[Leaplist] exchange replacement?

[Jason Boxman]

John Simpson wrote:
> On 2009-05-13, at 2108, Tom Parker wrote:
>>
>> I have limited experience with the variety of groupware that is out
>> there, but I have become very fond of Zimbra (http://www.zimbra.com).
>> They have an open source free version as well as a pay-per-user
>> version.  You can even use a hosting provider like 01.com if they
>> don't want to buy a server.
> 
> looking at their web site, the first thing which grabs my eye is the 
> phrase "Yahoo! Zimbra".
> 
> i don't trust yahoo, any more than i trust microsoft, verisign, or (pick 
> any bank.) my worry is that by using the software, the license agreement 
> gives yahoo access to the data, or the software sends copies of the data 
> to yahoo for indexing (i.e. "to help you find your data faster", or some 
> other marketing euphemism for "we get to mine your data for marketing 
> purposes") or you're agreeing to allow them to add their own footers to 
> the bottom of every message, like the yahoo webmail interface does...

The great thing about software is you can always artificially box 
yourself out of solutions. ;)  (*recalls 'unfree' QT versus GTK, among 
others.*  ymmv)

I think Zimbra is one of Redhat's supported collaboration suites.  You 
don't have to use the Yahoo Windows client if you don't want to afaik. 
There's an Ajax client[1].

[1] http://www.zimbra.com/products/collaboration.html

<snip>
> - i looked at "kolab server", which is free. i'm not sure of the exact 
> details, but it seems to be somehow tied to KDE, or kmail, or kdepim, or 
> something like that.

Probably unsuitable to your needs.  I haven't deployed it at my office. 
  It's entirely dependent upon KDE, specifically Kontact.  While I am 
happy with Kontact for personal use, it doesn't exactly work in a 
Windows environment.  (There's a KDE/win port, but it's not stable yet 
afaik.)

> - i found something called "citadel", which is not only free, it's GPL. 
> however, it seems to be structured like an old-school BBS system with 
> the internet services (SMTP, IMAP, etc.) tacked on as an afterthought. i 
> honestly don't know what to make of it.

That was my interpretation when I evaluated it myself.  I decided to 
skip it.

The Horde thing also supposedly does calendaring.  It was the worst PHP 
software I've ever attempted to install and the interface was utterly 
useless.  Unsuitable for any purpose.  Not recommended.

Since I looked briefly, I'd always intended to install Zimbra, but 
everyone at the office seems satisfied with Thunderbird and the 
Lightning extension for calendaring.  The tasks interface in Lightning 
is completely useless.

I've been using a nice caldav server, caldav, with a PostgreSQL backend 
store for Lightning.


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