Scott has been using Linux as his day to day desktop for a while now. Probably a few months, I'd guess. The other day he posted a rant about Evolution, the Linux Open Source world's answer to Outlook. Evolution wouldn't export his task data.

He's since followed up with another post in which he says:

What about the person who goes to desktop Linux because its "open" and then finds out that Outlook for practical purposes is more open than Redhat's default mail client. What does that say about us the "open" community.

Very good point, Scott.

Posted by jzawodn at June 22, 2003 08:20 PM

Reader Comments
# kasia said:

Evolution stores its data in plain text... and xml..

on June 22, 2003 08:41 PM
# Luke Reeves said:

I call bullshit on that. I had to get an absolute ton of mail (perhaps a gigabyte) out of an Outlook/Exchange combination, and the best way to do it was pull it from the Exchange server using IMAP. The export features in Outlook leave a lot to be desired.

Now though I just keep everything on an IMAP server, and never keep mail locally. It's a lot safer and more reliable. And if I ever needed to, I could easily "export" the data, since the mbox format is nice and human-readable - unlike PST files.

on June 22, 2003 08:48 PM
# Sterling Hughes said:

As I pointed out to scott, when things are stored in standard formats, like with evolution, you don't need an export format. Also, if you something like POP, you just fetchmail it into maildir or mbox or any other format, evolution reads that.

If you use IMAP, well then IMAP is your export format. You can read it via any mail reader under the sun (which really is the whole point).

on June 22, 2003 10:22 PM
# FredFlintstone said:

Heck you got the source code man, just whip up whatever you want. Geez dude, quit your bitchin' step up or step off!!!

on June 22, 2003 10:29 PM
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