On Mon, 3 Dec 2001, MJ Ray wrote:
James:
Evolution 1.0 is out. Debs expected in unstable... Well, sometime soon.
Is it true that some of the connectors are non-free?
The Exchange interoperability one is, certainly. Which makes sense, I guess. It's not available yet (due early 2002) and will be priced at $69 ($599 for 10 pack, $1499 for 25 pack). Personally, I'm in favour of this: build a great free client, and then charge a "Microsoft tax" for those people that insist on hooking up to non-free groupware servers. Use the money to fund development of a decent free groupware server, perhaps.
See slashdot or the ximian site: http://www.ximian.com/about_us/press_center/press_releases/ximian_connector....
In any case, I think I prefer tools that "do one thing and do it well". I need to find a better one for email, or make this one better.
I think Evolution *is* a case of doing one thing and doing it well. It's aimed at the groupware end of things, and as such organising PIM and email into one front-end makes a lot of sense. I can see how it could have significant advantages in an office/business environment.
That said, I got bit bad by Evolution betas crashing all over the place and chewing up my email, so I won't be switching any time soon. And don't get me started on the bloated mess of gnome libraries that it hauls onto your system with it. As a matter of fact, I'm back to using the mail client I started off with in 1992, which is still the best IMHO :-)
Andrew.