With every Tom, Dick and Harry (okay, Visto, Nokia, Good, Microsoft, Palm, Etc.) positioning itself as an alternative to Research In Motion's e-mail service—as users anxiously await the 24th's injunction hearing, it's not a surprise to hear about another vendor throwing its hat into the mob-e-mail ring. Funambol, a company with several years worth of wireless synchronization experience, is different, however: it has released an open source push e-mail solution.

Funambol v3 - for carriers and enterprises - supports Exchange, Domino, IMAP and POP e-mail servers. On the device side, Funambol works with BlackBerry handhelds, Windows Mobile devices,and Open Mobile Alliance compliant (also known as SyncML) phones from Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and others.

With the solution, users can send, receive and forward e-mail, open attachments, read messages on and offline, and accept or decline meeting requests. It also provides standard over-the-air synchronization of calendars, to-do lists, contacts, and other PIM data.

Analyst firm Gartner predicted last year that by 2008 wireless e-mail would become standard fare for all smartphones, existing right alongside voice communications. Funambol CEO Fabrizio Capobianco asserts, "Open source software and standards will accelerate mobile e-mail deployments, increase revenue opportunities for carriers and give enterprises more flexibility."

The solution is available without charge under the GPL open source license. There's also Enterprise and Carrier versions under a commercial license that provides access to additional features, broader platform support, intellectual property protections, commercial license terms, and available support, according to the company.

Funambol views its status as an opens source company as its ticket to success and acceptance. It already has corporate (CA, for example) and carrier (Vodafone & a Pilipino operator) customers and is banking on jittery nerves of companies watching the litigious mob-e-mail wars changing course. You see, unlike a vendor like Visto, for instance, you're less likely to see an open source enterprise like Funambol aggressively suing its competitors (Good Technology and Microsoft most recently in Visto's case) to protect intellectual property. Or, on the flipside, become as easily dogged like RIM by legal hassles.

It has, after all, the open source community standing behind its code, checking to make sure everything is kosher. Capobianco says, "We believe that mobile e-mail will quickly become a commodity, so open source is the natural approach to this market place. With Funambol v3, we deliver the benefits of open source software to our customers—code where every line is scrutinized and tested and access to largest mobile QA group in the world."