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Ximian Businesses Apple

Petition to Get Ximian Connector Ported to Mac OS X 27

Posted by pudge from the stick-it-to-the-man dept.
babbage writes "There has been some talk recently on various mailing lists about getting a Mac OS X version of Ximian Connector extension to Evolution, which allows Evolution to interact with Microsoft Exchange 2000 servers much as Microsoft Outlook can. It is already possible to build and run Gnome and Evolution on Mac OS X, thanks largely to projects such as Fink. Ximian is aware of this interest, and has indicated that if enough users expressed a serious interest in buying the product -- the target number was 500 paying users -- they would be willing to produce a Mac OS X port of Connector. To that end, I've set up an petition to help gauge user interest."
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Petition to Get Ximian Connector Ported to Mac OS X More

Petition to Get Ximian Connector Ported to Mac OS X

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  • Nice idea but... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by trollbot ( 542020 )
    I find Mail.app to be a *much* better performing MUA, and it already supports Exchange servers out of the box. Add to that powerful filtering options, near perfect HTML rendering and anti-aliasing, the most complete IMAP4 implementation yet, and the fact that Apple generously supplies it with each and every OS X system, and I see no reason for anything else.
    • I didn't realize that Mail.app had shared calendars and shared addressbooks. There's more to Exchange than MAIL.
      • From the Ximian Connector website:

        Ximian(TM) Connector is a unique extension to the Ximian Evolution(TM) groupware suite that allows Linux and UNIX users to manage personal information and collaborate with co-workers using Microsoft Exchange 2000. With Ximian Connector installed, Ximian Evolution will function as an Exchange 2000 client, enabling users to manage their email, personal and group calendars, address books and tasks lists using existing company Exchange 2000 servers. As a result, workgroups, departments and companies using Ximian software can cost-effectively enhance productivity, integration and support for their growing populations of Linux desktops.

        (emphasis mine)

        --Mike
    • Unfortunately there is no client other than Ximian Evolution w/ Connector that has ever allowed full compatibility with Exchange servers.

      Mail may be a nice e-mail client for most but it certainly doesn't do shared calendaring/messaging/folders etc. with Exchange Server.

      Outlook for Mac was close but not perfect and M$ stopped development long ago. Another company I remember from a year ago had something that also pseudo worked but had an insane licensing structure ($$$$$).


    • Assuming one is within a Network running OS X as the installed OS and you are speaking with other OS X boxes and suddenly you have concerns for Meetings, why the hell would you want to integrate that crap within a Mail application? The purpose of Services is to write applications that do specific tasks well, without the added interdependency of other code you have to manage and reduces the risk of bugs.


      At NeXT we had several Applications we leveraged through Services that were Networkwide, by design, and Calendaring was one of them. And the application put Exchange's Calendering to shame.


      Someone should write a Cocoa calendering application and make such Services available to hook within to Mail.app and bingo your applications remain, lean and if you miss your meeting thats your damn fault. There is a market for it and there are Objective-C developers tenfold more talented than I to do the job well.

  • So what you're saying is... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rope_a_Dope ( 522981 ) on Monday May 20, 2002 @05:10AM (#3549091)
    Let me get this straight. You want people on Slashdot to admit to using Microsoft Exchange?
  • One note: the headline used isn't the one I was expecting. It's not that Ximian has ported Connector, but that I feel people would like to see the company offer a port in the future, and would be willing to pay for it if such a port were to become available. The way the headline is written makes it seem as if it's already happened, but that's not the case.

  • A fortune waiting to be made (Score:4, Informative)

    by d0n quix0te ( 304783 ) on Monday May 20, 2002 @08:52AM (#3550079)
    To the first good, cocoa based exchange compatible client. I can easily see 100k-500k licenses. I bet, Ximian can make more money on a OS X native exchange client than anything else.

    But these guys seem to be blinded by the GNU cause and don't want to make money.

    Think about it Entourage is priced at $150. And lacks Exchange or group scheduling functionality.
    Make a cocoa based PIM with group scheduling and exchange support. You can sell it for $100-$150. Even at a modest 50,000-100,000 units sold that is $5-10 million dollars. This is not improbable given that the number of OS X customers by year end is ~3 million.

