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LDAP Exchange Gateway

davmail.sourceforge.net

29 pointsvincent_s21 comments

So is this only a gateway for Exchange or can it function as a standalone server, too? What I'm currently looking for is an LDAP/CardDAV solution that's easier to set up than doing it manually with OpenLDAP and co.

it's just an gateway to enable standard clients to talk to an Exchange server

I've used DavMail to stay outlook-free for the last year or so. It seems quite dependable, subject to Exchange's regular brokenness. Mean-spirited windows admins do sometimes lock out the URLs it uses, though.

DavMail + Thunderbird + the Thunderbird "Lightning" extenstion is pretty great. It gets you email, calendar, and active directory contact lookup functionality all without having to install Outlook. It's unfortunate that it requires Java though, because I try not to install Java on any fresh installs due to the security issues.

Used this for several years for myself and another coworker where the IT person was only familiar with windows and we were mac users. He had no ability to provide support. The server was Exchange 2003, so the options were to use windows, buy and use Outlook for work email and Mail for everything else, or get this setup and use one mail application for everything.

We finally upgraded to a newer version of Exchange and OSX added in support for newer Exchange servers in some previous version, which finally obviated the need to use this, but back then it was a lifesaver.

What I really want is a good FOSS replacement for MS Exchange. Can anyone recommend one?

Probably not, for a lot of people exchange already "does too much stuff", you can get a lot of replacements to things it does, email, calenders, authentication. But not a all-in-one package.

There are a number of packages that fit some definition of "open source alternative to Exchange", many of them listed at: http://alternativeto.net/software/microsoft-exchange-server/...

In my experience they are big, and tend to lean heavily on php, which isn't much of a plus in my book (mostly because of php's traditional deployment model as a web server module, and issues with session-files and db connections being shared across different scripts -- things that aren't intrinsic to php, but common enough in large project that aim to be able to install and run easily "anywhere").

I have yet to find something light weight that I prefer using, but if you really want "an alternative to Exchange", you might want to look at Kolab: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolab ,SoGo: http://sogo.nu/ (iRedMail bundles some SoGo components) or Citadel: http://www.citadel.org.

Most of them are also really difficult to setup and configure properly, and support costs aren't cheap, as many require a support contract for a commercial plugin to really do what is needed for outlook integration. In the end, for smaller orgs, office 365 may be a better option.

I find that a lot of smaller businesses don't need everything Exchange does, and larger ones should just consider Exchange. It's simply a pragmatic choice, though if someone has an Exchange alternative and makes if FAR easier to setup, I'm all for it. Contacts + Calendar + Mail + Team orchestration is integrated with Exchange+Outlook better than anything else I've tried.

Are you referring to persistent database connections and something like apache mod_php? The first one doesn't seem that common these days and the other one doesn't seem like something that the application would force on you anyway. Why do you dislike the web server module deployment model?

I'm referring to the mod_php-model. It is of course possible, even if running under apache mod_php, to treat each apache instance as an "application server", and potentially run each apache+mod_php-server in a chroot and as a different (system) user.

Does Kolab qualify as good?

There is OpenChange but it seems like it needs more upstream developers.

http://www.openchange.org/

I'm not sure to what extent this qualifies as an MS Exchange replacement (it certainly isn't a drop-in replacement), but the Open-Xchange suite, which powers mailbox.org, is quite good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-Xchange

Zimbra

https://www.zimbra.com/

Replying to my comment since I can't edit.

Thanks for all the replies. I will check them out.

Serious question: what does Exchange provide that you don't get out of open protocols for calendars, address book, and IMAP mail?

I have used Exchange and didn't see any advantage at all. Perhaps I missed something.

It's really exchange + outlook + lync... the integration is really good (for teams in a larger organization), is what it comes down to. From organizing meetings, to the rooms the meetings are in, etc... seeing when other people are busy. It's organization wide, and fairly transparent to the end user.

With lync integration properly setup it's really nice as well. Though the mac client doesn't work as cleanly as it does on windows.

Still the closest I've come is Zimbra + zpush. Zimbra isn't fantastic, but it covers a lot. zpush is for the mobile part, and allows to you to connect to Zimbra as if it were an exchange server.

Koloab works pretty well if you are okay with activesync. It doesn't do MAPI.

I wonder if this sort of solution supports shared calendar lookups on exchange?

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