So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Mark Crispin
I would like to think that IMAP and Pine communities for nearly two
decades. You've all been wonderful to work with.
I don't know who will take over UW imapd, but some members of the Alpine
development team survived the layoffs. You can contact them at
alpine-...@u.washington.edu.
Thanks to all of you!
-- Mark --
http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Harold Stevens
[Snip...]
> Thanks to all of you!
Mark, I'm very disappointed to hear this, after many years with your help
online. Best wishes from a Pine fan from way back. :)
--
Regards, Weird (Harold Stevens) * IMPORTANT EMAIL INFO FOLLOWS *
Pardon any bogus email addresses (wookie) in place for spambots.
Really, it's (wyrd) at airmail, dotted with net. DO NOT SPAM IT.
I toss GoogleGroup posts from gitgo (http://improve-usenet.org).
Michael Black
> I, along with several dozen other co-workers, was laid off today.
>
> I would like to think that IMAP and Pine communities for nearly two decades.
> You've all been wonderful to work with.
>
> I don't know who will take over UW imapd, but some members of the Alpine
> development team survived the layoffs. You can contact them at
> alpine-...@u.washington.edu.
>
> Thanks to all of you!
>
I've used Pine for 12 years, and don't expect to stop.
When I finally moved to Linux in mid-2001, the first distribution
didn't include Pine, and I wasn't up to installing it myself at
that point. So I ended up choosing a distribution because it
did include Pine.
Michael
Art Greenberg
Mark,
Thanks for all of your contributions to Pine and IMAP. I hope you're
able to continue doing the work you enjoy, wherever you land.
Good luck!
--
Art Greenberg
artg at eclipse dot net
Stephen Chadfield
> I, along with several dozen other co-workers, was laid off today.
>
> I would like to think that IMAP and Pine communities for nearly two
> decades. You've all been wonderful to work with.
>
> I don't know who will take over UW imapd, but some members of the Alpine
> development team survived the layoffs. You can contact them at
> alpine-...@u.washington.edu.
>
> Thanks to all of you!
Thanks for all your hard work Mark. IMAP raised email out of the dark
ages.
--
Stephen Chadfield
Holger Marzen
* On Tue, 20 May 2008 14:55:15 -0700, Mark Crispin wrote:
> I, along with several dozen other co-workers, was laid off today.
>
> I would like to think that IMAP and Pine communities for nearly two
> decades. You've all been wonderful to work with.
Thanks for the good work. Pine was my first love when I started using
Internet. My first shell account was on a Linux box 1994, and I love
Pine from the first moment when I used it.
> I don't know who will take over UW imapd, but some members of the Alpine
> development team survived the layoffs. You can contact them at
> alpine-...@u.washington.edu.
So Alpine development will continue?
nog
and once again - many thanks to all - good luck for the future!
I use pine on linux and windows (alpine) and will continue as long as i
can!
Rob Brown
> I, along with several dozen other co-workers, was laid off today.
Bummer.
Thanks for all the work you have done and all the advice you have
provided.
Best wishes for your future endeavours.
- Rob
--
Rob Brown b r o w n a t g m c l d o t c o m
G. Michaels Consulting Ltd. (780)438-9343 (voice)
Edmonton (780)437-3367 (FAX)
http://gmcl.com/
LC's No-Spam Newsreading account
Good night and good luck !
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
nos...@mi.iasf.cnr.it is a newsreading account used by more persons to
avoid unwanted spam. Any mail returning to this address will be rejected.
Users can disclose their e-mail address in the article if they wish so.
Erik Quaeghebeur
Hope to see you around.
Erik
alv...@example.com
Yeah, what Erik said! :)
Alvin in AZ
Beartooth Paganus
> I, along with several dozen other co-workers, was laid off today.
>
> I would like to think that IMAP and Pine communities for nearly two
> decades. You've all been wonderful to work with.
>
> I don't know who will take over UW imapd, but some members of the Alpine
> development team survived the layoffs. You can contact them at
> alpine-...@u.washington.edu.
>
> Thanks to all of you!
Keep us posted. I don't doubt the best people will race to snap
you up -- if only because so many of us know that anything youss guyss in
general, and you in particular, may do is sure to be supremely excellent.
