On 2012-01-30 20:42, Greg Banks wrote:
Georg, I notice there's a page about Z-Sync on the Kolab wiki. Do you
have any idea of the legal issues with the protocol?
It's obviously subject to all the general issues with patents.
Other than that, it's about as safe as anything will ever get with
Microsoft or another of the IT behemoths, I'd say. As long as you make
sure to stay within the Open Source / Free Software realm, that is.
We have indeed hooked up Z-Push to the Kolab server as one option to
get data to the mobile. As you wrote in your later mail, Microsoft has
offered it under a pledge [1] as part of its Workgroup Server Protocol
Program (WSPP) [2] in response to the antitrust case in the European
Union.
Our implementation is 100% Open Source / Free Software and distributed
as such. We never dual-license it for commercial purposes. In fact we
transferred Copyright in the Kolab backend to the Free Software
Foundation Europe to ensure this part is Open Source in perpetuity.
So we're reasonably confident that we're within the bounds of the WSPP.
As to the question whether Microsoft's promise could be revoked or is
reliable, that is a difficult question, of course. Our hope is that
Microsoft will not want to enter into another costly legal battle with
the Commission by going back on its assurances made in the antitrust
proceedings.
In any case if they were to go back on it, we'd definitely increase the
push for alternatives, which in fact we're already working on with low
intensity.
In the end, this is a major design advantage of Kolab: Storage in IMAP
means we get offline capable groupware clients easily once there is
IMAP. All it takes is some connector into the local data store on the
device, which libkolabxml [3] is going to make a lot easier to
implement.
So yes, we have substantial interest in all technologies that make IMAP
as fast, accessible and least-bandwidth as possible, including for
mobiles, since this will allow replacing the quasi monopolistic protocol
for this purposes that ActiveSync has become.
Best regards,
Georg
[1]
http://www.microsoft.com/openspecifications/en/us/programs/other/interoperability-principles-patent-pledges/default.aspx
[2]
https://www.microsoft.com/openspecifications/en/us/programs/wspp/wspp-patent-pledges/default.aspx
[3] http://kolab.org/pipermail/kolab-format/2011-December/001569.html
--
Georg C. F. Greve
Chief Executive Officer
Kolab Systems AG
Zürich, Switzerland
e: gr...@kolabsys.com
t: +41 78 904 43 33
w: http://kolabsys.com
pgp: 86574ACA Georg C. F. Greve
