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Open-Xchange Inc., the market-leading independent open source alternative to Microsoft Exchange, today announced a special program for Zimbra customers concerns about their investment in light of the pending Microsoft/Yahoo deal. Zimbra customers can fax the Open-Xchange Competitive Upgrade form (http://www.open-xchange.com/index.php?id=860) to Open-Xchange together with a copy of their last two years groupware invoice and Open-Xchange will offer a two year subscription to an equivalent Open-Xchange product for 50% of the cost of their invoice.“This is a disturbing time for many Zimbra users,” said Rafael Laguna, CEO, Open-Xchange. “Along with this program, we also introduced our Community Edition earlier this month – to make sure that any investment in Open-Xchange will be protected.”

(via PRWEB)

While the Microsoft’s attempt to acquire Yahoo is still in its earliest rounds of review, and Zimbra isn’t dead yet; the vultures are already circling. The quote above comes from a press release from Open-Xchange. They have announced that they will offer assistance and “discounts” to Zimbra customers who wish to jump ship, in fear of Microsoft’s killing off Zimbra should the take over bid succeed.

This smells about as scummy as Mark Shuttleworth’s note to OpenSUSE / SuSE developers after Novell’s deal with Microsoft. Is there so little room in the market for open-source groupware / messaging solutions that OpenXchange and Zimbra have to compete this viciously? You would think there were enough disgruntled Exchange users for them to share the space. It would be in their best interest to work together to expand the space and give open-source some credibility in this market, rather than nipping at each others heels.

Beyond this, the announcement of the “switch” program seems premature. The Yahoo/Microsoft deal is still just wet dream that Gates/Balmer are sharing; it is far from a “sure thing”. Yahoo’s board, shareholders and various government regulators would still need to approve/accept it. No organization in their right mind is going to schedule a replacement of Zimbra at this point based only of the prospect of a Yahoo acquisition.

I’d be curious to see if anyone else notices this. Will any customers actually be convinced by the FUD and take the bait? Will other competitors like Xandros’s Scalix make similar announcements? Or will this FUD receive the same negative feedback and discussion that Shuttleworth’s note to OpenSuSE devs/users did last year?