Everything is a Freaking DNS problem - yahoo

The Future of Zimbra

Kris Buytaert — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 09:45:31 +0000

The interweb thinks there isn't much future for Zimbra if Yahoo gets swallowed by Redmond. I`m not sure.

There are different alternatives apart from the being extinguished during the takeover.
I have no clue how the core developers and the management of Zimbra was reimbursed when they were taken over by Yahoo, however I hope they didn't waste all their money and still have some money left. As they went this far with the company already they must have some good contacts with financial people that can help them get a new company off the ground ArbmiZ or ɐɹqɯız would be good names ;)

They could either go with a fresh start, or Yahoo could be so smart to have the guys perform an MBO.
Or even sell the Zimbra assests again .. even at loss.

If getting the Zimbra organisation out of Yahoo doesn't work why not hire the key developers away from the company effectively rendering it worthless , big chance you don't have to hire them away from their current job but just be waiting at the front doors when the exodus starts, people either don't want to work for the new company or will be forced to leave as they are redundant.

RedHat has a big opportunity here .. they don't have a relevant mail offering yet, there have been rumors around RedHat going to partner with the OpenXchange folks but I haven't heard from that yet .., but other companies might have look at the codebase also.

Would we need a fork ? We don't know yet ..

But I don't think we have to worry that much .. I think there are bigger things to worry about ..

Microsoft to Buy Yahoo ?

Kris Buytaert — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 12:25:35 +0000

Lots of rumours about Yahoo wanting to dump a significant part of it's personnel have been overwhelmed by the new news that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo.

Let's stand still for 5 seconds to think about that impact :

First of all.. they are buying a lot of advertising and content , a field where they were currently losing market share. But they are buying more.

They are buying into the mindset of startups, Flickr, Upcoming, and others.. something they have long lost ..

Bort just made an interesting point in realising that in with Microsoft buying Yahoo, that would also include buying Zimbra, and lots of other open source technology. What about openID, will they make their own MS-OpenID ?

Will they make the same mistake they made when buying Hotmail ?

Will yahoo still need to let people go or will they leave themselves because of this ?
Lots of questions .. time will tell.

Yahoo and OpenID

Kris Buytaert — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:20:46 +0000

Peter points us to Yahoo and openID. While I applaud adoption of OpenID, I`m looking at the Yahoo configuration panel where I link my own self managed openid to my Yahoo account.

I don't need a 3453rd openid provider .. I have one that I manage myselve.. I just want to use it more often.