    Ximian should get off their ass, hire a Cocoa programmer and develop such a product.
  • Even that this is only half on-topic... is there a way to browse the calendars of other Evolution users, without using an MS-Exchange server?

  • Priorities... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gabe ( 6734 )
    Hey, how about folks get Ximian Evolution to be stable and work well under OSX first?

    I spent a few days compiling all of the stuff that evolution requires using Fink and it works ok, but it's still a tad unstable, and quite slow.

    How many people are even using it under OSX anyways?

    In my experience it was too slow under XDarwin for everyday use. Hopefully the project to port GTK+ to Quartz will work out and it can run "natively". Perhaps that would be faster. Perhaps I should just get a G4. Perhaps Apple should make an iBook with a G4 so they're affordable. Oh well...
  • I'd really like to see it ported as well, as the only reason I have a PC on my desk is to run Outlook and VSS. But Ximian runs the risk of getting seriously screwed by MS if they port Connector. MS already offers a version of Outlook for Mac, but it's a Classic app. There was some debate about whether or not they would make an OS X version, and I don't know where that effort currently stands, but you can bet if they see lots of people purchasing such a thing from Ximian that they'll get right on doing it. It would be as simple for MS as it would be for Ximian - just carbonize the current implemntation, or add Exchange support to Entourage (which isn't free, but most X users that're in a Windows office environment are probably already running MS Office and have it already - personally I hope they take this route, because Outlook Mac is pretty clunky, but Entourage is the best mail client I've ever used).

    As soon as MS does that, I think people will more likely use Outlook/Entourage for X rather than Connector, simply because it's free, or came with Office X.

    Either way though, I guess Ximian stands to make a bit of money in the interim between their release and MS's, only for the expense of porting their client, which probably isn't *that* difficult in the end.
    • Outlook (not Outlook Express) for Macintosh was at best a bastard stepchild of the MS Windows version of Outlook. A simple example: Outlook for Mac can only access Exchange servers, unlike the Windows version which can also access other Internet (POP/IMAP) servers. Shared resources such as Conference rooms: Outlook for Mac users cannot reserve a conference room, while Windows users can. Microsoft has more or less stated (although changes are still under consideration) that an OSX version of Outlook, if developed, or updates to Entourage.X would still not have feature parity with the Windows version of Outlook. (That was my impression from the briefing that Kevin Browne gave at the Silicon Valley Speaker series back on April 10th)

      http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/svspeake r/04-10browne.asp (microsoft.com)

      Entourage.X will talk to an Exchange server via IMAP, but doesn't do calendaring.

      Ximian definitely has a chance to make something good for OSX here.

  • OT: What _is_ a good exchange client? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by psxndc ( 105904 ) on Monday May 20, 2002 @02:56PM (#3553042) Journal
    Let me preface this by saying I set up Evolution under SuSE 7.3 at home a couple weeks ago for general mail and calendaring and it is fantastic! Truly an enterprise level application. Until reading the blurb, I didn't think Evolution had been ported to OS X though. That being said, assuming that it hasn't, what then _is_ a good exchange client for OS X? I want something that can download my mail and especially my calendar. If it has been ported, great, my question is answered. Otherwise, I'd love to hear what people use.

    psxndc

    • That's a Classic app, not OS X native. I'm using Entourage for OS X, and it's proving to be a very good mail client and to do list. It's a very pretty app and I'd like to see what can be done in OS X by either the Outlook 200 team or the Entourage X team.


      There's nothing wrong with Outlook 2001 if you're still using OS 9.1, but you want to move to Office X as soon as the budget allows - it's a damn good package.

  • Personally, I would applaud any such project. The school I go to/work at uses Exchange, and one of the things stopping us from officially supporting OS X is the lack of a native Exchange client (I currently use Outlook 2000 in VPC).

    But doesn't it seem a little self defeating in purpose?

    I mean, Exchange is a corporate solution, used by large organizations. Large organizations aren't going to buy copies of an OpenSouce solution (if they were so darn OSS-friendly, they wouldn't be using Exchange to start with), not to mention, they won't have very many Macs. Besides, MS has officially announced (in a MBU press conference) that they're working on Exchange support anyway.

    I think the project would be better off concentrating it's efforts on Linux, where there's absolutely no support from MS to start with.

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