--
Beartooth Paganus, Staffwright, Sciurivore
What do they know of country, who only country know?
John Haverty
> I, along with several dozen other co-workers, was laid off today.
>
> I would like to think that IMAP and Pine communities for nearly two decades.
> You've all been wonderful to work with.
>
> I don't know who will take over UW imapd, but some members of the Alpine
> development team survived the layoffs. You can contact them at
> alpine-...@u.washington.edu.
>
> Thanks to all of you!
Mark,
Wow, I do not check the group in a few days and I come back to all kinds
of happenings. Thank you for your help over the years! Good luck to you
in your future career path.
John
david
> I, along with several dozen other co-workers, was laid off today.
>
> I would like to think that IMAP and Pine communities for nearly two decades.
> You've all been wonderful to work with.
>
> I don't know who will take over UW imapd, but some members of the Alpine
> development team survived the layoffs. You can contact them at
> alpine-...@u.washington.edu.
>
> Thanks to all of you!
>
> -- Mark --
>
This is very troubling to me. You *ARE* the author of IMAP... you have done so much for Internet
email over the years... and you were LAID OFF? A bad message on corporate culture. Get rid of the
true contributors and intellectuals... hire trainees instead. really depressing. i have followed
your posts for years... Washington edu redefines Pine to Alpine - and then eliminates the very
leaders of that movement. I do wish you the very best. And I do admire also that you would tell
us.. thank you for that. And I wish the very best for you. Maybe this will be a career milestone to
future greatness. I had long felt that your talents exceeded your role. And I hope you stay in
touch with this group.
best regards,
david
--
-----------------------------------
david dsk...@usa.net
Beartooth
> I, along with several dozen other co-workers, was laid off today.
[...]
Given that opprobrious fact, and this statement :
===== ===== ===== =====
> Pine is no longer under active development. Consider evaluating its >
successor, Alpine, which supports all of Pine's functionality and more.
===== ===== ===== =====
which is still at http://www.washington.edu/pine/ -- given both, is it
not a legitimate topic for this group to ask, "What of Alpine, then?"
After eighteen years of the glory Pine and Alpine have reflected
on UW, does it now plan to drop both, and their literally millions of
users, flat? Will any source of operating systems spring into the breach,
if breach there be??
Will UW's sister school WSU stop making Cougar Gold cheese?
Has the San Andreas fault propagated itself all the way up the
Idaho border, prefatory to the whole West Coast falling off and drifting
out to sea, instead of the East as so many used to wish?
Which would be worse?
Seriously, isn't anything known, after over two months? Can it
not be told here? If not here, where? If not now, when?
--
Beartooth Implacable, PhD, Neo-Redneck Linux Convert
What do they know of computers, who only computers know?
Steve Hubert
probably called Alpine 2.0. It will include the source for Web Alpine 2.0,
which was not included as part of Alpine 1.10.
After that, we plan to continue serving as the primary host for Alpine
source, but shift our effort from direct development into more of a
consultation and coordination role to help integrate contributions from
the community.
University of Washington Alpine team
Unruh
Uh, that sounds like a plan to simply discontinue Pine/Alpine. Community
involvelement cannot simply be switched on at will. You developed pine in a
semi-proprietary fashion for many years which probably meant that you did
not develope a strong community team. That cannot simply be called into
action at a whim on your part. Either the community has to be involved from
day one ( a la the kernel of linux) or someone has to take th lead and
gradually grow that involvement. You cannot simply decide-- we are tired,
lets hand it over to the community.
Pine is a complex piece of code. Noone knows it terribly well, and to
support it someone needs to know it well.
Erik Quaeghebeur
>
>> We will have at least one more release within the next couple weeks,
>> probably called Alpine 2.0. It will include the source for Web Alpine 2.0,
>> which was not included as part of Alpine 1.10.
>
>> After that, we plan to continue serving as the primary host for Alpine
>> source, but shift our effort from direct development into more of a
>> consultation and coordination role to help integrate contributions from
>> the community.
