Novell To Release Ximian Connector Under GPL

ashmodai9 writes "According to this article on LinuxToday.com as well as this press release directly from their site, Novell announced that its "Connector for MS Exchange Server would be integrated into Evolution 2.0 and made available as open source, beginning today with the current Connector 1.4." Apparently, downloads will be available for the current version of Evolution starting May 14th." Thanks to reader crafterm, a snippet from Novell's Connector website: "With the Connector for Microsoft Exchange installed, Evolution functions as an Exchange client, enabling users to become full participants in company-wide group scheduling and other collaborative tasks. Linux and Solaris users can access public folders, Global Address Lists, email, calendar, task lists, and group scheduling information." Update: 05/11 17:58 GMT by T : In related news, ChiralSoftware writes "Codeweavers' long-awaited sequel to Crossover 2.1 is here. Just like the old version, the new version lets you install MS Office on Linux desktops. The new version adds support for Outlook XP, Lotus Notes and Microsoft Project."

Apache?

[Anonymous Coward]

But what does this have to do with Apache?

Yay!

[jargoone]

This is great news! I put in a request a couple of months ago to have this purchased, and I just cancelled that request. It's nice to have one fewer barrier to acceptance.

Now I just have to convince our NT admin staff to turn on Outlook Web Access...

custom contacts form and categories?

[ironhide]

I always wondered if custom contacts forms would work.
And what about categories? In Windows you have to add them to the registry - there is no such thing in Linux.

Novell owns Evolution??

[RedOregon]

Did I miss something somewhere?

"Evolution is Novell's award-winning e-mail and workgroup client for Linux systems..."

When did Novell pick up ownership of Evolution??

I wonder what MS will think of this

[existential goo]

Now that Connector is open-source, it should be interesting to see what MS thinks of this as it will undoubtedly eat into their ability to sell Office as well as they do now.

I also wonder how long it will be before we see some kind of open-source version of Exchange Server itself, replacing MS across the board for Exchange!

Great News

[SmilingBoy]

That's great news - and for those wondering why Novell would release this open source, whereas they could sell it for cash before: Remember, Novell is not primarily selling software but services. They hope to sell more services by freeing the Connector.

That's great news!

[GMFTatsujin]

Any word on when Novell will add, say, GroupWise integration? You know, the server suite they make that competes with Exchange?

Macs.

[saintlupus]

Now only there were some way to access full Exchange compatibility from OS X...

--saint

Wonderful News

[cube_slave]

This is great. A couple developers here at work are trying to get Linux for their workstations. Hooking into Exchange was always a set back. IT did not want to pay for the connector, since it already paid for Outlook.

This is just one less hurdle to overcome. I aplaud Novel's decision.

Paging Steve Jobs!

[toupsie]

Stevie-baby, here is your chance to get Mac OS X into the Enterprise! One of the major problems with integrating Macs in most large scale companies is the Exchange Mail Systems in use. In the past, most Mac OS X users had to load up classic to use the G-d awful Outlook client. The new Office 2004 Entourage client is still not as cool as Stickies, Mail, iCal and Address Book working as a team and the best part, those are built into the OS -- as the connector should be.

Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just hoping to see evolution ported to windows soonish. And heck, seeing the ximian connector integrated into thunderbird would be very cool as well.

Good for KDE folks, too

[Just Some Guy]

I use KDE, so Kontact integrates better with the rest of my desktop than does Evolution. However, this is bound to be good for me, too, since the KDE folks can presumably use this to improve KMail's Exchange support. Oh, to be able to view the company calendar without booting into XP. That would be very, very nice.

Novell, you seriously rock. I know you're doing this for business reasons, but you just bought a lood of goodwill from a bunch of folks in IT departments. Thank you!

OT harp: Now, if KMail would just add IMAP filtering... ;-)

Thank you, Novell

[JediTrainer]

I'd just like to throw that in. I've been waiting for ages and now it's actually possible.

I can actually use my Linux box at work, without relying on my Windows box.

In my particular company, we use Exchange. While I *have* been able to get IE working with Wine, I haven't had any luck with Outlook at all - I need it for its calendar, which everyone else uses. With Evolution plus the connector, I can now throw away my old dusty NT box for good!

We've needed this for a long time, and I am very grateful for this.

Re:Cue Irrelevant Feature Complaints In....

[macemoneta]

How about one of the major features of Outlook that has been missing for three and a half years now? The notes/memos [ximian.com] feature? I, and many other use it extensively, but no matter how many times it has been requested (or who requests it; check the submitter on the listed bug), it has never made it into Evolution.

Re:Wonderful, wonderful - alll we need is a server

[miguel]

You could write the server-side of the protocol this client expects for instance. That should not be too hard.

Specially if you use something like Mono (plug, plug, plug, plug).

Love,
Miguel

Indeed: havoc in redmond

[SlashDread]

Wow.

This is THE single big reason to NOT switch away from Windows in Office Automation. THE. Wow.

I cannot believe, there are not 10.000 alarm bells ringing in redmond right now.

Notice the tarball already avail in source?

Notice how SOON it will be officially? This looks like a planned hit and run to me.

Prediction: Either MS treatens them and they pull it. But the source is out so -pbbbt-. Or expect the next big free software suit to arrive. And it will be pulled, but the source is out so -pbbbt-

If, on the other hand, MS plays nice about this, well, hell just froze over again.

"/Dread"

Not for Exchange 5/5.5...

[Spoing]

I've admined 5.5 over the past few years...and can't get management to switch over to OSS or even newer versions of Exchange that Connector supports. Very annoying...though I do use Evolution to read mail.

Re:Excellent news for the FOSS community!

[bhmit1]

This day is getting better by the minute. I've been getting sick and tired of connecting to exchange via webmail in firefox (or whatever it's called now). They turn off half of the features (spell check, alarms, etc) if you aren't using IE. My company doesn't allow me to setup a rule to forward all my mail off site, so I've been pretty grumpy about company email for a long while.

On an aside, I'm interested in finding a good imap server for evolution that lets me store calendar and address entries on the server. Is that even possible? If not, what other options are there?

Re:Awesome

[Gilesx]

"Now I just wish that Evolution would be properly integrated with KDE. They are doing it with OOo..."

I seriously doubt that's going to happen. For one, Evolution 2 will have parts of C# in it, and we all know how KDE feel about C#...

I see this announcement as yet another nail in the KDE coffin. Novell will want to push Mono big style and are keen to switch Evolution to Mono fully to lock out Sun, who obviously will not include a direct competitor to Java in their desktop distribution. The side effect is that this also locks out KDE, because as witnessed on the KDE developer forums recently, the attitudes of most KDE developers seem to be anti-sematic MS Hating idealists. If Evolution will not work without C#, that's yet ANOTHER library you have to include with KDE - starting to get bloaty now huh?

Coupled with the cross platform for-profit app development licensing restrictions, *and* the Ximian connector now being released for free, this spells a big win for Gnome, and Ximian specifically, and an opportunity missed for KDE. When you also lastly consider that Evolution is almost certainly the most powerful, widely used and efficent free GUI mail app, you really have to fear for the future of KDE and their now apparently hobbyist desktop.

Open SUSE and the new Distro scenario

[InodoroPereyra]

Is it me ? I have the feeling that if Novell keeps opening up (as in GPL) the core of SUSE, then the (perhaps) most polished distro (according to reviews from people I respect) will become extremely popular.

The big picture for commercial distros a couple years back was:

• RedHat, open but not very user friendly.
• Mandrake, even more open (in its development cycle), more polished and user friendly, not as stable.
• SuSE, polished, stable, professional, user friendly, but with closed source bits preventing widespread use.

With RedHat going Fedora (and resigning its mindshare), it wasn't clear what the new scenario sould be. Mandrake was in my mind the great candidate to be the king of the overall distro (from freelading and home users through enterprise solutions), assuming they released more stable corporate versions.

Mandrake did its homework, and they announced a new development strategy with a community release and a later, more stable official release. They probably should add a slower (once a year) corporate option

But now Novell buys SUSE, opens it up and kicks the hell out of the Chess board. RedHat backs up and announces their (late) return to the desktop. Things are getting hot my friends :-)

Groupware Standard

[ash*embers]

If Evolution then connects to Suse's Openexchange Server [suse.com] as seamlessly as to M$'s, then suddenly Microsoft Exchange Server is the unwitting new standard in groupware servers.

Re:Cached Mode?

