Suggestion to the list maintainer

[James Hawkins]

On Jan 21, 2008 2:44 PM, Kuba Ober <kuba at mareimbrium.org> wrote:
> On Saturday 19 January 2008, Tomas Kuliavas wrote:
> > Sorry to other list readers about offtopic rant, but I can't stand when
> > people attack software that I like.
>
> I don't think what I said amounts to an attack. I've reported what works for
> me, and one of the problems I had with squirrelmail.
>
> > >> Zimbra is commercial groupware suite. SquirrelMail is free webmail
> > >> application. You are suggesting to replace whole user's email system
> > >> with some proprietary locked product.
> > >
> > > It works pretty well, is free as in beer, and the only "closed" parts are
> > > its
> > > Java core. A lot of other stuff, such as the JavaScript framework, and
> > > reused OSS project, are still open-source.
> >
> > Main Zimbra's product is not Open Source Edition. Zimbra sells its
> > products on annual/monthly subscription per seat basis.
> >
> > Outlook, iSync, Blackberry, mobile connectors. Clustering. Backups. These
> > are not open.
> >
> > Do Zimbra admins know how their email setup works or just click on
> > provided buttons? Can they change setup from default values without
> > breaking it completely? Do admins have option to revert their changes, if
> > something breaks? What happens if you deviate from standard OpenSource
> > Edition setup and see cryptic Java errors in your logs or Zimbra web
> > pages.
>
> Considering that Zimbra builds on a big bunch of OSS technologies, I can't
> really imagine it'd be any different if say squirrelmail provided similar
> functionality. I don't think that squirrelmail admins usually know much more
> about "how it works" than Zimbra admins do. In fact, with squirrel I may well
> posit they know next to nothing about squirrelmail, but they do know much
> about their underlying deployment which interfaces via imap. All of this
> knowledge can translate to Zimbra, which happily uses postfix, clamav, mysql
> etc.
>
> > > I have been using it for a year and I really beats everything else out
> > > the hands down. IMHO of course.
> >
> > I've been using SquirrelMail for more than 6 years.
> >
> > You are comparing apples to oranges. Zimbra is not email client. It has
> > email client as part of whole server package. Zimbra's webmail client uses
> > AJAX, has better integration with email system (it is designed for Zimbra)
> > and it can't be compared with SquirrelMail.
>
> Well, in the end it's about what users need. I understand the technical and
> free software argument, but few people will demand email and nothing else
> these days. Certainly business users need way more than that, so for better
> adoption in an institutional setting, squirrel would have to include features
> beyond email.
>
> > Zimbra can't replace SquirrelMail, because it also replaces IMAP, SMTP and
> > POP services and other parts of email setup. Zimbra adds features that are
> > not needed for standard email client.
>
> I've been testing a Zimbra deployment that uses CentOS-provided functionality
> for everything that Zimbra normally carried around, and it works. Not out of
> the box, but it definitely does.
>
> The deal is that unless the "extra" features are integrated into the client,
> they may as well not exist. Calendars and address lists have been part of
> standard client functionality everywhere else for years now (no, I don't use
> Outlook) - considering them "not needed in a standard email client" is simply
> wishing that water flew uphill. If the users want those, one can't tell
> them "suck it up".
>
> > > Having run squirrel for a 5+ years, and some of the most annoying bugs
> > > remaining unfixed (say support for national characters that actually
> > > works in real life)
> >
> > Prove your claims. When these issues are related to broken MIME produced
> > by other software?
>
> Nope. For me, Squirrel can not parse its own emails with Latin-2 characters in
> them. Neither can anything else parse them. It's been like that for years,
> across multiple redeployments, starting at least with RH9. Unless RedHat had
> kept something seriously messed up in their distro over many years, I think
> it's Squirrel's problem.
>
> > I am former SquirrelMail i18n developer and I suspect that you are
> > spreading FUD about SquirrelMail. SquirrelMail has issues, but you and
> > others are free to fix them. If Zimbra has issues, you will have to wait
> > until Yahoo fixes it.
>
> I can only report on what works and what doesn't. I have limited time that I
> can allocate to fixing bugs in software that I'm not working on myself.
>

Please take this discussion OFF LIST.  This has nothing to do with
wine development.

-- 
James Hawkins