On Tue, 5 Aug 2008, Unruh wrote:
>
> Uh, that sounds like a plan to simply discontinue Pine/Alpine. Community
> involvelement cannot simply be switched on at will. You developed pine in a
> semi-proprietary fashion for many years which probably meant that you did
> not develope a strong community team. That cannot simply be called into
> action at a whim on your part. Either the community has to be involved from
> day one ( a la the kernel of linux) or someone has to take th lead and
> gradually grow that involvement. You cannot simply decide-- we are tired,
> lets hand it over to the community.
>
> Pine is a complex piece of code. Noone knows it terribly well, and to
> support it someone needs to know it well.
I would not be so pessimistic. The code is there, UW would still provide
some structure, lots of computer-knowledgeable people use (al)pine, some
somewhat famous (like Mr Torvalds of the linux kernel) that could perhaps
be persuaded to make publicity for the cause of keeping alpine fit.
Erik
Unruh
Linus has his hands full with the kernel. And just because a programmer is
good does not mean that they can take someone else's code, figure out how
it works and start altering it without a huge investment in time. I have
not looked at the code so have no idea how well the source code is documented.
If documented to the same standard as most of the stuff in the kernel it
would be a month long job I suspect. You need the people who understand the
code well to be around to guide the people trying to get up to speed even
if it is well documented. If it is not, forget it. To simply dump a
codebase onto the community without preparation is to relegate the code to
oblivion.
>Erik
Harold Stevens
[Snip...]
> people who understand the code well
Well, there's always Mark Crispin. Oh, wait...
Mark Crispin
>> people who understand the code well
> Well, there's always Mark Crispin. Oh, wait...
That is not going to happen, especially now that I have a new job.
I strongly recommend that if you want to see Alpine developed and
maintained, you should try looking at the code and understanding it on
your own. Nobody is entitled to have someone else do it for them.
In my opinion, Alpine is not a particularly difficult package for a
competant programmer. It is very well organized into a very few
functional blocks:
. alpine for the PC and UNIX user interface
. web for the web user interface
. pith for the common modules
. pico for the editor
. imap/src:
. c-client for the message access and Unicode API
. osdep/unix or osdep/nt for local mailbox file handling
Finally, to correct a misperception:
The development team did not give up Alpine because they were "tired".
UW, their employer, killed the project; and laid off two members of the
development team (not to mention 64 other people in UW's IT department).
UW is in the process of switch to Exchange and cloud-based services (Live
@ Edu, Gmail, etc.).
In fact, Pine and IMAP were both supposed to be killed at least 5 years
ago, and the death warrant was signed in 2005.
That's what Alpine was all about; the swan song of Pine. Alpine was
supposed to be nothing more than a quick rename of Pine 4.64 to get out of
the trademark obligations; tossing in the previously-unreleased WebPine
bits, and yanking out the third-party proprietary speller that prevented
the release of the source code for PC Pine.
The development team went far beyond that. They spent a year creating a
major new release, with vast extensions over the old Pine. Then they got
the Mellon Grant to do a complete professional redesign of Web Alpine
(which you will see in the next release) which kept everything going for
another year. I had my own modest contributions to all this...
Not bad for a project that was killed nearly three years ago!
I'm not a member of the development team any more. When I was a member I
was just the IMAP guy. Nonetheless, I think that the development team
deserves a hearty "thank you and well done" from the community.
And, from me to my former teammates:
Thank You, and Well Done!
-- Mark --
http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
Unruh
I certainly agree that the development team are owed a huge vote of thanks.
But I have serious doubts that Alpine will be around in 5 years as an
ongoing support/project.
Mark Crispin <m...@Panda.COM> writes:
>On Wed, 6 Aug 2008, Harold Stevens posted:
>>> people who understand the code well
>> Well, there's always Mark Crispin. Oh, wait...
>That is not going to happen, especially now that I have a new job.
>I strongly recommend that if you want to see Alpine developed and
>maintained, you should try looking at the code and understanding it on
>your own. Nobody is entitled to have someone else do it for them.
Just as you have other things to do in your life, and are unwilling to
spend your evenings supporting Alpine, so with most other people. While
noone is perhaps entitled, if someone else does not do it, neither you nor
I will be using alpine.
And too bad all of that work will likely go to waste.
