Zimbra takes Yahoo Mail offline just as I've learned to love it online

Yahoo announced today that it's letting Zimbra run amok, improving its Yahoo Mail with offline access. CNET's Stephen Shankland has a good review of how this impacts Yahoo Mail users, as well as some warts that remain.

It's a pretty significant move since it means that Zimbra is now reaching more than 250 million people, instead of the "mere" 11 million that it was touching before. That's even more than the number of people currently using Firefox. Next time your mom asks what open source is, you can tell her "Zimbra" or "Firefox." She's likely to appreciate the value of open source (and the job you do) between those two examples.

The ironic thing for me is that despite berating Zimbra for a year to develop an offline version of its excellent software, I almost never use it anymore. E-mail for me has become a tab in my Firefox browser. Sure, if I get on a plane then I'll use Zimbra Desktop, but even with how much I fly (125,000-plus miles each year), that's still only 1 percent of my life). I almost never need it.

So, thank you, Zimbra, for providing offline access to my corporate e-mail (We use Zimbra here at Alfresco), and for helping to enrich Yahoo's e-mail experience. But it's just insurance to me now. You've converted me to life in the browser. I'm not going back.

[smokinmunky]

Wow, flying 125,000 miles a year is a pretty big carbon footprint. Maybe you could lower it if you only take one of your family's macs instead of 8.

[smokinmunky]

Wow, flying 125,000 miles a year is a pretty big carbon footprint. Maybe you could lower it if you only take one of your family's macs instead of 8.

[royrusso]

"Zimbra is now reaching more than 250,000 million people"

Wow! Next time a CIO/CTO argues that "OSS can't scale", point them at Zimbra.

[cris_odd]

ya, i can say that zimbra is good, its more accessible than others