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Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine)
Over at Linux Magazine, Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier takes Zimbra Desktop 2.0 for a spin, comparing it to the email interface that Gmail provides. While there is much to like with Zimbra, which is open source, he found Gmail to be easier to use. "Another major feature for Zimbra is that it allows you to use pretty much any mail service. So you can tie Zimbra Desktop to an IMAP server that you control, and all your mail belongs to you. Totally. For some folks, this feature alone is going to make Zimbra (or another email client) far more desirable than Gmail. While I am sometimes uneasy with Googles ever-increasing collection of data, Im not personally concerned that someone at Google is reading my email. And Googles Gmail reliability has improved to the point that I havent had a problem reaching my mail in several months."
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Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine) Posted Oct 22, 2010 2:08 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
Is a post about Zimbra & Gmail really appropriate for LWN?
Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine) Posted Oct 22, 2010 4:13 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
Zimbra provides an integrated webmail/calendar/etc much like gmail, as an Open Source project. A comparison of gmail with a possible Open Source replacement seems entirely on-topic for LWN.
Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine) Posted Oct 22, 2010 9:35 UTC (Fri) by sce (subscriber, #65433) [Link] Is it really free software though? I tried finding the license for the Zimbra Desktop, and ended up downloading it. In the License.rtf file that accompanies it you're simply asked to go to their EULA. There (under Zimbra Public End-User License Agreement) it says: NOTE: A SOURCE CODE VERSION OF THE ZIMBRA SOFTWARE LICENSED HEREUNDER THAT YOU MAY COPY, MODIFY, COMPILE, EXECUTE, AND DISTRIBUTE IS AVAILABLE TO YOU FREE-OF-CHARGE FROM WWW.ZIMBRA.COM UNDER THE ZIMBRA PUBLIC LICENSE (ZPL), and other open source software licenses. But I could not find any such on their webpage. The EULA states: You may not modify, alter or tamper in any way with the Product (if you desire to make modifications to the Product, please instead use the source code version under the appropriate Open Source Licenses). I suspect this is the same EULA they're using for their other proprietary Zimbra products. In any case, if anyone can actually find a free software version of this software, I'd appreciate it if you let me know. The (linux) version from the download page is not free software (and "open source" doesn't give you much if all you can do is just look at the code).
Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine) Posted Oct 22, 2010 10:24 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] I tried finding the license for the Zimbra Desktop, and ended up downloading it.The licence is here, linked from the open source edition download page here, which in turn is prominently on their products page. The "Zimbra public licence" seems open-source enough to me. The odd thing is that they distribute their binaries under another, proprietary licence: the ZPL is only for their source distribution.
Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine) Posted Oct 22, 2010 15:19 UTC (Fri) by sce (subscriber, #65433) [Link]
The download page you linked to is only for Zimbra Collaboration Suite: A server application which, as far as I can tell, does not bundle Zimbra Desktop. The latter is a client application written about in this article. If the client application really is free software, they're not making it easy for their users to verify (or maybe I'm blind, but not that blind).
Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine) Posted Oct 24, 2010 12:21 UTC (Sun) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] You're right, the desktop does not seem to be open source. (And in fact, the linked article nowhere claims that it is.)
Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine) Posted Oct 24, 2010 18:26 UTC (Sun) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
I stand corrected; thank you. In that case, I agree with the original suggestion that this doesn't seem on-topic for LWN.
Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine) Posted Oct 24, 2010 18:48 UTC (Sun) by sce (subscriber, #65433) [Link] Actually, this bugged me, so I decided to try again. I found a wiki page that said "download zimbra source" as one of the steps to build Zimbra Desktop from source. So I decided to follow the steps on this page and fetched the Zimbra Collaboration Suite from their perforce repository. The directory "ZimbraOffline" seems to contain the Zimbra Desktop sources, and even though there isn't any single license file, all files seems to have a header that states The contents of this file are subject to the Zimbra Public License Version 1.3 ("License"). So my assumption that the server software does not bundle the client application was at least partly wrong since the source for both products was stored in the same source code repository. However, in my defence I must say that they're doing a poor job communicating which license Zimbra Desktop actually falls under, as well as where exactly the code can be found. I mean, even their FAQ states "Zimbra Desktop is open source and free" with no more clarification other than pointing to the EULA that states it's proprietary. So in the end it looks like Zimbra Desktop is licensed under the same terms as the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (apologies for any confusion I might have created). End users might not care, but for programmers or companies that might actually be interested in taking advantage of the open source license it's of course very important. And the lack of clarity makes the open source intentions of Zimbra feel half hearted IMO.
Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine) Posted Oct 24, 2010 19:27 UTC (Sun) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Anybody of the LWN readership actually rebuilt that program? Patched it? Distributed fixes? Sent back bug fixes?
Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine) Posted Oct 26, 2010 17:33 UTC (Tue) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
I dunno from *patches*, but I've filed over 50 bugs, about 20 of which have been worked so far.
Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine) Posted Nov 5, 2010 0:01 UTC (Fri) by cras (guest, #7000) [Link]
I haven't tried myself, but as far as I know SOGo is similar in functionality to Zimbra, plus it's fully open source, including the upcoming Exchange MAPI support.
Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine) Posted Oct 22, 2010 16:20 UTC (Fri) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]
Pabs wrote:
> Is a post about Zimbra & Gmail really appropriate for LWN?
Well, the original article was in Linux Magazine. Please consider the following regarding Zimbra Collaboration Suite... it is made up of many free software components (MySQL, Postfix, SpamAssassin, OpenLDAP, ClamAV, etc) that are harnessed together with a custom Java-based storage engine, POP/IMAP server, and Web 2.0 (or whatever the trendy word is now) web-client. All of that is free software. They do have several proprietary addons like their mobile support, Outlook plugin, and the various feature differences between the Open Source Edition and the commercial enhanced versions. Unlike some products, the Open Source Edition is fully usable and not crippled in any way. Well, I guess it depends on how you interpret the feature matrix for their product line:
So far as the source being available or not, I can tell you that the proof is in the builds that have been made by community members for platforms Zimbra does not target / support.
I've been using the ZCS OSE for over four years in two installations (hobby and work) and it is very singular in its value as a complete email system. One of the problems I've had with Linux distributions is that no one ships with anything resembling even a half-way usable email system... and it is a very daunting task to engineer one with the available pieces and parts. Zimbra comes with a quantity of everything in an easy-to-install and pleasure-to-use system... and is fairly bug free given the length and complexity of its feature set. Sure it is a resource hog but it scales all the way up to millions of users and they have the deployments to prove it. How many other email systems have you seen mentioned on the cover of the Wall Street Journal (http://www.theopenforce.com/2006/11/zimbra_front_pa.html) being called a major competitor to Microsoft Exchange Server with the paying mailboxes to prove it?
I haven't checked out Zimbra Desktop since the pre-1.0 days so things may have changed... but originally Zimbra Desktop was a scaled down version of the server product created solely (in my opinion) just so they could check off "offline mode" on their feature list. No disrespect to the design / development team around it. Reading the review it appears the Desktop product has expanded some beyond the Collaboration Suite product.
I can understand why the reviewer came to the conclusion he did but I don't think it really addresses the large scale that Zimbra offers over a traditional email client. I have users who have hundreds of thousands of emails and it (ZCS) is still fast and the search is incredible. The fact that virtually all of the functionality of the server product can be scaled down well enough to fit into a desktop application using mostly the same parts, is pretty amazing. Of course, only a small fraction of desktop users would even care about or notice the difference.
Zimbra has changed their license over time. I believe some of the changes were the result of one or more external entities co-opting major portions of their custom pieces and building competing products out of them without giving Zimbra any credit... so they changed their license to stop that from happening... while staying within compliance of the licenses of all of its free software components. Given the fact that it has changed ownership twice, I can't really complain about its state of openness.
Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine) Posted Oct 22, 2010 5:37 UTC (Fri) by jmm82 (guest, #59425) [Link]
I a not concerned that Google is reading _MY_ email because it is really boring, but if I had something to hide I would be a little concerned. Google and the U.S. Government seem to be getting a little more friendly than one would like. I do trust Google to keep my data secure from average Joe gaining access though.
Gmail vs. Zimbra Desktop 2.0 (Linux Magazine) Posted Oct 22, 2010 7:20 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
It does not really matter how 'in bed' Google is with the Government.
The government has decided that since your hosting your information by a third party then you've surrendered your rights to unreasonable search and seizure. They've decided that hosted information like Google (or any cloud services) have instead a collection of really complicated and conflicting rules regarding your 'secret' information. Stuff like if have not accessed a file in six months then that reduces the burden of proof that the government has to do to get access to your information.
Cloud services companies have a lot of liability in this regards and they will fight to protect your privacy when they can, since they need you to trust them in order to get your business. They are less interested in your data then your business, but ultimately they are under the thumb of government and need to interact with them just to be able to do what they do.
This really is a big problem not only for people that want to use 'clouds' for their businesses, but it's also a huge problem for companies that want to provide the hosting services.
Here is Google representative talking about how the problems they have with ECPA:
See also:
> The ECPA has been met with criticism through the years including its failure to protect all communications and consumer records. Under the ECPA it is relatively easy for a governmental agency to demand service providers hand over consumer data that has been stored on servers. All that is required of the agency is a written statement certifying that the information is relevant to an investigation of foreign counterintelligence with no judicial review required. It also increased the list of crimes that can justify the use of surveillance as well as the number of judicial members who can authorize such surveillance. Data can be obtained without a warrant on traffic and calling patterns of an individual or group allowing an agency to gain valuable intelligence and possibly invade privacy without coming under fire because the actual content of the communication is left untouched. While workplace communications are in theory protected an employer must simply give notice or a supervisor must feel that the employees actions are not in the companys interest to gain access to communiqué. This means that with minimal assumptions an employer can monitor communications within the company. The ongoing debate is where to limit the governments power to see into civilian lives while balancing the need to curb national threats. The ECPA falls directly in the middle of this debate both sides wanting revisions and clarifications made by the courts and legislation.
If at any point your or your business does anything that can be considered a political liability when dealing with government, lobbying, or politicians in the future then your going to have to be careful about what sort of things you trust to hosted services.
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