Editing GNOME Evolution (section)

==History==
Ximian decided to develop Evolution in 2000. It felt there were no e-mail clients for [[Linux]] at the time that could provide the functionality and interoperability necessary for corporate users. Ximian saw an opportunity for Linux to penetrate the corporate environment if the right [[enterprise software]] was available for it. It released Evolution 1.0 in December 2001 and offered the paid Ximian Connector plug-in which allowed users to connect with Microsoft Exchange Server. Evolution itself has been free software from the start, but Ximian Connector was sold as [[proprietary software]] so that Ximian could generate revenue.<ref name=register /> This changed after Novell's acquisition of Ximian in August 2003. Novell decided to integrate the Exchange plug-in as free software in Evolution 2.0 in May 2004.<ref name=novell />

Novell was in turn acquired by [[The Attachmate Group]] in 2011. It transferred Novell's former Evolution developers to its subsidiary [[SUSE S.A.|SUSE]]. In 2012 SUSE decided to stop its funding of Evolution's development and assigned its developers elsewhere. As a consequence only two full-time developers employed by [[Red Hat]] remained.<ref name=evo-newin36 /> Later in 2013 Red Hat dedicated more developers to the project, reinvigorating its development. The reasons given for the decision were the cessation of active development on [[Mozilla Thunderbird]] and the need for an e-mail client with good support for Microsoft Exchange.<ref name=evo-newdev />