[pavera]

This situation has gone on too long, it has been almost a month, and still no official word from anyone inside Zimbra about the status of the software after an MS acquisition.

It is becoming more and more clear that this acquisition will go through, even though the Yahoo board rejected the offer, Yahoo is now being sued for this rejection. Microsoft has initiated a proxy battle to force the hostile takeover, all indications are that Microsoft will succeed in this bid.

I am 100% convinced that the agenda for day 1 after the acquisition closes is already written up in Redmond. Item 1 on that agenda is disband Zimbra, lay off all employees, and cease distribution of the software. They will not allow a competitor to exchange to exist.

Because of the attribution clauses in the license, it is impossible to effectively fork Zimbra. MS will own the Zimbra trademark, which is required to appear in any version of Zimbra (OSS or otherwise), MS will sue anyone for violating their trademark after the acquisition, so it will be illegal to distribute or use Zimbra. If you strip out the trademark, MS will sue you for violating the license. Zimbra has 6 months to live at most. The takeover will be completed at the latest at the June Board Election, in which MS will seat a new board and complete their proxy hostile bid takeover.

In light of this entirely hostile environment the user community needs some indication of the status of the software and legal agreements between Zimbra and Yahoo. There is absolutely zero evidence that Zimbra will be a viable piece of software in six months. Because of the "Open Source" license chosen by the Zimbra team, even the OSS version is not safe and can be discontinued the day after MS takes over. If I need to migrate my users off of Zimbra, I need to start NOW! TODAY! I use the OSS version, but reading the license gives me zero confidence that this version will be legal or available after MS completes this takeover.