Zimbra now Yahoo! thoughts

[Rich Graves]

jholder, that's nice to hear, but I need to know that this acquisition is good for me, not that you will courageously struggle against the Yahoo overlords in the interest of the community. Reassuring us that you will do the right thing almost makes things worse, by implicitly accepting the assumption that absent your efforts, Yahoo would do the wrong thing.

Personally, I think this *is* good for me, and for others similarly situated.

I would assume that you are talking to your SaaS providers separately, and I accept that there are possible ways this could be good for them, too, but they're ultimately none of my business.

It's unfortunate that the news leaked, preventing you from giving the news to the SaaS shops in a more appropriate manner.

[kevindods]

Hi Rich Graves, I agree, that different types of 'users' eg enterprise and SaaS, have different expectations and therefore likely to see things differently in the new Yahoo! light. I also agree Yahoo! is not the dinosaur but it does have a large corporate style and approach. You may be seeing such a style with Google as it develops and things move on.

In essence, Yahoo! is not single purpose, Zimbra was. That means as the company settles into Yahoo! the decisions made about its direction are no longer just internally made for it's benefit. There will be a change in culture and expectation.

I can quite readily see that a company (Yahoo!) not used to offering local site support for mission critical services will see that as a more unnatural place for them to be. I can see them 'encouraging' enterprise users of a small-med scale to take up hosted offerings with them rather than have large numbers each of a few hundred/thousand seats on a matrix of supported os/hardware combinations.

If you want hosted solutions then Yahoo! deal will be good for you. For SaaS and smaller ISP/Enterprise clients I think there will be a change to deal with. For OSS only it may be great, time will tell, but few other similar software deals seem to have benefited the OSS one greatly. I very much want it to succeed and be good for me, I just have to keep a rational realistic hat on.

[florian]

Remember HPs OpenMail.
There used to be a free version under some license back in 2001.
OpenMail was sold to Samsung and became Samsung contact.
Welcome to Samsung Contact
Well Samsung contact has now shut down samsungcontact for 2007.
Maybe someone could get them to release the code to OSS.

Well, just to get the history straight - Samsung has licensed OpenMail from HP and created Contact as a derived product; it was not sold to Samsung and Samsung did not get rights from HP to open-source. Even if they did, Samsung did very little development work on the HP codebase after 2002, so the product would be quite outdated.

However, HP also licensed OpenMail to Scalix in 2003, that license was amended in 2006 to allow Scalix to open source the bits should they want to.

HP never provided a truly free version, although for a while you could get a free 5-user license key with no updates and support. Scalix provides both free and commercial versions of their product and has added substantial development effort to make it a much more advanced and modern product than Contact ever was.

Cheers,
Florian (and yes - I did work for both HP and Samsung as a consultant and I do work for Scalix now. The above, however, is simply stating the facts)

[tgx]

In response to jholder 'Zimbra will do the right thing.'
Unfortunately there is no 'Zimbra'.
Zimbra is now Zimbra in name only.
Just a matter of time until this website disappears into some
Yahoo! netherworld.

[01-com]

Both our hosting business and our integrator/consulting business has gotten busier since the announcement. We thought it would be positive, and based on business alone, still think so.

Zimbra Blog | 01.com » Yahoo to Acquire Zimbra

[Rich Graves]

Good to hear about your hosting biz.

You know, a lot of bad precedents have been mentioned above. A surprisingly good precedent occurs to me. Take this as both wish and advice to our Yahoo overlords.

When EMC bought VMWare, a lot of people, myself included, said "What the hell?"

Now, I would say that VMWare is a far stronger company than it was before the EMC acquisition. It remains an independent unit and recently completed a successful independent IPO. The same could happen with Zimbra.

Had VMWare not been acquired by EMC, there's a chance that FUD from Microsoft or Citrix/Xen, or some bogus patent suit, or some financial problem, could have killed an excellent company.

Zimbra, like VMWare, is a *great* brand among people and Google, I mean, Yahoo, searches that matter. Yahoo should retain and foster the brand.

(No, I am not an unmitigated fan of VMWare -- in fact, I'm planning to migrate our small number of VMWare ESX servers to either Xen or Microsoft Virtual PC, because we don't need all the VMWare features or price points. But I do think that it's a great company with a great product, if you need to manage dozens to hundreds of virtual machines and don't feel like buying an IBM mainframe.)

[jrobb]

Zimbra, like VMWare, is a *great* brand among people and Google, I mean, Yahoo, searches that matter. Yahoo should retain and foster the brand.

That is the plan and the Yahoo team has been very supportive of keeping the brand. (btw - I lead the mkting team here at Zimbra)

[batfastad]

I've only just seen this news and at the moment I'm feeling very disappointed

It looks like a Yahoo acquisition to try and add to their hosted services in their running battle with Google.

I've been looking at Zimbra over the past couple of years and gradually watching it develop into a serious competitor to MS Exchange and Outlook.

I'm just really worried that all the good work could come undone here

I hope it continues to be branded as Zimbra and not Yahoo Zimbra or something... I won't be taken seriously if I suggest to people they upgrade their Exchange system to Yahoo Domain Controller/Yahoo Network or something equally as Fisher Price

Here's what I hope will happen...
1) Zimbra continue an open-source project
2) Zimbra continue stand-alone installable versions for companies to run their own e-mail/groupware servers, as present
3) Little or no Yahoo branding anywhere near the stand-alone paid-for / open source versions. Or you can get rid of all of it at the click of a mouse!

But what would I allow Yahoo to get in return for their $350m ?
- I will allow Yahoo to offer a paid-for hosted service of Zimbra to companies using their own domain names... similar I guess to Google Domains but 18 months behind. Using the Zimbra brand... but being hosted on Yahoo's network and infrastructure - now that would be good
- I will allow Zimbra technology to filter in to their free hosted services... mail, calendar, address book etc

If someone can give me a guarantee of 3 concerns above, then I will be much less distressed about this news!
It can potentially give Zimbra the funding and stability it needs to continue to flourish as a platform

Please keep the Zimbra branding separate from anything to do with Yahoo though!
When I think Yahoo, I think... games, fun, chat rooms, loads of annoying adverts, and 2nd best to Google in every respect.
I do not think... a professional group-ware solution with ability to revolutionise my business!

I used to use Konflabulator... I don't use Yahoo whatever it is now

I'm a sysadmin for a small business and I was seriously considering migrating from Exchange SBS to Zimbra in 12-18 months.
I really hope all my excitement about Zimbra over the last couple of years isn't about to blow up in my face

[mchapman]

Seems like the guys who started Zimbra did the right thing...cash out on a helluva deal. Who wouldn't? An honest answer is a plus...having said that, and not having followed all of the posts concerning this, I would like to learn if the pre-Yahoo Zimbra product implementors and contributors to the source code (little guys, Corporate America) made a profit from the software, and also if anyone that contributed to the Zimbra source made a profit from their contributions to the source pre-Yahoo. I am not asking for hard numbers, nor private details please. Just a general answer would be sufficient.


Mike

[raj]

I don’t think so ANY one connected to Open Source Contributors made any money if that was the Q.
I think Yahoo bought the NON-OPEN source NE Edition Source/KB and all the intelligence of people at Zimbra.
Open Source software’s used in zimbra are still free to be used as they are so no money will go to them.
On the other hand as zimbra/yahoo "still" be supporting OSS version. Then maintaining and improving OSS version is kind of what is "paid back" to open source community.

Raj