Michele Dondi
>That's what Alpine was all about; the swan song of Pine. Alpine was
>supposed to be nothing more than a quick rename of Pine 4.64 to get out of
>the trademark obligations; tossing in the previously-unreleased WebPine
>bits, and yanking out the third-party proprietary speller that prevented
>the release of the source code for PC Pine.
[...]
>The development team went far beyond that. They spent a year creating a
>major new release, with vast extensions over the old Pine. Then they got
[...]
>Not bad for a project that was killed nearly three years ago!
It must also be said that just at the same time as I'm really sad
myself to learn that *pine development will be abandoned, because -for
one thing- I see space for improvements (I have a list of feature
requests, BTW) there are valuable pieces of software that can be
reasonably considered stable and thus usable perfectly from some point
on with no further evolution.
I think that pine will always remain my favourite email client. It is
much more important IMHO, to have experts hanging around who can
dissolve doubts and uncertainities about fine details in configuration
issues.
Last, I have faith that at least for bug fixes someone will pick up
pine, and further improve it.
Michele
--
Liberta' va cercando, ch'e' si' cara,
Come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta.
[Dante Alighieri, Purg. I, 71-72]
I am my own country - United States Confederate of Me!
[Pennywise, "My own country"]
Harold Stevens
[Snip...]
> And too bad all of that work will likely go to waste
IMO you're being a bit hasty here, Bill, although I generally agree it's
a difficult situation for any FOSS project. I'd say give it time, to see
if UW and the FOSS community can come to some agreement about terms.
I certainly hope it doesn't go to waste. I still find (al)pine to be one
of the most handy tools in my online kit, going on years now.
JMO; YMMV...
Unruh
>In <3nxmk.4608$%b7.4317@edtnps82> Unruh:
>[Snip...]
>> And too bad all of that work will likely go to waste
>IMO you're being a bit hasty here, Bill, although I generally agree it's
>a difficult situation for any FOSS project. I'd say give it time, to see
>if UW and the FOSS community can come to some agreement about terms.
I certainly hope so.
>I certainly hope it doesn't go to waste. I still find (al)pine to be one
>of the most handy tools in my online kit, going on years now.
Oh, I agree. I use it all the time. It is just the UW is NOT going about
this in a terribly helpful manner. They seem to think (or not) that one can
just dump a project onto the open community and everything will be alright.
Open source projects need nurturing, and need one of two people who take
responsibility for it.
Mark Crispin
> Open source projects need nurturing, and need one of two people who take
> responsibility for it.
Who will fund those "one or two people"?
There is NO SUCH THING as "free software", whether you claim "free" means
"no charge" or "freedom". There are ALWAYS costs and encumberances.
Projects such as the Linux kernel are heavily funded by corporations with
deep pockets. So far, no deep-pocketed angel has come forth for Alpine
(much less the IMAP software).
In May, I looked into continued development and maintenance of UW IMAP
(or, more accurately, doing so as an open source project; I've already
forked for my private purposes). It was a non-starter. What little
funding that was held out as a possibility was less than 1/10 of what
would be needed.
This has always been the problem. Over nearly two decades, the silence
was deafening any time there was any suggestion of financial contributions
to help keep Pine and IMAP alive at UW. This was unsustainable, and
eventually it had to end. I'm surprised that it took as long as it did.
I hope that my former teammates will be allowed to help ease the
transition; but (assuming they stay at UW) they will have other projects
to do.
Last but not least, what is happening is exactly what UW was badgered to
do for many years. The people making the decisions at UW received all the
complaints about the Pine license over the years. Is it any wonder that
they decided that this project was a liability?
The lesson is to be careful about your wishes. They may come true.
Itay
On Wed, 6 Aug 2008, Mark Crispin wrote:
> [...]
> I'm not a member of the development team any more. When I was a member I was
> just the IMAP guy. Nonetheless, I think that the development team deserves a
> hearty "thank you and well done" from the community.
>
> And, from me to my former teammates:
> Thank You, and Well Done!
>
> -- Mark --
Big-big thanks!
And good luck in your new job.
Pine is one of the very few software that I stayed loyal to over more
than decade and a half since I started my way in the computer world.
I wish it will stay with me at least that long.
You, and the development team did an excellent work.
