A new open-source effort dubbed OpenGroupware.org has been launched with the explicit intent to create applications that compete with Microsoft Exchange server products.
OpenGroupware.org is a sister project to OpenOffice.org, a community bent on developing open-source desktop applications that compete with Microsoft's dominant Office applications. The two groups identify themselves as separate but complementary and say they intend to work together to ensure interoperability. "Just to be perfectly clear, (OpenGroupware.org) is an MS Exchange replacement," Gary Frederick, leader of the OpenOffice.org Groupware Project, said in a statement. OpenGroupware.org is "important because it's the missing link in the open-source software stack."
In the market for communication server software, or groupware, Microsoft ranks first in number of customers, followed by IBM, Novell, Oracle and a number of smaller companies that are hoping to fill specific niches. Microsoft is set to release a new version of Exchange later this summer, the first major update to the product since releasing Exchange 2000 nearly three years ago. Frederick highlighted the OpenGroupware.org launch as the culmination of a decade-long effort to map all the key infrastructure and standard desktop applications to free software.
Source:
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-1024994.html?tag=fd_top
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