MS Exchange server on FreeBSD?

[Anthony Atkielski]

Ted Mittelstaedt writes:

> You said you would be interested in other solutions that provided the
> same features as Exchange.  What is wrong, were you not telling the
> truth?

I am telling the truth.  But another solution that provides the same
features as Exchange will have ALL of them, and so it isn't necessary
for me to "list the features I think are key."  The alternate solution
has to have all the features of Exchange, period.

> I look for non-Microsoft solutions because they are cheaper and faster
> and do what I need them to do.

Except that that's not unconditionally true.  Some Microsoft solutions
are cheaper and faster than non-Microsoft solutions.  And there are
other considerations besides price and speed, and in some cases
Microsoft solutions are better even if they cost more or aren't quite as
performant.

I look for solutions, period.  I don't care whether they come from
Microsoft or not.

> To me this to me means better.

Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that to everyone else.

> To someone else who, perhaps, shits money out their ass when they go
> to the crapper, well perhaps they can buy brand new hardware at $30K a
> pop for a server, and make up for the speed difference with it, and
> perhaps they don't care about it being cheaper.

Exactly.  A lot of companies do that ... in part because it is often
cheaper overall.

> Maybe you define better as what is better has more features?

I define better as whatever matches the client's requirements.

> Others may define better as running more reliably.  Still others may
> define better as being more flexible.

There are many criteria for "better."

> I already mentioned Horde in another post.

It does everything Exchange does, and installs in ten minutes from a
single set of CDs?  I don't think so.  In fact, it doesn't even come
remotely close to that.

> And that's just from the open source world. I didn't even look at the
> commercial UNIX products.

They aren't any better.

> That is what they started with but they did also put in some of their
> own code.

Yes, mostly copyright notices. The rest was a hodgepodge of whatever
garbage they could scrape up. They had neither the time nor the money to
build a real messaging system of their own, and they depended on
marketing to hide that fact (for example, "standards-based" was their
euphemism for "we patched together public-domain code"). Unfortunately
for them, they couldn't hide it well enough.

> How much was the investment in FreeBSD?  And who made it?

I don't know, but I'm pretty certain that it pales to insignificance in
comparison to that expended on Exchange. You might be surprised at how
much Exchange cost to develop.

> Why doesen't it count?

I just told you why.  In a Web interface, all the software is on the
server.  The fact that it can be accessed by many dumb client machines
does not equate to running custom client software on those machines.
Web interfaces, as a general rule, are slow, messy pieces of junk that
one uses only as a last resort, when one has no client software instead.

-- 
Anthony