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Re: a bit offtopic
On Mon, Jun 18, 2001, Hetz Ben Hamo wrote about "Re: a bit offtopic":
> > All in all, I will be quite satisfied with a protocol, not a tool.
> > However, if you decide to develop a tool, make it interoperable with
> > popular calendars, such as KOrganizer, ical, the emacs calendar,
> > reminder, etc.
>
> I'm affraid that won't be possible.
>
> The thing is - if a company would have to reverse engineer the Exchange
> protocol stuff - it wouldn't release it for free - or else they'll have 1000
> competitors within a week. They cannot add support for stuff like KOrganizer,
> ical, emacs caldendar because of 1 reason - they are under GPL'd - which
> means they'll have to release source code, which with it - you can find how
> they reversed engineered it and the story of 1000 competitors starts again.
Hetz, I understood that you are probing for the business-case of a company
selling Outlook clients, and that giving such clients away for free doesn't
leave you with much of a business-case... But you have to consider the
following facts:
1. Someone *can* reverse engineer the outlook protocol and write something
free for generating outlook "confirmations", reading calendar info, and
stuff like that, like the original poster requested, and make it free
software. If your business case requires that nobody will have reversed-
engineered the protocol except you, then you'll be out of business.
I doubt it is so hard to do such a reverse engineering. If I had to guess
I'd say a month of work could be enough for some initial version. So
why such support doesn't exist yet? I don't know, but there can be
several reasons:
a. I think using outlook to schedule appointments is a mortal sin, which
strengthens Microsoft's hegemony. I always get my appointments by
email (outlook does that automatically), and if I want to confirm or
cancel, I email the person who wrote the announcement. Maybe free
software developers think like me, and wouldn't want to touch Outlook
with a ten-foot pole?
b. Maybe it's hard creating a *convenient* (for non-experts) interface
to outlook, and nobody wanted to do a half-assed job.
c. Maybe it's harder to reverse-engineer the protocol than I think...
2. Does Microsoft make a lot of money from selling Outlook *clients*? I doubt
it, since they also provide a web-interface (buggy or not) that people can
use instead of their client. I'd bet they make the bulk of the money from
selling the server software.
So Microsoft itself can one-day release a free outlook client for Linux
or Unix. You'll be out-of-business on the same day.
> Well, I was talking about a server solution to replace Exchange, not for the
> client.
Then why are you against releasing the *clients* (which is what the original
poster was after anyway) freely?
I hope if you think of replacing Exchange, you have a good lawyer - Microsoft
will be at your throat in no time ;)
--
Nadav Har'El | Monday, Jun 18 2001, 27 Sivan 5761
nyh@math.technion.ac.il |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Sign seen in restaurant: We Reserve The
http://nadav.harel.org.il |Right To Serve Refuse To Anyone!
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