[cascadefx]

But Exchange/Outlook really is running well! Two things stand out (well having different mail views in OL2K3 is awesome - for example having a view of "follow up" items, or "unread" items separate from the folders they are in):

Virtual folders have been in Evolution forever. I have the same thing set up in Evolution and was shocked when I installed Outlook 2003 and they had it too. I think the interface is BUSY though. I hate the bars that break stuff out by date... it is distracting. The other stuff is interesting (but I have it in Evolution).

I don't know everything that the connector adds, but I am glad to get it... hopefully soon.

This isn't to say that Evolution doesn't have its rough edges. It DOES... but it is amazing for how relatively young it is. I have been using Outlook for years and it only recently got to be very usable. Evolution is a lot further in a shorter amount of time (love the RSS feed aggregator that is built in).

Re:Wonderful, wonderful - alll we need is a server

[IGnatius T Foobar]

You could write the server-side of the protocol this client expects for instance. That should not be too hard.

Sounds doable. I'm a developer on the Citadel [citadel.org] project, which has an open source groupware server. Now that the Connector is open source, we might give some serious consideration towards implementing the required WebDAV API in our web service.

Exchange Server alternatives or better options?

[xeno]

Ok, this is fantastic news. I'll be taking my work laptop and switching over to linux as my primary OS by the end of the week. (And yes, I realize I'm lucky to have an IT dept that will still support me after I do such a thing.) I'm not a zealot about such things; imho Outlook and IE genuinely suck on their own functional/security merits. The only thing I'll miss from a windows client perspective is Visio (yeah, I think MS does make/maintain some good products), but then there's always VMware.

BUT here's the obvious question: When will there be a viable challenger to Exchange Server? Am I missing something big? Last time I looked, most of the messaging solutions were missing a decent calendaring/schedule solution. Oracle's Collaboration Server is so involved/overkill (9cds for a basic install, iirc) that it's out of reach for most small/med orgs, and makes Notes look svelte. Groupwise was pretty obtuse & closed when I last looked. Open Groupware looks interesting (especially with the knoppix-ogo distro), but feels like Openoffice build 635... i.e. not fully baked.

When is a project going to come up with messaging, calendaring (via ical, mapi, etc etc), a repository that isn't as horrid as exchange public folders (maybe something modeled after/improving upon Opentext's Livelink), flexible event notifications (maybe simple stuff like alerts via email/SMS???). I have hopes for IBM's recent office tools announcement, but we'll see. A turnaround for Groupwise? Maybe? Options, I want options, dammit!

-Jon

Re:Lack of feature?

[tiger99]

Yes, the objective should be to get rid of Outlook on the desktop, to get rid of the worm threat. It looks as if that will be the next phase of either Novell's plan, or a culmination of other bits and pieces that are in development.

It seems to me that all the functionality of Outlook could be provided in a browser interface with a bit of clever stuff on the server. If that browser is not IE, then many of the problems simply go away. I don't see that anything Outlook provides can't be done in a better way.

I am looking forward to the next phase of development, a few major breakthroughs on FOSS look like co-inciding with Longhorn being late......

Bynari Insight Server

[OmniGeek]

http://www.bynari.net
This product (not free, but cheaper than Exchange) which, by an odd coincidence, I'm evaluating for purchase in an upcoming IT changeover, replaces an Exchange server and supports both standard and Outlook/Exchange clients with all the calendaring bullhockey PHBs can't seem to do without. They have a separate for-cost Webmail product as well, about which I know little.

Insight Server *looks* very good, and the independent info I've seen also likes it. (If anyone has direct experience good or bad, I'm interested in hearing of it.) I'm looking forward with glee to a MS-free server room...

Also, once upon a time, Bynari was making a free Exchange client, but something happened to that plan and they don't mention it on their site any more.

Maybe now they will fix the bugs

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Evolution/exchange connector for my email every day. Its really flaky. I've become quite familiar with the evolution --force-shutdown command. Maybe now that it is OSS some of these seemingly 'hard to figure out' bugs will get fixed.

No excuses for IT now?

[Tokerat]

For a basic office computer, there is now no excuse for IT to not use Linux, unless there is a specific Windows-only app that is needed.

Linux has any terminal you ever needed, OO.org, and now is fully Exchange-server compatable?

And it's all free?

