Scalix To Open-Source E-Mail

Scalix will offer up a good chunk of its next e-mail release to the open source world, the company said Wednesday.

Components of Scalix Community Edition will be available under a license modeled on the Mozilla Public License (MPL). That will enable the legal use of third-party code not licensed under the MPL to coexist with commercial code. A commercial license will also be available for the Scalix enterprise product.

The next Community Edition Open Source will comprise the mail server, a Web Services API platform, installer, administration console, Scalix Web Access Mobile and new search and indexing services, the company said in a statement.

The entire stack will be based on a new release of Scalix to be announced at LinuxWorld in August. The various open source components will roll out through next year. The company's existing Community Edition is free but is not available under open source licensing. It has been positioned as an adjunct to the paid Enterprise Edition but for users who do not need that version's collaborative features.

In a related announcement, Scalix said it had inked a new licensing pact with Hewlett-Packard that will enable it to open source the portions of the Scalix line that are based on HP's OpenMail.

Scalix and other smaller Linux mail vendors like Open-Xchange and Zimbra are fighting the open-source e-mail battle.

Meanwhile, IBM's Lotus, a perennial market leader, said it will offer a full Linux version of the Notes client this summer.

IBM says that move should make Domino/Notes the only top-tier mail system available for Linux. IBM and Microsoft vie for top spots in e-mail market share but Microsoft Exchange Server is obviously a Windows-only product.

In other open-source news, ObjectWeb and eXo Platform SARL announced the availability of what they call the first open-source content management and repository that will let users create and manage documents from a single access-point Web portal.

ObjectWeb is a an open-source consortium; eXo is a privately-held company backing its open-source content management platform.