[Gllug] Linux MAPI client

[Mike Brodbelt]

On Sat, 2006-01-07 at 15:08 +0000, Russell Howe wrote:

> Thunderbird would still need TNEF support though, to decode Outlook's
> somewhat esoteric attachment format...

There's lots of TNEF decoders out there they could incorporate.

> I think some kind of Exchange<-->IMAP proxy server might not be a bad
> idea (you could always run it locally, if it wasn't provided by the
> organisation you worked for)

That's a nice idea, but in practice I don't think it's that helpful. If
someone within an organisation has the authority to install it, then
they probably have the authority to tell the Exchange admin to enable
IMAP. 

So the only people who might use it would have to install it locally. If
you think about Firefox, it's made great inroads in displacing IE, and
one of the reasons for that is that it's dead simple to install, even
for non-techies. The barrier to entry for the average users is a lot
higher with a local proxy and mail client setup than it would be if
Thunderbird just provided a "Exchange" option in the mail server type.

I'd really like to see Thunderbird gain the same popularity as Firefox.
Displacing Outlook would do a lot to preserve open standards, as well as
improving security on the desktop. They really need to get
Sunbird/Calendar working a lot better as well...

Mike

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