Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 09:36:44 -0700 From: Anthony Cordeiro <ren@kana.com> To: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> Cc: Stephen McKay <syssgm@detir.qld.gov.au>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Need anti-exchange ammunition Message-ID: <19991026093644.A20925@kana.com> In-Reply-To: <3815C5F1.3D4F3B14@softweyr.com> References: <199910261348.XAA16538@nymph.detir.qld.gov.au> <3815C5F1.3D4F3B14@softweyr.com>
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On Tue, Oct 26, 1999 at 09:17:05AM -0600, Wes Peters wrote: [snip] > > Our current mail system supports about 1500 people. We know we could do > > the lot with imap and a couple FreeBSD boxes (distributed over the state), > > but I've discovered that the killer argument is that the mail program must > > come with a scheduler/organiser, just like CCMail. Again, management are > > utterly convinced that scheduling and mail are the same stuff. They can > > point to CCMail and say "We want one just like this, except that works". > > We have nothing to offer, calendar wise. Suggestions solicited! > > Netscape Enterprise server. If there is a (recent) version that runs on > FreeBSD, I'd love to hear about it. It's certainly a better answer than > Ex-crud. You really, really want nothing to do with Netscape's Calendar server. Trust me on this one. (Look Ma, I'm on ex-mozilla) Unless they've done a complete re-write in the past six months, you don't even want to go there. But, it'll run on any OS you like, so long as it's Solaris. Which means it's really not a consideration for us freaky daemon lovers. The problem here is a major one, and unless something absolutely revolitionary happens, I'm almost willing to concede that the free source crowd has lost the "messaging and collaboration" market. People want point'n' click address books, and whiz-bang one-button calendaring, and such. Exchange gives you all of that and more right out of the box. Sure, it doesn't scale, but all the person paying the bills cares about is that it works. Stripping years off their IS staff's life is not their concern. This is a really tough argument that I've yet to win. NT fanboys can say, "Look, I can just install Exchange, and Outlook on everyone's desk, and all our users are happy". What can I do with FreeBSD? Well, I can set up an IMAP server, okay. Oops, gotta write some sort of script to sync the mail server user database with the NT password database, well, okay. Calendar? Er, flat files and grep? Address book? Well, we've got LDAP, sort of, until Captive Directory shows up with its new LDAP with "extra features", and it's not compatible with anyone's client anymore. Has /anyone/ managed to put together an elegant all-in-one solution on FreeBSD that can run a whole shop, and keep all the Outlook drones happy? We've had a bunch of arguments against Exchange so far, but this is -advocacy. Anyone got a success story for something other than Exchange? --Ren To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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