The only thing that could possibly make your Linux TCO high now is perhaps re-training your tech staff who have undoubtedly been brought up on MS Windows if they went to college in the US, and that's not terribly expensive in the long run...

Re:Wonderful, wonderful - alll we need is a server

[The Slashdolt]

What would be the advantages of writing the server-side in Mono over Java? Not a flame, I'm sincerely curious.

thunderbird?

[twelvemonkeys]

I wonder if thunderbird will be able to integrate the connector into their code?

Some of us are still forced to use windows at the workplace for other reasons (Visio a big one), but would love to have an open win32 email client that can connect to exchange for calendaring reasons.

Re:Exchange Server alternatives or better options?

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

When the Calendar Access Protocol gets finished. Of course, now their talking about having to modify iCal and such to deal with inconsistencies caused by the CAP draft. The CAP draft itself is on draft 12 which is 6 years of development.

If you want a server, see if you can help get CAP out the door: IETF Calendaring & Scheduling group [ietf.org]

From what research I've done, everyone seems to think this will be the final draft, sets up a new project [kiv.zcu.cz]. Although, I am hopeful that the UW project [washington.edu] will be successful, although I have no clue how tough to integrate with Cyrus or Postfix it will be.

Re:I wonder what MS will think of this

[13Echo]

Not only that, but there may be something else to consider.

1) OpenOffice.org is available for several platforms.
2) Ximian is working on putting Evolution integration into OpenOffice.org.
3) Ximian is porting Evolution 2.0 to Windows.
4) ???
4) I think that "Profit!" fits in here somewhere.

Nevertheless, it may be a very good strategy to begin to pull away the strict dependance upon MS Office and Outlook/Exchange. Microsoft still charges Exchange server "seat licenses", but this is just one small step that may very well make a significant impact, especially when MS Office itself is taken out of the equation, and can be replaced with OO.o and Evolution.

Novell is getting to be pretty crafty. Maybe we need to give them a bit more credit? ;)

Re:Excellent news for the FOSS community!

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Furthermore, this creates a OSS project that now directly challeges Outlook, which will exempt users from most of Outlook's exploit issues...

Sorry, but no. First, this 'exchange connector' depends on Outlook web access, so it is not TRULY an Exchange connector. It is more an exchange translator. Second by requiring Outlook web they will cause more sites (not less) to run Iis (internet information server) The only thing worse than a site running exchange (as an MCSE I know) is a site running exchange with Outlook Web enabled. They get all the power of exchange viruses coupled with the ease of IIS viruses for an optimal user experience Sarcasm I hope that they are pursuing a true Exchange connector.

Re:Wonderful, wonderful - alll we need is a server

[dwinship]

You could write the server-side of the protocol this client expects for instance.

Er, no, don't do that unless you want to keep tracking our ever-expanding knowledge of exactly how Exchange works. OpenGroupware made their server work against Connector 1.2, and then it just failed against Connector 1.4.

Admittedly, if they had had the source, they could have figured out why, and fixed things, but the point is that Connector doesn't really have a real, official, documented "protocol". It just does whatever works best for us at the time, and we're always figuring out new things.

If you're going to try to hack in to one of the Evolution backends, it would be better to use the GroupWise SOAP interface, since that does have well-defined semantics. (Although that API will also be changing over time.)

The best would be to get CAP [ietf.org] or CalDAV [ietf.org] finalized and out the door so Evolution can support those.

Re:Excellent news for the FOSS community!

[Lumpy]

but wher the hell is the OSS project to replace exchange?

that is what is needed. this is a great stop-gap. we need an OSS exchange server.

Yes, enter Kolab!

[pointwood]

The Kolab Project [kolab.org] is a project that was sponsored by the German "Federal Agency of IT-Security". The Kolab server is based upon several open source software pieces: OpenLDAP, Postfix, Cyrus IMAP, Apache and more. Kontact (combines the following KDE apps: KMail, KOrganizer, KAddressbook and KNotes) will soon be ready for use as a Kolab client too. There are other clients too.

Re:Wonderful, wonderful - alll we need is a server

[nine-times]

Is this a joke/troll? Miguel de Icaza?

Eh, anyway, why would you try to build a new server technology based on a hack of an old one? I mean, if you're going to spend the time an resources to build a server-end-software, why not develop a new open protocol, or extend IMAP? Why would you try to emulate the bass-ackwards way of accessing an Exchange server that Ximian uses, when you could probably develop a server with something superior to Exchange's unknown front-end access and add that protocol to Evolution?

