OpenChange aims to provide a portable Open Source implementation of Microsoft Exchange Server and Exchange protocols. Exchange is a groupware server designed to work with Microsoft Outlook, and providing features such as a messaging server, shared calendars, contact databases, public folders, notes and tasks.

We are working on two different aspects:

  • Provide interoperability with Exchange protocols. This is the MAPI library development purpose (libmapi). MAPI stands for Messaging Application Programming Interface and is used within Microsoft Exchange. The OpenChange implementation provides a client-side library which can be used in existing messaging clients and offer native compatibility first with Exchange server; and in a near future with OpenChange server. As a proof of concept and in order to keep the implementation close to what developers shall expect, we are developing a gnome-evolution plugin which relies on libmapi.
  • Provide a transparent replacement to Microsoft Exchange Server with native Exchange protocols support and direct communication with Microsoft Outlook. This basically means that OpenChange server won’t need any plugin installation in Outlook. The server is tighly linked to Samba4 since it is developed as an endpoint module for smbd (the samba server daemon). One of the main objective with the server development is the abstraction layer architecture we are working on; it would not be sane for long term development either to rewrite a messaging server or to work with a single existing product. As a matter of fact, openchange should be able to run with any messaging server. For the first technical preview, we will surely orient the development towards a sqlite backend for testing purposes and a postfix one for production one.
Who is behind OpenChange ?

The project was founded in 2003 at EPITECH by Julien Kerihuel in the context of his final study project. Julien is the project manager, lead developer and is in charge of the recruitment of EPITECH students interested in joining the OpenChange effort since 2005.

Without the Samba4 folks and the amazing work they have been doing since past years, it would certainly not have been possible to achieve most of the work we have done or are about to realize.

What does OpenChange provide?
  • MAPI library: It can be used for command line tools development or third party messging clients development such as Gnome Evolution or Thunderbird
  • Gnome Evolution plugin: This development started a few months ago and technical preview are planned all along the MAPI library development.
  • Transparent Exchange Server
  • Wireshark contributions (Exchange protocols dissectors and tshark features): It is a normal way to contribute to this project which is one of the main tool we are using during our researches
Contributing to OpenChange

You can help the project in several ways:

  • Join the development effort
  • Test our product
  • Share information
  • Funding the project
  • Provide some hardware resources

Link to Web Site