[nylug-talk] The futureof Zimbra after Microsoft's bid forYahoo!

[Ron Guerin]

Ajai Khattri wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Feb 2008, Ron Guerin wrote:
> 
>> I'm making this up as I go along, and I think it's *possible*, but I 
>> have no idea how probable.  Steve Jobs does want to take over the world 
>> though, so I have to think he's got an idea or two about how Exchange 
>> helps maintain the Windows dominance of corporate desktops.  To really 
>> play in that market you need to have both a server that provides highly 
>> similar functionality, and you need a plugin for Outlook.
> 
> At least one or two drop-in replacements dont need an Outlook plugin... 
> wonder if they reverse-engineered the protocols?

They must have.  Supposedly it is Very Hard To Do, because guys like 
Ximian/Novell can't figure it out, and do what amounts to Web scraping 
for their "Exchange Connector", unless that's changed.  The only reason 
I'm partial to a plugin is because if you reverse engineer Exchange's 
protocol, then you're subject to Microsoft changing it to screw with 
you, whereas if you go the plugin route, then (I think) you're less 
likely to find yourself broken one morning after Patch Tuesday.

The pricing on PostPath looks a little brutal, IMO.  12 users is free, 
if you need 13 users, you have to buy a 60 user license for $4000.  Even 
if you need 60 users, $4000 doesn't sound all that competitive to me, 
vs. SBS2003, although in theory you might save money on consultants.

One thing I'll throw out here though is I've never liked the tight 
binding of groupware service to mail service.  With Exchange you must 
use the integrated SMTP/IMAP services.  Even here, PostPath works only 
with Postfix.  All the FOSS ones I've seen were tied to some specific 
SMTP server.  I think the starting point for a FOSS groupware server 
should be that it is SMTP service implementation neutral.  Then all 
parties interested in groupware services can work on it, regardless of 
their preferred SMTP server.  I really think dictating what mail server 
you have to use is one of the reasons we've got little to show for all 
the efforts that have been made at this stuff.  It fractures the labor pool.

- Ron