RE: [SLUG] How to annoy Outlook users

[John Wiltshire <jw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Jill Rowling [mailto:Rowling@xxxxxxxxxx]
> 
> Exactly, I agree wholeheartedly with Conrad.
> Voting, ability to attend meetings etc has NOTHING to do with 
> email, other
> than the fact that it might use a mail transport agent eventually.
> It has OTOH much to do with project management.
> 
> Could you imagine the silly M$ concept of using a common 
> mailing list when
> you wanted to email your group, and your group was a project on (say)
> Sourceforge.
> Zillions of project groups...zillions of possible users.
> 
> The M$ common mailing list system doesn't even work properly inside a
> largish corporation and has clearly been designed with a 
> small workgroup
> instead.
> I don't see any necessity to emulate it.

I think you are setting up a strawman here, Jill.  There is no such thing as
a "M$ common mailing list".

Using Microsoft Exchange (or Lotus Notes for that matter) doesn't involve
any sort of mailing lists as you seem to be suggesting.  If you are using
groupware for project management then you use public folders and a shared
schedule between everyone.  Mail is only exchanged (in the traditional
sense) when one user needs to communicate directly with another user.

As for mailing to groups, Exchange (and I presume Notes) only sends and
stores *one* copy of the email per server so it is far more efficient than
you are making out.  Your "sill M$ concept" becomes a whole lot less silly
when you are using a client/server mail protocol (IMAP) against a central
server rather than the more common practice in *nix systems where mail is
delivered to each users machine.

If anything it more approximates a newsgroup which has a set of custom
fields and scripts.  To set up a groupware server on Linux I think innd
would be a good place to start with a heap of scripts that can manipulate
the posts as they are received to send information about status changes to
the various people who need to receive them.

Don't take this as a "M$/Lotus is great, Linux sux" mail - it isn't.  The
capabilities for a good groupware system exist in Linux and would involve a
bit of work between imapd, innd and a few others with some web scripts
thrown in for good measure.  It's certainly possible and the real Unix
philosophy of having many small tools that do their particular tasks well
(as opposed to the one touted before - not sure where that came from) suits
groupware systems just as well as it suits most other tasks.

John Wiltshire