[TYPO3-dev] Open-XChange vs. Kolab

[Dimitri Tarassenko]

Christian,

On 5/25/06, Christian Jul Jensen <christian at jul.net> wrote:

> No, your claim was that a connector would still be OpenSource, and my
> comment is that while it is, it is still not useful if you don't invest in
> licenses anyway. The point being that it doesn't make a big different as
> free software.

I won't speak for the rest of the world, but in U.S. you'll probably
find very few small businesses that own a server and don't own a Small
Business Server license (which includes Exchange) or an equivalent. In
real life, a U.S. business that would need to have several BE logins
in TYPO3 will most likely have Exchange.

> The point about stealing is maybe a little off, but come on how many private
> people do you know that found the products good enough to pay the license
> for it? They might have license for windows because it was packaged for
> their hardware, but they don't for office / photoshop etc.

Who cares about private people? Isn't TYPO3 a "small to midsize
enterprise-class Content Management Framework"?
(http://www.typo3.com/About.1231.0.html). And yes, I do know how many
people run legitimate software, which happens to be around 78% for
U.S. - http://www.bsa.org/globalstudy/upload/2005-2006%20Global%20Piracy%20Study.pdf
.

> >> The mission of the TYPO3 project is to 'innovate excellent free
> >> software', a connector to a non-free software are hardly within these
> >> goals.
> > Second, following your logic,
> > FreeTDS, samba, unixODBC, ghostscript, ntfs kernel module are not
> > innovative, free or excellent?
> I dont agree that you can deduct that from my stmt.

Yes you can. All of them are "connectors to a non-free software".

> But, let me moderate
> that: Given the fact that we don't have an unlimited resources, I think
> that we should use the ones we have on colloborating software that is as
> close to our goals as possible.

I agree. What I disagree with is emphasis on "free" in the set of
these goals, at the expense of "excellent" and "innovative".

> This very clearly states the difference between your point of view and mine,
> please tell me why Elmar should invest his time in programming a connector
> to Exchange and sharing it with you, when you would never do the same
> thing?

He shouldn't. However, if he has already decided to donate his time
for greater good (and not just helping some corporate leeches that
never give anything in return), to me greater good is larger number of
people who can use the results of this work, even if these people
happen to use a Microsoft product.

> I disagree, I consider the time and money I spent on TYPO3 an investment, it
> enables me to run ny business and make a living from it. I also do it for
> idealogic reasons and because it's fun and I have a lot of friends in the
> community. These are things I also like to invest my resources in.

I think this highly depends on what you see as return on this
investment. While you may see your carma and higher status in TYPO3
community as a return on investment of your resources, these are
meaningless to me. While you may get more business because of being
associated with TYPO3, I can see cases when this is irrelevant (mine).
That's not to say it's not fun, it is, but I don't mix "fun" and
"investment" in the same sentence;) Let's agree to disagree.

> > The time is to get real and aknowledge that at least some Microsoft
> > products are popular not because some Microsoft is a greedy monopolist
> > monster, but because they (the products) are good. And
> > Exchange/Outlook is a prime example of such a product.
> I never claimed otherwise. I only stated that I don't think we should spent
> time on supporting non-free software.

That's where your logic is broken (or, differs from mine, let's say;).
You see writing an Exchange connector as "supporting non-free
software". I see it as "helping people who happen to use TYPO3 and
non-free software". Another aspect that might not be so obvious, is
that whatever the connector connects to, TYPO3 benefits. And I see the
benefit higher when this "something" we are connecting to has larger
install base.

-- 
Dimitri Tarassenko