Comments on: Microsoft-Yahoo Is Dead, Long Live Zimbra

By: Ken

Ken — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 08:33:52 +0000

Exchange when you talk about about features being crippled, your pretty much describing Exchange. The system manager is a cluster, and a joke. Administrating it is not rocket science, but for the cost, it’s pretty pathetic. While Exchange 2003 came out I didn’t see much improvement, what they gave us OWA, whoopy! You want to talk about crippled, that would be OWA. Zimbra’s Ajax client I found much more useful, and they even had a built in mobile friendly client that I use instead rather than syncing over the air. ALL which included in the open-source version. While I will agree that the Open Source version isn’t open source… it’s just… well free, it does NOT lack features. It’s pretty much the full blown thing minus MAPI, Mobile Sync, Branding (you can’t do that with exchange) and various borderline useless features like doing searches within attachments. Zimbra’s strength is on the Administrator side, I absolutely love managing it, where I have lost my faith in it though is the fact that you cannot attach contacts to tasks, calenders, etc. This was the breaking point for me. If Exchange wants to kill the competition all they need to do is make system manager better (I don’t mean user friendly, just less of a cluster of crap), come up with a nice Ajax client or something to that effect, because OWA sucks, and give us some other mobile options, over the air sync shouldn’t be your only option. Other than that all of Exchange’s best feature functionality is within Outlook, not exchange. Also another thing about Zimbra, where all the cool zimlets?!?! They have NOTHING in the way of Zimlets, it’s a joke.

By: WebDevBB

WebDevBB — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:23:14 +0000

Alex, there is a community (Open Source) version that is free to download and use. I’ve installed it and it works well, without restrictions:

http://www.zimbra.com/community/

The Network Edition (which has the 60-day trial you are talking about) has more benefits, if they are important to you:

http://www.zimbra.com/products/network_edition_benefits.html

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:04:33 +0000

Zimbra is not really open source. Its more like semi-open. Its absolutely useless IMHO. Its essentially proprietary software, with an crippled “open source” demo. In order order to get the “full version” you need to pay for a per seat/per year license.

http://alexvalentine.org/?p=576

By: ig

ig — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:31:19 +0000

I'm not so sure that Zimbra is ever going to provide any real value to Yahoo, even without the threat of a Microsoft takeover looming. Zimbra has effectively painted itself into a corner when it comes to value in terms of cost/benefit. They helped themselves to FOSS underpinnings in order to develop their product quickly, and because of this they are obligated to offer a feature-crippled free version. Because of their well-funded PR department they were able to spin this as "see, we're an open source company" in order to gain some street cred, but anyone who has taken a serious look at Zimbra knows that if you want it to be useful to anything more than the most simplistic of installations, you have to buy the "Network Edition." This effectively locks them out of the marketplace for true open source solutions such as Citadel and Kolab and eGroupware because they're not true end-to-end FOSS. At the same time, they can't raise their prices high enough to make real money with the product, because customers would just as soon go with Exchange. Disclaimer: I'm a Citadel developer, and a proponent of end-to-end FOSS solutions rather than weird commercial hybrids such as Zimbra (or Scalix, for that matter). But I think there's a lot of weight to what I'm saying here.

By: Marcos

Marcos — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:04:03 +0000

adding to my own last post. The only problem may be this:

“3.2 – In any copy of the Software or in any Modification you create, You must retain and reproduce, any and all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices that are included in the Software in the same form as they appear in the Software. This includes the preservation of attribution notices in the form of trademarks or logos that exist within a user interface of the Software.”

I think you can’t convert it to GPL with this, and I’m not sure how will it work for doing something that is fully different than what it had before.

By: Marcos

Marcos — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:00:17 +0000

I don’t see any proprietary restriction on the license. It is a simple mozilla like license (you most provide source for modified files but any added file is just yours).

I don’t think it is a problem if you want to GPLing your code.

By: Randy

Randy — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:11:39 +0000

Now that Microsoft has ended its pursuit of Yahoo!>>>
That’s wishful thinking, my dear!

By: Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér

Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér — Mon, 05 May 2008 09:49:52 +0000

What are the restrictions? Is it compatible with any of the open source licenses?

By: john

john — Mon, 05 May 2008 09:13:08 +0000

Zimbra is not under a open source license anymore. It is under the Yahoo Public License 1.1 which has proprietary restrictions. So who cares?

By: YHOO Shareholder

YHOO Shareholder — Mon, 05 May 2008 05:06:53 +0000

Long Live Zimbra AND Yahoo