Yes, the UiO director has approved that Exchange should be used on the servers, and this will be implemented. What is not true, is that all employees must use Outlook. IMAP support will be kept and a number of clients will be supported, for Linux, Mac OS, Android, iOS and Windows. Most Windows users will probably want to use Outlook, but there will be other alternatives for Windows users too. Access to the -mail will not be limited to Microsoft clients or indeed clients based on proprietary technology.
So, my campaign is not especially about the desktop clients (that is, the programs you use to read your mail), but about the mail infrastructure, what in IT parlance is called the "mail servers".
Still the reason why I wrote the sentence "Everyone is going to use Outlook" in my original posting is that the more it gets dominant and the more education there is on it, the most people will use it... until the argument "since nobody uses X and Y, support will be discontinued" foreseeably comes up in the (not so distant) future.
This is of course my "prediction". Other people can disagree and even expect that this change will produce a more varied palette of mail clients in UiO.
But I then should remind those people that, at least in HF/ILOS, all computers in the classroom have: Windows! All administrative tasks that have to do with personal (holidays, trips) have to be accessed through remote desktop to Windows... It does not look like "other" users receive the same rights when "administration", or leadership, enforces new procedures.
(For the record, I have a RHEL 6 desktop, Linux, thus. And this is why I am also so interested in being able to use Open Office and not only MS Office. It is a question of freedom, not of convenience. Not that "it works", but that "it is right".)
Please support this movement No outlook for Exchange: we want a free university by signing the protest here and spreading the word and discussing it with other people.
See also the information in Norwegian about losing rights in other IT-fronts: Fjerne ODF som obligatorisk standard i det offentlig