[nylug-talk] The future of Zimbra after Microsoft's bid for Yahoo!

[Ron Guerin]

Ron Guerin wrote:
> Kevin Mark wrote:
>> On Sun, Feb 03, 2008 at 11:44:38PM -0500, George Bourozikas wrote:
> 
>>> Also, has the Yahoo! Public License (which is used for Zimbra Open Source) 
>>> been scrutinized in any way?
>>>
>> If this YPL is indeed 'open-source-like', then at leaast folks should be
>> able to fork it and work around any issues. If not, well, then it
>> wouldn't matter anyway.
> 
> When it comes to stuff like this, the license is almost beside the 
> point.  If not developed by a company paying developers, it won't be 
> developed at all.  One thing you've never seen, and aren't likely to 
> ever see, are community developers hard at work on groupware that's 
> actually useful to anyone.  There is a prevailing attitude that this 
> stuff is beneath them, and that the companies that want it should pay 
> people to write it.

I'm snarky before my caffeine.  I really don't mean to take potshots at 
whatever's out there, which may be useful to people.  But, for all of 
the faults in the Outlook/Exchange implementation, the model is very 
popular.  Geeks may have trouble understanding it, but all consultants 
know when you show someone a mail program, one of the first questions 
they're going to ask is "does it do shared calendars?"  Telling them 
you've got some external or web app that does shared calendars pretty 
much drains the excitement out of the conversation.

- Ron