It's funny: in the early years, 'Open Source' projects (e.g.: Emacs, Linux, gcc) really did offer substantial qualitative and quantitative advantages versus their closed-source cousins; these projects/tools were cutting edge and often responsible for introducing totally new concepts into the zeitgeist. Now we come to Evolution (ironic, that!) which seems to be struggling vainly to just meet the lowest level of the bar set by a commercial offering from the software development institution that everyone loves to hate. Even the (pretty bad) UI and UI functionality is copied sans improvement -- in fact, with reduced functionality. (What would be the fate of another closed-source entity that attempted this?!) Anyway, this state of affairs seems mighty sad and disappointing -- but of course, the bigger question is, does this reflect on just this project, or the principle of 'Open Source' in general...? -frank »

Has any technology or project ever started with the intention of producing a whole that is less than the sum of the parts, or even just equal to the sum of the parts? And yet, here we are.... »