Improved Thunderbird Still Fails Enterprise Test (eWeek) [LWN.net]

Improved Thunderbird Still Fails Enterprise Test (eWeek)

Posted Oct 9, 2005 15:36 UTC (Sun) by emak (subscriber, #488)
Parent article: Improved Thunderbird Still Fails Enterprise Test (eWeek)

Thunderbird is a mail client, I don't see why it should have schedule management capabilities...

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Improved Thunderbird Still Fails Enterprise Test (eWeek)

Posted Oct 9, 2005 17:12 UTC (Sun) by SlOrbA (guest, #29900) [Link]

Well, yes it shouldn't and that's the problem in communicating with big corporate users.

There should be more over all reviews of firefox, thunderbird and sunbird interoperational setups. Now the programing sense of fragmentation is not seen as an asset, but as a liability of possible unability in co-operation between these projects.

Let's face it M$ has impressive facade of coherent interoperable office software platform and that (the facade) will filter corporate judgement on alternative softwares.

Improved Thunderbird Still Fails Enterprise Test (eWeek)

Posted Oct 9, 2005 20:53 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]

And if they did do a review of Firefox, Thunderbird, and Sunbird together and made any criticisms, we would have an easy path to a reasonable response:

WHAT THE HELL DID THOSE IDIOTS THINK THEY WERE DOING REVIEWING A PROJECT THAT IS STILL AT THE 0.2 RELEASE LEVEL?????

When Mozilla has a browser, email client, and calendar all at the 1.0+ level, the proper reviews will follow.

(BTW, SJVN is more clueful and aware of Open-Source happenings than many give him credit for.)

Improved Thunderbird Still Fails Enterprise Test (eWeek)

Posted Oct 10, 2005 1:37 UTC (Mon) by karath (subscriber, #19025) [Link]

"Thunderbird is a mail client, I don't see why it should have schedule management capabilities..."

It all depends on what the context is. If all you want is a a mail client then scheduling etc. is not required. But if you are looking for a "mail client" for a large enterprise, then not having embedded access to individual and group calendaring is a huge negative.

regards,
Charles

Improved Thunderbird Still Fails Enterprise Test (eWeek)

Posted Oct 10, 2005 14:35 UTC (Mon) by etwilson (guest, #8459) [Link]

It should have calendaring because that is what the customers want. Outlook's calendar functionality is the only thing that keeps many organisations from using open source mail systems.

Improved Thunderbird Still Fails Enterprise Test (eWeek)

Posted Oct 10, 2005 18:25 UTC (Mon) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

It should have calendaring because that is what the customers want.

Are you sure? Many customers don't know what they want, they just know what they're used to, which in this case is probably MSFT Outlook.

Back in the early 80's some people wanted station wagons. Then Chrysler started selling minivans, and quite a few people found out that they didn't really want station wagons after all.

If the only software written is what people think they want, then they may never get what they really want.

Improved Thunderbird Still Fails Enterprise Test (eWeek)

Posted Oct 10, 2005 22:20 UTC (Mon) by alextingle (subscriber, #20593) [Link]

> Are you sure? Many customers don't know what they want,
> they just know what they're used to, which in this case
> is probably MSFT Outlook.

Such arrogance!

Outlook's collaborative scheduling system is really very good. I'm not aware of any free software that can match its functionality or ease of use. (And believe me I've looked, and if I found anything, I'd be using it.)

The open source community needs to acknowledge what's good about the opposition, if they hope to prevail in the end. Just because you want to believe that everything Microsoft makes is rubbish doesn't make it so.

Arrogance?

Posted Oct 10, 2005 23:03 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

The open source community needs to acknowledge what's good about the opposition, if they hope to prevail in the end.

I think that we can hope to educate the public along the way, too; making people prefer open formats and copylefted source code to flashy icons and offers to do everything for you. Even to functionality and ease of use. But you make a good point.

Improved Thunderbird Still Fails Enterprise Test (eWeek)

Posted Oct 10, 2005 23:16 UTC (Mon) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link]

> And believe me I've looked, and if I found anything, I'd be using it.

What do you think is missing in Kolab? What about OpenGroupware.org? What about Open-Xchange? What about phpGroupWare?

Improved Thunderbird Still Fails Enterprise Test (eWeek)

Posted Oct 14, 2005 16:54 UTC (Fri) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

Such arrogance!

My humble opinion.

Outlook's collaborative scheduling system is really very good.

I'm not saying that it's either good or bad. But it's munged together with an email client, which is probably not the optimal solution.

Unless someone has used an email client that hasn't been burdened with additional, unrelated features, they probably don't see the benefit. Mozilla saw fit to release a web browser that wasn't burdened with an email client, and quite a few people found it to be a better alternative than using the Mozilla suite. If Mozilla had not released Firefox, I doubt that many people would be asking for it.

I'm not aware of any free software that can match its functionality or ease of use. (And believe me I've looked, and if I found anything, I'd be using it.)

Again, I'm not comparing Outlook to any existing free/open source calander/email client, but rather (trying to) make the point that a stand-alone calandering system is probably better than having everything munged together into the same binary wad.

The open source community needs to acknowledge what's good about the opposition, if they hope to prevail in the end.

I do not think that it has been convincingly demonstrated that combining everything together into a single program is a Good Thing.

Just because you want to believe that everything Microsoft makes is rubbish doesn't make it so.

I did not state, nor imply, that I believe that everything Microsoft makes is rubbish. You must have (incorrectly) made this inference.

Sorry about the lateness of my reply; I've been off doing non-computer things for a few days.

Improved Thunderbird Still Fails Enterprise Test (eWeek)

Posted Oct 15, 2005 17:59 UTC (Sat) by phudson (guest, #33105) [Link]

"I'm not saying that it's either good or bad. But it's munged together with an email client, which is probably not the optimal solution."

No, I think it is. Or at least you need *very* tight integration. That's the way business works; discussions turn into appointments and meetings, which require arranging through communication with the participants, and meetings cause discussions, need re-arranging etc.

Now, you could implement an entirely separate communication system than email to do that, but I need another place to monitor for messages like I need a hole in the head.

Or you could have the meeting-related messages arrive in email, but the email client treat them as email and the user has to do the right thing.

Or you can recognise that calendering related messages are a major fraction of the email handled by enterprise users, and have the email client do something intelligent with them.

In other words, delivering tools that support what your users need to do trumps technical elegance any time.

Improved Thunderbird Still Fails Enterprise Test (eWeek)

Posted Oct 10, 2005 18:18 UTC (Mon) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

It should, however, handle passing information back and forth with a calendar program, because a lot of schedule management is triggered by (and may even be automated from) email.