>What alternatives have you tried?

Squirrel mail for one - hoping to replace owa.  In general, because
exchange is so feature rich and users have come to expect those
features, switching to something else with less features is not an
option.

I have not talked to any developers of mail software and told them
what features to include.  I know software development doesn't
happen in a vacuum, but what is wrong with developers getting out
there looking at features in exchange or notes/domino and trying to
make an open alternative.  I tend to think what keeps them from
doing it is that it is damn hard complicated work.  Most opensource
projects I've seen (not including linux itself) are done by a hand
full of developers,  (look at source forge and see how many
developers a project has) in there spare time.  No way are they ever
going to build an exchange or notes/domino type product.  It seems
to me what software exist on Linux tends to be of
networking/internet related toolsets - not business software.  We'll
never see openSAP for instance.  There doesn't seem to be anyone
interested in building that kind of thing, but if they can build yet
another network tool, they'd be all over that.

As long as I'm ranting, another thing we will never see from open
source software is documentation to the level that is typical of
commercial software.  Why, because it takes a manager at a company
to force coders to document decently and have someone put all the
documentation together.  Documetation is not the glamorous part of
development.  Open source developers can pick an choose what they do
and nobody is there to make them document a thing.  I work with a
guy that is a linux and open source zealot.  Guess what?  He writes
flawless, self documenting code, which only he can understand.  This
is one of the few knocks against open source compared to closed
source.   I try to implement stuff in linux whenever possible and
admin a solaris box, but find when you are talking about small to
medium size business software, generally the best stuff is on
windows and sometimes is even made by microsoft.



IPC 2002