0.0"
127.0.0.1 - cal [15/Apr/2007:15:13:19 -0500] "PUT /calendar/17e23dae-dabc-49c6-83f6-322d0bcba25c.ics HTTP/1.1" 201 298 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070326 Thunderbird/2.0.0.0"

[*] - http://www.twilight-systems.com/flacco/mozcal/inde x.html [twilight-systems.com]

Don't copy - innovate!!

OK, so there is a lot of talk about creating an Exchange clone, an alternative, and most solutions offering a Linux backend that still allows users to use Outlook and synchronize with MS products.

Isn't this just copying and not creating and real value to innovate? Directly creating a Linux Exchange clone that can talk with Outlook, doesn't that just further strengthen the cause to use MS products for the end-user?

The Linux community should embrace a standard compliant Group Calendar, Addressbook, and Mail - This can be provided completely Web-based without the need for a fat client, especially end users with Outlook. Users can access the product using Firefox, Safari of IE, cross-platform.

Food for thought, embrace a new protocol/product that can offer the features Exchange does, but in a radically new way, without the need to support 'Outlook'

One product that has this vision is @Mail [atmail.com] - Keep an eye on the project

Meldware Communication Suite

We're working on providing an open standards based replacement for exchange largely based on Mozilla Thunderbird (but supporting Outlook and Evolution as well) which provides freebusy, full calendar, IMAP, webmail/cal etc. You can look here: http://www.buni.org/mediawiki/index.php/Meldware_C ommunications_Suite [buni.org] for starters. We plan to offer commercial support, but we supply our software under an unqualified open source license (LGPL) rather than a non OSI-compliant "exhibit B" (adware) license or feature limitations.

Re:Evolution???

Evolution replaces Outlook, not Exchange.

Re:Evolution???

We run Evolution at work, and it sucks. It is not stable and does not handle even simple calendaring properly. There are more bugs in it than at a cockroach farm.

I say that and I am sorry, because I love open source, but Evolution is something only a mother can love.

Re:Evolution???

Ok.. It's buggy. Have you submitted bug reports? Doesn't do any good to gripe about the rain if you're not willing to do something about it.

There is such a thing as users wanting products that just work. Open Source does need participation from the community, but this is not just a strength - it is also a weakness. It isn't reasonable to expect that every user of a product should participate in the testing and development of that product. Products that are intended to be used by a broad user base should be stable products and should not require the end user to have to provide input for product development. Clicking "yes, submit error report" is one thing - having to go out of the way to file an error report is another. So long as the open source community continues to respond to complaints by saying, "You should file a bug report!" or "You should develop a patch!" - so long as this sort of thing takes place, Open Source products will lose. It's completely the wrong attitude for developers to have.

Re:Evolution???

Evolution replaces Outlook, not Exchange.

Only if it is intelligently designed.

Re:Evolution???

For those who don't know what Evolution [wikipedia.org] is. Screenshots [gnome.org].

Re:Real Problem

Um... really. I think an enormous percentage of those using the full Microsoft Office suite (with Exchange etc) would disagree with you.

There's nothing out there that can match the usability of Exchange/Office. It's a sad reality, because Exchange/Office is fucking expensive.

Re:Evolution???

Hmm, I have found that Evolution works better with Exchange than Outlook...

Re:Real Problem

It's not about when will Google/Mozilla replace Microsoft Office in usability. That's already happened.

It has? Did I miss a memo or something?

As interesting and featureful as the alternatives to MsOffice are, they are nowhere near gaining sufficient market penetration for the average office user to be using them instead of MsOffice. I think that'll take a teensy bit longer.

And the online google spreadsheet/office package is a bit too basic just yet for mainstream use. You can't even embed charts in the spreadsheet, a bit of a drawback that.

I honestly think Microsoft will start handing out free cut down versions of MsOffice (as in like office 97 level of functionality) if OpenOffice/Google and co become a serious threat. No doubt with some seriously gay restrictions, like how many documents can be open, number of fonts or something.

Re:Not Yet

Why should management accept risk in a support function?

It's one thing to say that you bet the company's future on a revolutionary new widget, and lost. It is another thing to have your company drown in disorganization because it can't make its internal systems work.

The name of the game is good enough, cheap enough, safe enough. If there weren't a safe enough component to the decision making, we'd have had extensive adoption of Linux desktop years ago. For better or worse, you have to chart a low risk path towards new technologies. The ideal thing is to have a set of new killer applications, and suddenly have people wake up and find that they have a parallel infrastructure they are equally or to a greater degree committed to. That's how the PC/server combination supplanted the minicomputer. It's how Linux servers gained widespread acceptance in Internet based roles.

Otherwise, optimization is not worth the risk. Very few people think that Microsoft is the best solution. But plenty of people think it is the safest. And if it is good enough and cheap enough (if not optimally good or optimally cheap), then you're going to have to have a better argument at hand than you think management is being a bunch of spineless stick-in-the-muds.

Re:Not Yet

It is true that the best products are not always the most widely adopted. However, to blame those in charge of IT is a little short sighted and naive. The choices that IT has to make are often more than just technical. Sometimes the best 'technical' solution does'nt make the most business sense.

The purchase cost of any software is just one part of the total cost involved. The costs incurred during the entire product lifecycle are all important. These 'post-purchase' costs are often several times more than the purchase cost. That means the products that are easier to deploy and maintain often mitigate some or all of the purchase costs as opposed to free solutions.

What is really needed to 'dethrone' Microsoft are products that are just as mind-numblingly easy to setup and deploy for businesses. Most don't have the skills or time it takes to configure many open source products. Good documentation and user community support are critical for any product to be accepted by users.

As for the second point, it does'nt matter what product is deployed, if it does'nt go as planned management should have an issue with it.

Re:Huh?

Don't you read the posts before you make your own? Have you read the hundreds of (correct) posters that have said that there is no OSS equivalent to Outlook/Exchange?

Know what Exchange does?

Neither does Microsoft. They're pretty sure it involves patches, though.

Judging from the posts here I imagine replacing Exchange is more of a chew your arm off escape than a found a better girl kind of choice.

Re:Huh?

>>Firefox 2 is years ahead of IE7. Firefox 3 will be light years ahead
>Um, Dude - a light year isn't a measure of time.
Sure it is, its a year!

Re:Evolution???

At $1100 [open-xchange.com] for 25 seats, versus $700 [microsoft.com] for 5 storage groups, monetarily I don't see the point...