Remember that Ximian's business is providing a solid desktop application environment for Linux. Building a desktop client that is compatible with Exchange is far more consistent with their goals than building a replacement for Exchange itself. Having an Exchange compatible client is a *huge* step in making Linux a workable desktop replacement in a corporate environment. From a corporate point of view Exchange is a pretty sweet setup. In addition to integrating e-mail, address book and scheduling services, it makes it easy to apply consistent policies across the company. If the legal weenies say that internal e-mails should be archived for 6 months and external e-mails for 3 years, Exchange can do that for you. If you want deleted messages to be available for recovery for 45 days, Exchange can do that as well. Of course it integrates into the existing MS security model for dealing with authenticating users and assigning privileges, and it can provide access to pop/imap clients and web browsers as well. There are a lot of people with a stake in managing something as simple as e-mail in a large company and Exchange tries to balance off the needs of each group. I personally don't like the way a lot of stuff gets done in the whole Outlook<->Exchange set up, but I can certainly understand why reasonably people might choose to go that route. It seems a bit naive to say that 'sendmail/imap/web-based calendar app' is a drop in replacement for Exchange Server without recognizing the management/administrative issues that products like Exchange, Notes and Groupwise try to address. --rick Dan Taylor wrote: >Can't see the forest for that big tree in front of them I'd bet. >Seriously, from what I've heard from people who've used Outlook, Evolution >is about as close to a verbatim clone as you can get. With the mindset >that develops an application that way, you don't deviate from the >model in any significant way. > > >On Wed, 7 Aug 2002, Callum Lerwick wrote: > > > >>What I don't understand is Ximian is apparently working hard on making >>Evolution talk to Exchange, but why aren't they making their own >>Evolution Serverthingy? They have the client, they just need the server. ;P >> >>_______________________________________________ >>Twin Cities Linux Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >>http://www.mn-linux.org >>tclug-list at mn-linux.org >>https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >> >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >Twin Cities Linux Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >http://www.mn-linux.org >tclug-list at mn-linux.org >https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > >