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Comment by stefanve | Hacker News Reader

SharePoint is a Jack of all trades, master of none so based on you requirements you have to choose the right tool most of which are OSS or at the very least non depended on Windows

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Definitely true. A wiki provides a good chunk of what I've seen folks in academia use SP for but I've seen other companies use primarily the office-type features (calendar, contacts, etc). But if you setup a wiki along with something like Zimbra and that could provide most of what SP offers and some extras.

Could you name few? Anything would be helpful.

It really depends on your requirements. What is it that you need? Like any software SP is a tool, just like home improvement you don't go out buy a tool and than try to use it for what ever task is in front of you (you might end up with a screw driver while you really needed a hammer). So I could make a list of Document Management, Content Management, Intranet, etc software but the correct answer depends on your needs since there are lots of choose and all (some) have there own strong and weak points.

SP is a mesh up of several software suits slowly coming to getter, it is getting better every release. SP could also be the right choice depending in your needs. Mainly work group portals but those tend to fail (as in not being used) since most of the time there is no proper business case nor business processes in place to support the grand idea

If you respond with specific requirements I'll be glad to give you a rundown of options for each requirement, as well as good "package deals" of software that works well in concert.

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