Buildling from source

[O]

Okay, I'm running gentoo and just built this from source. A couple of things:

Be sure to specify the proper --prefix= to ./configure (probably should be the same one with which Evolution was built).

A few things failed to link. This was solved by adding "-lresolve -lldap" to the proper _LIBS= line in the Makefiles. I only had to do that a couple times.

So, I have it installed and Evolution finds it. It seems to be hung up right now trying to connect to the Exchange server, but at least I got it installed.

Opposite Problem

[awarlaw]

But I Currently have the opposite problem and have yet to find a solution.

I am looking to replace an exchange5.5 with something a little more controllable. Cost is an issue and I have around 50 clients. webmail a must. Currently, we are evaluating and will probably go with SUSE Openexchange.

But, here's the problem:

We also want to replace the outlook clients and I would love to switch to evolution. But, I cannot switch the clients off win2000 because of some propriatary programs that need to run.

The goal here is to be MS free within the next year. And, with the exception of some programs we are currently porting, If I can get the users off outlook I can switch them from 2000 to Linux or BSD and very few would notice the difference.

It took us 3 months to ween the users from MSOffice to Oo with very little complaints/training.

Any thoughts?

Yes, it's lost...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think it's going to be real credible for RH to do a boxed set again? You think the droves that went away will just say "Oh, I'm back to Red Hat, now that they're boxing it again."? IMO, they abandoned me, and I'm not going to be overly eager to jump back on board. I'm looking for two things from my OS provider: 1) quality; 2) consistent understanding of its customer base. These are the problems with MS, no? Why shouldn't we be wary when we see others wavering back and forth on one (or more) of them also?

Any news for Mozilla

[standing_still]

Will Mozilla be integrating the connector?

Don't underestimate the windows bridge

[16K Ram Pack]

For a lot of pieces of software, Windows versions are very important.

Some people may disagree, on the "well, if it's there on Linux, people won't switch".

There are, however, 2 good reasons for building Windows versions. Firstly, people will choose the OSS project instead of a Microsoft one. That's less money for MS to spend on developing lockin, paying lawyers etc.

Secondly, if people have Evolution (to go with Apache, PHP, MySQL, GIMP, Open Office and Mozilla), they can get used to it on Windows. Then, they can pull the plug and continue to use what they've got elsewhere.

Re:Silliness

[Graymalkin]

By allowing Connector to be distributed without encumbrance in other Linux distros they can increase the popularity of Evolution in Windows oriented corporate settings. Increasing Evolution's popularity increases Novell's mindshare in corporate settings. With every copy of Evolution installed on a corporate machine that is one less copy of Outlook sold. With a reduced demand for Outlook Novell is probably hoping the demand for Office will drop as well. Once Office's demand drops it stands to reason that the demand for Windows server products will drop as well.

The goal of Novell, Sun, IBM, and others is to make alternatives to Microsoft viable in corporate settings. Some companies might want to replace Windows on their PCs with Linux or maybe buy a bunch of eMacs. If they're stuck with Windows and Outlook for e-mail and calendaring they might not be able to. If Novell gives that company and out from under Microsoft - via Ximian Connector - they'll be remembered for it when it comes time to replace an Exchange server. By backing open source projects to replace Microsoft they can take advantage of tons of man-hours invested into the projects and the inherent cross-platform capability of the software. Where before a company might have only had the prospect of upgrading to new Windows PCs there's increasing propects of being able yo buy any PC they want running any OS that fits their needs.

This is great news

[Cable]

If you have Linux and want to connect to the firm's Exchange server.

The next step would be to port Evolution to Windows to help ease the migration to Linux. Evolution needs to integrate with OpenOffice.org so that it can take advantage of a word processor to edit messages better and do a spell check.

Re:Don't wait until the 14th.

[Dalcius]

About 50% of the developers for my company (software company/Linux shop) run Linux as their primary desktop, a handful of others run it secondary, and all our new back-end stuff is Linux. We're actually in the process of moving to Exchange as we speak, and this is very welcome news as it makes things just that much easier.

We're just one company in a sea of others, but I'm sure we're not an isolated incident.

Cheers