[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: a bit offtopic



> 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:

Actually, I'm not probing any business case - I do some study right now. 
Nothing more then that.

Regarding selling clients - I don't think it's profitable so much, but in a 
company where there for example 500 machines, and 50 of them are Linux based 
workstations, you can sell few clients at a very very cheap price (lets say 
$15 per piece).

>
> 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:

Many so far have tried. I've been doing some research and I found something 
like 10 attempts. All of them have failed. I've found a good one (Bynari) but 
their solution seems pretty clumzy (at best) and not explainable so much. Not 
even a demo is available and they're price is not based on anything. Oh, and 
you need other parts (like OpenLDAP) in order to make it work - so it seems.

>      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?

So you use outlook. I always said - use the right tool for the right job.

And regarding free software developers - I like free, but I don't have a 
problem paying for something I want.

>      b. Maybe it's hard creating a *convenient* (for non-experts) interface
>         to outlook, and nobody wanted to do a half-assed job.

Have you ever tried many projects from freshmeat or sourceforge? more then 
half of them are making very bizzare interface for anything - so they do (if 
they do) half-assed job.

>      c. Maybe it's harder to reverse-engineer the protocol than I think...
>

Yes, this one is really hard.

> 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.
>

Again - I was talking first about Exchange server replacement, and 2nd 
outlook clone client for Linux. 

And regarding MS - oh yes, they do make money from the clients - it's called 
CAL (Client Access License) - so sure, they'll give you outlook for free 
(they don't - it comes only with the office suit, and I'm not talking about 
Outlook Express), so they make money both by selling you office (outlook 
price is included in office), and they charge you for money for client access:

Price examples (from various onlibe web sites):

Microsoft Exchange Server with Outlook 2000 5.5 25-Client: $1780-$1895
Microsoft Exchange Server v5.5 w/5 CALs: $1199
Microsoft Exchange Server v5.5 w/10 CALs: $1499

So as you can see - MS does makes money from both client and server, and 
quite good money.

> > 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 ;)

Reverse engineering is legal - MS done it once, Samba guys are doing it 
constantly - and surprise - no one is being sued for that...

Don't take one case (DeCSS) and throw it on others. The DeCSS case is 
different since the person who took the CSS key, violated the EULA. You 
wouldn't be able to use half of your Linux drivers if there wasn't reverse 
engineering envolved - start from Zip drives, webcams, SCSI cards, graphics 
cards etc...

Hetz

=================================================================
To unsubscribe, send mail to linux-il-request@linux.org.il with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
echo unsubscribe | mail linux-il-request@linux.org.il