From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Nov 13 2:16:33 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from clientmail.realtime.co.uk (simian.realtime.co.uk [213.52.146.137]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 638CA37B41C for ; Tue, 13 Nov 2001 02:16:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from pan.ehsrealtime.com ([213.52.146.196]) by clientmail.realtime.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 163acC-0005rZ-01; Tue, 13 Nov 2001 10:16:24 +0000 Received: from waynep by pan.ehsrealtime.com with local (Exim 3.33 #1) id 163aaU-0000Yf-00; Tue, 13 Nov 2001 10:14:38 +0000 From: Wayne Pascoe To: setantae Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: slightly OT: Unix MTA vs Exchange References: <20011112102721.H71050-100000@cactus.fi.uba.ar> <86bsi77fon.fsf@pan.home.penguinpowered.org.uk> <20011113095014.GA86200@rhadamanth> Date: 13 Nov 2001 10:14:37 +0000 In-Reply-To: <20011113095014.GA86200@rhadamanth> Message-ID: <86r8r3dlki.fsf@pan.ehsrealtime.com> Lines: 44 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG setantae writes: > > If anyone has any information to contradict this, I'd be interested to > > hear it. I'd love to be able to punt a decent alternative to Exchange. > > Despite not being able to find it, I am _sure_ that I say a posting on > the exim-users list sometime in the past that suggested that all of that > functionality was implemented client-side in Outlook, and that an Exchange > server was actually surplus to requirements. That's mostly accurate. The way meetings are generated in Outlook, is that an e-mail is generated with a specific format. Upon receipt, other outlook clients know that this is a meeting request and take actions. This part is doable with any MTA on the backend. When things get tricky is shared calendars. When you have a holiday calendar for the entire department, that is maintained on the central server. Each client that has permissions can change items in this calendar and all other clients see these changes. But wait, there's more :) There is also an outlook web interface to this that allows non windows or mac users (ie. me) to be able to see and book items in shared calendars. This cannot be provided by a generic MTA :) Both of these functions are available through different applications on FreeBSD, but the trick is the integration. Because many large company's have become dependant on being able to do all of this in one place, we really need a solution that will provide this. But because Microsoft controls the desktop, and their client software doesn't easily accept plugins, you basically have to reverse engineer and re-implement the exchange protocol. I looked at doing this a few months back, but its an enormous task and I'm far too stupid. -- - Wayne Pascoe | 'tis far easier to get forgiveness than freebsd@molemanarmy.com | it is to get permission - probably someone http://www.molemanarmy.com | famous, but more often, my Dad. | To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message