Replacing WINDOWS and NOVELL service with CYRUS

Etienne Goyer etienne.goyer at linuxquebec.com
Wed May 14 09:46:16 EDT 2003


M. West,

I will try to answers some of your questions.  Other people on the list
will probably add to the discussion and may provide better answers than
I do.  As a disclaimer, I must say that I am not affiliated with Cyrus
or the ASG at CMU (maintainer of Cyrus software).  I am just a satisfied
user of Cyrus imapd that try to be helpful.

On Wed, May 14, 2003 at 01:11:43PM +0100, David West wrote:
> a. How does CYRUS collect our incoming email from our Internet Service
> Provider (ISP)? (POP3?)

This is outside the scope of Cyrus imapd.  However, various approach
exist that can fetch mail from a third party provider and inject it into
your mail server.  An example of that is fetchmail, a mail retrieving
program that support various protocol (POP3, IMAP, etc).

> b. How does CYRUS send email via our ISP to the outside world? (SMTP?)

This is also outside the scope of Cyrus.  Your mail client (ie Outlook,
Netscape Mail, Eudora, etc) send outbound mail to an SMTP sever.  This
SMTP server may or may not be running on the same machine as your Cyrus
IMAP server.  If you run your own SMTP server (MTA for "Mail Transport
Agent" in email-speak), you can choose any of the popular one such as
sendmail, Postfix or Qmail.  They all inter-operate with Cyrus imapd
without problem.

> c. Can we use email addresses that include "." such as david.west at osmis.com,
> d.f.west at osmis.com?

Yes.

> d. Does CYRUS store the messages in individual mailboxes for each "client"?

Yes.

> e. Can we use Outlook Express and/or Outlook 2000 as a client to CYRUS?

Yes, definitely.

> f. If I normally use an office on the 4th floor but temporarily uses an
> office on the 1st floor will I be able to access my messages?

Yes, probably.  This will require a little explanation of the two most
popular mail retrieving protocol : POP3 and IMAP.  With POP3, the mail
server store mail locally.  When the user retrieve it's mail, the
message is sent to client and (most of time) deleted from the server;
thus, the only copy of the message exist on the client machine that
retrieved it.  With IMAP, incoming email is also stored locally.
However, when a client retrieve its mail, it stay on the server until
deleted explicitely by the user.  Thus, to retrieve your mail from
another computer, you just have to configure the mail client to consult
your mailbox and all your messages and folders should be accessible.

This is a simplification, but hopefully you will get a general idea of
how it is working. 

> h. What are the licensing issues regarding CYRUS under the following
> circumstance:
> h.1 Internal use only?
> h.2 Distribution to academic sites
> h.3 Distribution to commercial users

I will let the people from CMU answer this questions authoritatively.
However, I can tell you that Cyrus imapd is distributed free of charge
under a very liberal Open-Source license.  You should consult the file
COPYRIGHT which is part of the source distribution of cyrus-imapd.

> i. What are the ongoing support cost for CYRUS under the following
> circumstances:
> i.1 Internal use only?
> i.2 Distribution to academic sites
> i.3 Distribution to commercial users

It depend on what you mean by "ongoing support cost".  

If you mean TCO, this is pretty hard to figure out and depend a lot on 
your particuliar situation.  Setup and administration of a Cyrus imapd 
server and associated services will require the help of a system 
administrator proficient with email technology. 

If you mean cost of support contract, you will have to look for third
party support.  I know Cyrusoft provide support and consulting related
to Cyrus software.  My employer could also be interested in providing
support.  Ther could be other that Ido not know about.

I hope it clear up some of the interrogation you have concerning Cyrus
imapd.  As I said, these are not authoritative answers as I am not
affiliated with the maintainer of Cyrus software.

Regards,

-- 
Etienne Goyer                    Linux Québec Technologies Inc.
http://www.LinuxQuebec.com       etienne.goyer at linuxquebec.com




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