[lschweiss]

I just found Zimbra while Googling to find a solution to upgrade some of my clients from Samsung Contact. I was ready to give Zimbra a try until I realized it was a Yahoo company.

Not long ago this would have made me more secure about investing in Zimbra, however with the threat of MS overhead, this project is doomed.

If you think MS will keep Zimbra around in any form you are kidding yourself. HP had a rather successful product called OpenMail that they discontinued simply because Microsoft threatened to raise their costs on their desktop PCs if they kept selling OpenMail.

I could see Microsoft even going so far as to threaten trademark lawsuits against any fork of Zimbra open source for using the Zimbra name that they would have acquired.

Simply put if MS acquires Yahoo, they will kill Zimbra. The only thing that can keep the project alive is if Zimbra changes the open source license to GPL before the acquisition. The paid versions are completely doomed.

Microsoft will take over Yahoo, they see it as their only hope to compete against Google. It's only a matter of time afterwards that someone in MS pulls the trigger on Zimbra.

I'll be watching what happens with Zimbra in the coming months, hopefully something will be done to either separate it from the takeover or legally protect it from Microsoft. If Zimbra is lucky the FTC will force MS to sell it off.

The day MS closes the takeover of Yahoo will be another sad day proving the DOJ settlement with MS was useless.