Microsoft Making Another Offer for Yahoo?

[d2globalinc]

YHOO - Yahoo! Inc. - Google Finance

notice the jump.

Oh how I hope this never happens for Zimbra's sake.

[bjquinn]

Has Zimbra never addressed the licensing problem? This is ridiculous! It's the merger that won't die!

[y@w]

This sounds much better..
AOL-Yahoo Merger Details Emerge; Deal Could Happen This Month

[uxbod]

Whatever happens I am sure Zimbra/Y! will have everybodies interest at heart.

[jholder]

Originally Posted by bjquinn

Has Zimbra never addressed the licensing problem? This is ridiculous! It's the merger that won't die!

Bjquinn-
We don't see a problem to address. The license has worked for us as well as you and our community.

Therefore we have no plans to address a problem that is non-existent. When someone disagrees with the terms put forth by a vendor, there is one clear solution: don't accept the license.

[browland]

John, I take offense to this post as it takes great effort to deploy a new email solution. Now if MS gets it's way, they could change the license which will cause companies like ours to shift once again to another solution. The cost of a major change like this is only 30-40% license cost and the balance is deployment cost. So it is not just so simple to say "don't accept the license" for large companies.

[d2globalinc]

I'm not really worried about it from the license standpoint. The fact is - we usually go through an evaluation of our email / collaboration suite platform once every 3 years.. So as I see it - we buy Zimbra today - then if they get bought out or go a direction we don't want - oh well, we will find a new system when it's time for us to evaluate. At-least we have open standards to work with now and our options and conversion would be less of a headache than dealing with Microsoft Exchange.

So time will tell - the day after we decided on using Zimbra the announcement that MS was looking to buy them came out.. At first we were concerned - then we realized it didn't matter in the long run. We will use the best software available right now - which is Zimbra.. If it isn't in 2 - 3 years - then we will move onto something else.

I love competition! It brings innovation! But I also HATE Microsoft and its arrogance - so I don't want to see them get yahoo - even though it would waste their money and do nothing for them on improving their advertising revenue market share. They would run it into the ground like they do everything else. Not an original idea from that company since... well.... hmmm..

I do agree tho with the fact that it would be much easier if there were a different license so that if a merger of some kind did happen Zimbra would live on.. Becasue you know if MS does buy yahoo - Zimbra will be scrapped and pieces turned into hotmail - or just lost - because MS can't have innovative features..

-D2G

[uxbod]

IMHO these sort of threads do drag on ... I buy them, and they buy me ... Its all circular. The technology arena changes so fast that nobody can keep up. ZCS is such a cool and forward thinking product so why would Y! have paid so much to give it away. Are you really worried ? Im not, end of day you can always make the jump back to something far superior

[bjquinn]

jholder -

No offense, but you don't see anything to address? Please correct me if I'm wrong or if something has changed, but if MSFT bought out Yahoo today, they could kill all future development on Zimbra. Zimbra's supposed to be open source, right? It sort of defeats the purpose of being open source if MSFT can buy you out and kill you because of some silly little attribution clause in the license...

[uxbod]

Just remember Zimbra (ZCS) is a commercial product aswell! Zimbra push a huge amount into OSS, aswell as Y! who brought them, so hand in there!