MS Exchange server on FreeBSD?

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org wrote:
> Duo writes:
> 

> 
> When and if another product that is superior comes along, people may
> well move to it.  As far as I know, however, nobody is trying
> to compete
> with Exchange.  It would be a billion-dollar undertaking with very
> high risk, and the market potential just doesn't justify that sort of
> adventure. 
> 

That isn't why they are trying to copy Exchange.  They aren't trying to
copy Exchange because Exchange is a terrible architecture.

By contrast there are a number of companies who are selling messaging
systems/groupware systems that have even more features than Exchange,
(like Lotus Notes) and there are a lot of companies producing mail
software that uses the architecture of "do a few things very well
instead of a lot of thins poorly" ie" the Small is Beautiful philosophy
that UNIX came from.

Exchange does not do everything that a much more extensive product does,
nor is it small enough to be lightweight and fast.  So it really has the
worst of both worlds and none of the advantages of either of them.

> 
> My attitude is that of a longtime IT professional who has grown out of
> petty schoolyard crushes and hate campaigns.  I run whatever does the
> job best.  I don't care who wrote it.  I recommend what I
> consider to be
> objectively best.
>

IT is one of those fields that is large enough so that people still have
more than enough to do if they specialize.  And it is a truism that a
specialist knows their area far better than a generalist, even though
they know everyone else's area far worse than the generalist.

You are claiming yourself to be knowledgeable enough to run anything.
That's a generalist approach.  If you are a true generalist then you
couldn't possibly know mail systems well enough to make an informed 
comparison of Exchange and any UNIX equivalents.  And if you aren't
a generalist, then your a specialist and therefore in your sphere of
expertise you should know much, but in any other area you aren't going
to know anything.  And based on what you have posted so far your sphere
of expertise isn't mail systems.

Ted