Evolution is a Big Application. It stands on the shoulders of such giants (and I'm talking download time, here) as Bonobo, ORBit, Gtkhtml and gnome-xml. This wasn't a problem for me- I have a fast ethernet connection- modem users should note that you've probably got enough time to catch a movie (Recommendation of the day: "Antitrust") while Evolution installs, though.

On with the installation. I'm running Debian, which meant that after a 'sources.list' change, all the necessary packages were installed one after the other, and soon enough there was a link to Evolution in the 'Applications' segment of my Gnome menu. Non-Debian-ites can use the installer supplied by Ximian/Helixcode instead, which I'm told is just as nice to use.

Running Evolution brought up a dialog box informing me that Evolution wanted to create a directory in my $HOME for some data files, and soon after brought up the main Inbox window. From there it was easy to set up my pop3 mailbox details- I'd prepared a mailbox especially- and send out a test message that was picked up and displayed with no problems.

Evolution has some Nice Features to it, some of which you won't find in Outlook. For example, there's threading, which will show replies to messages indented under the original message- great for keeping track of mailing lists, or keeping messages from the same person regarding the same subject in a nice, neat list. Other features include linking with the gtkhtml library to give the ability to display html in messages in much the same way as your average web browser. It doesn't stop short at e-mail, either... Evolution has attractive and not-unlike-outlook style Contacts and Calendar modes, both of which were a pleasure to use. The contacts database can search LDAP directories for the person you're after as well as storing/printing/searching through details, and consists of a portable back-end; networked users can share contact databases, for example. The Calendar mode supports the popular iCalendar standard, which means it's possible to synchronise your appointments with your PalmOS device, and Evolution will also export an attractive html version of your calendar, for publishing on the web; again, this is one of the sections that does everything Outlook can and more, and is a very promising sign for Evolution's future.

I currently use mutt, with fetchmail and procmail, and it's taken quite a while to get my settings just as I like them, especially with regards to procmail. I wasn't, therefore, relishing having to re-program my mail filters into Evolution's own format of filtering. Unlike some e-mail clients, though, Evolution gives you the option to work on a mail spool rather than pop3 or IMAP, and this is what I moved to next. I created a backup copy (these are Good and Worthwhile things, especially with personal mailboxes) and gave it to Evolution to play with. It surprised me greatly in that both searches and just loading mailboxes seemed much faster than with mutt, with a search through 4000 messages (my linux-kernel mailbox) taking literally under two seconds to come back with the goods, and on a 64mb PIII-500, too. I was impressed.

Getting this far got me really intrigued about Evolution and where it's going, and in a fit of excitement I managed to track down Jeff Stedfast, who's been a "Hacker Monkey" at Helixcode/Ximian since last May, and works on the mail section of Evolution. I decided to ask him about Open Source, Ximian, and where Evolution's going.

Chris: So, how exactly did you get involved with the Open Source community, and with Ximian/Helixcode?

Jeff: I've always been into the idea of sharing knowledge. I think that my belief has only gotten stronger the more I use and develop Free Software. I guess it's because I crave knowledge.

When I was nearing the middle of spring semester 2000 at The College of New Jersey, I had started my search for a programming internship. I wanted to write GNU/Linux software if I could, but I was pretty much willing to take anything I could get. One night on irc.gimp.net I half-jokingly asked Miguel de Icaza [co-founder of Helix/Ximian] if he had a place for me at Helix Code. He immediately said yes and wanted to know when I could be up in Boston. I was shocked. I couldn't believe he was serious. I told him that I was finishing up my semester but that I would gladly be up there as soon as I could.

Prior to this I had been working on my own mailer with Miguel constantly giving me grief and trying to push me into hacking on Evolution.

Chris: Okay. Evolution's come a long way... I've been following it since the first devel release, and coming from someone used to Outlook it's constantly surpassed my expectations of it as an Outlook clone- features like threading, iCal and LDAP support and the ability to export many types of data to html really help me out. What other features can you see in Evolution's future? If the goal of Evolution was ever to become a working Outlook substitute, do you think that goal's been changed to make something that outclasses Outlook? Was that always the case?

Jeff: I can't speak for the Calendar or Addressbook teams, but as far as the mailer goes we have a number of improvements lined up. Here are the more notable ones that come to mind:

- Disconnected IMAP. This will allow a user to browse his or her IMAP mail while offline. This is extremely useful when trying to read/respond to email while on an airplane for example.

- IMAP client-side filtering. Currently IMAP itself doesn't support any method for filtering mail but it does provide a means to MOVE and COPY mail to other folders. The idea here is that you will be able to specify a set of filters that will shuffle your mail around on your IMAP server. The only way to do this now is to run procmail (or something similar) on the IMAP server.

- SSL/TLS support which I know will make a lot of people happy. If you're not familiar with SSL/TLS, they basically provide an encrypted channel for your IMAP, POP, and SMTP communications.

- Multipart/Signed and Multipart/Encrypted email. While most people may not use this feature, it's an important one. Currently I've got the PGP/MIME specification almost completed. The other big one is S/MIME but I can't say for sure if that one will be supported by 1.0. I will say that we will support it eventually though.

As far as what "new" (meaning never-before seen in email) features might be seen in future releases of Evolution? Only time will tell, but we might try to extend the idea of VFolders into the other components. I personally think that would be cool.

Chris: Cool. When Evolution started up, there were a lot of technologies available under open-source licenses that must have helped you out- gtkhtml, bonobo, ORBit, the messaging interfaces, gnome-print- how far do you think the Open Source community's helped Helixcode/Ximian in their job of producing an e-mail client? How much of the work on Evolution is done by yourselves at Ximian, and how much is from outside volunteers? Do outside volunteers ever get recruited by Ximian? Is Evolution truly an community effort, or do you tend to keep things in-house?

Jeff: It has helped a lot, unfortunately writing a good mailer is still hard work ;-)

Being able to build on top of the GNOME libraries is a tremendous help. I don't even want to imagine what writing Evolution using straight xlib and libc would be like.

Chris: How much of the work on Evolution is done by yourselves at Ximian, and how much is from outside volunteers? Do outside volunteers ever get recruited by Ximian? Is Evolution truly an community effort, or do you tend to keep things in-house?

Jeff: It depends on how you categorize "Evolution" as a whole and what you mean by "work"...

If by "Evolution" you mean only Evolution's source tree, then I'd say more than 95% of the code is written by hackers at Ximian. I guess that this is the only definition of "Evolution" that can really be measured because a countless amount of work goes into it's dependencies like ORBit, GNOME-libs, Oaf, and things by a large group of people, many of which are strictly volunteers.

A lot of work (non code) on Evolution is also done by translators and people who send us bug reports who are mostly volunteers.

To answer your question about volunteers being recruited by Ximian, the answer is yes. Most of the employees at Ximian started out as volunteers in the GNOME community. I, for example, wrote the SMTP code in Evolution before I became an employee at Ximian.

So there we go. I'm getting ready to wave goodnight to mutt and depart on a new journey with Evolution. I may even submit some code, too, if I can. Whatever happens, Microsoft are going to have a tough job to try and keep me as an Outlook customer, and I'd imagine they know it.