OpenChange 0.4

Openchange project intends to provide an Open-Source implementation of Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 under Unix Platforms.
The Openchange Project is developed in C language under the BSD license, and will primary work on NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Linux platforms. The project time line has been defined to approximatively one year, and we believe the project will be in a complete stable state at this time.
Openchange wishes to integrate the enterprise working environment and to substitute to an Exchange Server in a transparent way, so final users may continue to use Outlook, or any other mail client.
We also intend to provide to network administrators an easy solution to migrate Exchange databases into Openchange ones and reversely. And last but not least, we work so developers may reuse our sources in a smart way.
The project is divided into 4 parts :
- The OpenChange Library
- The OpenReverse Library
- The Documentation Framework
- The Openchange specifications
The OpenChange Library
This library includes all the requests managing the identification process, the data flow, and all the other requirements needed to permit the communication between an Outlook client and an Exchange Server. It can be used either to develop another Exchange-like server or client.
The OpenReverse Library
Due to legal restriction, the Openchange Server wont reuse the Microsoft Jet Database file format. Instead, we provide a library making easy to parse headers, retrieve the data, calculate checksum and more generally to offer a abstract migration tool to other user defined backends. This library can also be used for basics to develop a repair database tool.
The Documentation Framework
In the documentation framework, you will find all our research results. The subjects may concern the Exchange Internals or treat of a related subject. We wants to provide the most valuable information so our work can be shared with developers community.
The OpenChange Specifications
At last, we will provide the complete specifications of OpenChange in a printable way. This major document of the OpenChange team will help new developers to understand how Exchange Server works, how we implemented our APIs to make OpenChange, Exchange compatible. Around this main development, you will find several modules:
- OpenUtils Library
- OpenSniff
- OpenEDB
Enhancements:
- This release fixes limitations from the previous release (0.2) and adds a set of new features.
- Sending email messages to external recipients is now possible.
- It can also fetch and create appointments, contacts, and tasks in their respective default folder.
- Experimental NEWMAIL notification support is also available.
- The openchangeclient command line messaging tool has been improved and exchange2mbox has been introduced.
- It provides a way to synchronize an Exchange mailbox with an mbox file, supports MIME types, and is able to reflect changes back to Exchange.