My first comment to my boss? "Maybe that Yahoo Maps zimlet will finally work now."
Seriously though, I really hope this is a good deal for all of us involved. Yahoo obviously has a lot of financial and technical muscle that Zimbra may be able to put to use. Then again, I tend to avoid most things with the Y! logo on them. I've never really been that happy with most of their offerings, and they tend to go with the 'big flashy' look.
I can see this going 2 ways (obviously) - either Zimbra maintains its identity, and just has some Y! injected into it, via logos, search, integration etc., or Zimbra slowly disappears into the Yahoo conglomeration.
Yahoo backing is obviously big. Zimbra doesn't have any worries at this moment (not that they did before) and their future is set, whether it's as Zimbra or as Yahoo, the technology will continue to be developed, and I assume you'll all get to keep your jobs.
Injecting money could help out the dev process at Zimbra. I'm personally hoping that 5 will be released sooner than it says on the pm (but I've been hoping that for a while now.) My company is actually waiting on 5 to be released (or at least a solid RC) to implement.. I blame someone else for not telling me we needed Shared Folders. I expect that the Zimbra NE will continue to be maintained, improved, and expanded. Adding some Y! featured might really be nice, better RSS feeds, maybe integration/mashup with more Y! services, financial, etc.
Then again, we might see Zimbra go away. Not entirely, as Yahoo purchased a technology, and obviously wants to make use of it. Non-hosted solutions haven't been Yahoo's big thing up til now, and I haven't seen any signs (other than this) of them changing. For Yahoo, it's 'come to our site' not 'host it yourself' - something that Zimbra obviously doesnt fit into. Whether they're moving on a new strategy or just acquiring technology will remain to be seen. (see "extend its email leadership to the University, Business and ISP markets" - their new strategy?) I don't think this bodes all that well for the OSS version. Sure it will still be offered, but I don't want, as someone mentioned, 'Yahoo ads attached to all emails sent.' Yahoo will obviously want to make their mark on the product, since they just dropped a couple bucks on it... whether this means more ads, banners, etc. I imagine that the OSS version will jump out at you
Y! on a regular basis.
Quote:
"We are committed to keeping the current source open and available for use and we will continue to offer the network version that will contain value added proprietary features on top of the open product."
What makes me nervous is that only the current source will stay open - which means no updates for the community version.
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According to the FAQ, "Zimbra will continue its practice of offering both an open and certified, network editions of the software." - I assume that things will stay the same along this front. My concerns lie more along the lines of future development. There was lots of talk about 'grow our footprint at an accelerated pace' and the like, but not as much talk about future of the product. Will Zimbra 5.x be the last major set of releases? Well it slowly disappear into Yahoo? "Will Yahoo! keep the Zimbra brand name? This is work in progress. Stay tuned."
Personally, I'm no longer going to implement the OSS for my own personal stuff at this point. Since we've already paid for it at work, we're obviously going to use it (once we get 5 anyway.) I don't know what's going to happen to Zimbra yet, only time will tell.
I expect this is good news for all involved. Obviously I, as most of us do, have misgivings about it, but I expect most of those will be aleviated. If not, then Zimbra will be relegated to history as "oh, that looks like the Yahoo mail client."
Everything aside, congrats to the ZImbra team.