Re: [fetchmail-devel] Add MAPI support to fetchmail

[Yangyan L. <yan...@gm...>]

Hi Matthias,

http://lwn.net/Articles/192409/ tells us why it's useful for FLOSS to talk
with MAPI, and OpenChange are working on two different aspects: provide
interoperability with Exchange protocols and provide a transparent
replacement to Microsoft Exchange Server with native Exchange protocols
support and direct communication with Microsoft Outlook.

Fetchmail will be able to pull mail from Exchange, as well as push mail to
Exhange, if MAPI support is added. It seems that there are few software
under linux platform which support MAPI. One I know is Evolution, which
provides MAPI support with a plugin developed by OpenChange. So it will be
useful to add MAPI support to Fetchmail.

It's not decided whether I am the chosen one of this GSoC project, and
this will be decided before April 21, 2008. However, I'd like to contribute
to  this project even if I'm not the chosen one.

Best regards

2008/4/2, Matthias Andree <mat...@gm...>:
>
> Yangyan Li schrieb:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I am a student attended to join in GSoC 2008 (
> > http://code.google.com/soc/2008), and I am going join one project of
> > OpenChange (http://www.openchange.org) to add MAPI support to Fetchmail,
> > perhaps as a plugin.
> >
> > Now, I am puzzled how to add MAPI support to Fetchmail. I've found that
> > in Fetchmail there is a plugin option which allows users to use an external
> > program to establish the TCP connection. If I add MAPI support in this way,
> > I have to write an adapter to translate between MAPI and one of the
> > protocols Fetchmail supports. These is no need to change Fetchmail code in
> > this approach. However, seems the plugin option is incompatible with -f
> > option and mda option in Fetchmail.
> >
> > Are there any other approaches to add MAPI support to Fetchmail?
> >
>
> Hi Yangyan,
>
> In order to answer that question, I'd need to know which protocols, or
> directions, would MAPI support address? I'm pretty much agnostic of the
> Windows internals... So is MAPI good for:
>
> - fetchmail pulling mail from some server, as alternative to IMAP, POP3
> and thereabouts?
>
> - fetchmail pushing mail locally to some other server, as alternative to
> SMTP/LMTP or MDA?
>
> - both?
>
> I think we should then fork a branch in the repository, as a side branch
> off of BRANCH_6-3, so that the support can later be merged into a
> to-be-created 6-4 branch or onto the trunk.
>
> Best regards
>
> --
> Matthias Andree
>
> Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
>                                                -- John Lennon, 1980
>