I think the idea of needing better Open Source email depends on how you look at it. On the Linux platform, there are a number of great clients there for us to use. On Windows however, the choices are much less I am afraid.

Outlook is a security-hole wolf dressed in an e-mail client’s sheep clothing. But many companies still won’t, or can’t, move from it because Outlook is also their group calendaring and address book application. In short, it’s a core desktop application for them.

This point was driven home to me when I spoke recently at a meeting of CIOs, chief technology officers and e-mail administrators at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. These people run serious e-mail systems with hundreds of thousands of users.

All of them knew that Outlook has more than its fair share of security problems; most of them would at least consider an alternative. Indeed, some of them already use alternatives like Qualcomm’s Eudora, but the vast majority use Outlook. As one said to me, “What else is there?” [Read the rest]