Topic: How did SME/E-Smith start.

[SSBN]

How did SME get started before Mitel? I assume Mitel purchased it from someone. Or did they build it from the ground up. If a person or organization built it who was it and are they still part of the community? Do they work for Mitel or another company? Did one person or a team of people and where are they now.

[raem]

This post may be of interest (it's a bit hard to find it again though)

http://lists.contribs.org/mailman/public/devinfo/msg07107.html

Re: [contribs-devinfo]e-smith-LPRng bug (wasRe:[contribs-discussion]WhichVersionisStable 6.0b3+upd
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From:  Peter Samuel   <Peter.Samuel@xxxxxxxx.xxx>
 
Subject:  Re: [contribs-devinfo]e-smith-LPRng bug (wasRe:[contribs-discussion]WhichVersionisStable 6.0b3+upd
 
Date:  Monday February 9, 2004, at 11:33:23 PM (MST)
 

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On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, Sage Telecommunications Pty Ltd wrote:

> If I remember my history correctly this SME project came out of a need to
> provide a cheap quality solution for IT services during the East Timor
> independance.

You are mistaken. The e-smith Server & Gateway (now known as SME
Server) was the brain child of Joe Morrison. He founded e-smith inc.
Joe released his original code in the late 1990s (1999 if I remember
correctly). Charlie Brady saw it and realised it would be a good fit as
a server platform for various charitable and non-profit organisations to
which he was donating his time and services (along with others including
Gordon Rowell and myself).  One of these charities was Community Aid
Abroad (the Australian arm of Oxfam). The e-smith Server and Gateway
was deployed in their Sydney office (replacing a previous Linux system
maintained by Charlie, Gordon and myself as well as CAA staff). CAA was
also working in East Timor and a version of the e-smith Server & Gateway
was deployed in their East Timor site (with a number of modifications
to support satellite modems and UUCP mail transport[1]). During this
time, Charlie and Gordon made contributions, modifications and bug
fixes available to Joe. Gordon and I deployed the software in other
commercial sites and CAA began rolling it out into their other offices
across Australia. Joe was building up a strong customer base from
Ottawa. Eventually, Joe was able to secure venture captial funding and
began employing staff in early 2000.  The company known as e-smith,
inc was acquired by Mitel Networks in June 2001. The name of the product
was changed to SME Server (it had other names during the transition but
that's not really important here). A new revenue model was adopted[2]
(ServiceLink) and over the next 2 years the focus/direction of the
commercial product changed to incorporate more telephony features (Mitel
is in the telephone business after all). In late 2003, Mitel decided
to cease further commercial development of the product and transferred
control of the GPL community infrastructure (the forums and lists etc)
to the "devinfo" community.

Obviously this is a much abbreviated history. It may contain a couple
of time line errors, but the information is factually correct to the
best of my recollections.

[1] qmail was/is still used but remote transport was/is handled via uucp
as it is more bandwidth friendly. Satellite modems cost money to run!

[2] The ServiceLink model was developed and originally coded before the
acquisition but wasn't fully utilised until after the acquisition.

--
Regards
Peter
----------
Peter Samuel                                Peter.Samuel@xxxxxxxx.xxx
Phone: +1 613 729 7964