Itay
Unruh
>On Thu, 7 Aug 2008, Unruh posted:
>> Open source projects need nurturing, and need one of two people who take
>> responsibility for it.
>Who will fund those "one or two people"?
Who funds Linus Torvald?
Some companies do not mind funding a programmer to spend part of his time
working on things like this. It used to be that UW did. But they created a
closed source proprietary program and developed no community whatsoever.
>There is NO SUCH THING as "free software", whether you claim "free" means
>"no charge" or "freedom". There are ALWAYS costs and encumberances.
>Projects such as the Linux kernel are heavily funded by corporations with
>deep pockets. So far, no deep-pocketed angel has come forth for Alpine
>(much less the IMAP software).
Sure they did. UW. They are now bailing.
>In May, I looked into continued development and maintenance of UW IMAP
>(or, more accurately, doing so as an open source project; I've already
>forked for my private purposes). It was a non-starter. What little
>funding that was held out as a possibility was less than 1/10 of what
>would be needed.
>This has always been the problem. Over nearly two decades, the silence
>was deafening any time there was any suggestion of financial contributions
>to help keep Pine and IMAP alive at UW. This was unsustainable, and
To whom were these suggestions directed? And while Pine was closed source,
and tightly controlled by UW, why would anyone else come onside?
>eventually it had to end. I'm surprised that it took as long as it did.
>I hope that my former teammates will be allowed to help ease the
>transition; but (assuming they stay at UW) they will have other projects
>to do.
>Last but not least, what is happening is exactly what UW was badgered to
>do for many years. The people making the decisions at UW received all the
>complaints about the Pine license over the years. Is it any wonder that
>they decided that this project was a liability?
?? The license was silly. They have now opened it. But they opened it and
abandoned it at the same time, which is equally silly. Had they opened it
those 10 years ago, and continued to put some money in, there might well
now be a community who could take it over.
>The lesson is to be careful about your wishes. They may come true.
I wish for a car. Someone drops a tank on my head. Have my wishes come
true?
Mark Crispin
> Who funds Linus Torvald?
Why don't you ask him?
You don't think that he lives in the basement of his parents' house,
hacking on the kernel for free?
> Some companies do not mind funding a programmer to spend part of his time
> working on things like this. It used to be that UW did.
That was the case in the past, but that has nearly vanished in recent
years, both in companies and academia.
Today, if someone at a company works on an open-source project, it is as a
product of the company.
> But they created a
> closed source proprietary program and developed no community whatsoever.
I don't know where you got your information, but this is totally false.
UNIX Pine has always been open source, the source has always been freely
distributed, and many many people modified it over many years.
The ONLY restriction was that if you wanted to redistribute a hacked
version of UNIX Pine, that you had to send a polite note to UW asking for
permission. In the past, that was considered to be "common sense" and
"common courtesy".
I note with considerable amusement how today's "kewl d00dz" post something
with the GPL, then throw outraged temper tantrums when someone has the
temerity to take their program, hack it, and redistribute the results.
I enjoyed working with the vast majority of users in my previous job. I
enjoyed answering their questions, and helping them resolve their issues.
I collected many very kind thank-you notes with statements of how they
received far better support from us than from anyone else (including
vendors that they had paid for support). For many years, my job at UW was
the best job in the world, thanks in large part to these kind users.
What I did not enjoy, and do not miss, were the small minority of
demanding individuals who feel a sense of entitlement and get abusive when
they do not get their way.
Booker Bense
Harold Stevens <woo...@aces.localdomain> wrote:
>In <3nxmk.4608$%b7.4317@edtnps82> Unruh:
>
>[Snip...]
>
>> And too bad all of that work will likely go to waste
>
>IMO you're being a bit hasty here, Bill, although I generally agree it's
>a difficult situation for any FOSS project. I'd say give it time, to see
>if UW and the FOSS community can come to some agreement about terms.
>
>I certainly hope it doesn't go to waste. I still find (al)pine to be one
>of the most handy tools in my online kit, going on years now.
>
I dunno, trn has been abandonware since sometime around 1995 or
so and I'm still using it to read usenet news. It still compiles
and runs on any unix I use w/o any effort on my part. You can write
software that "just keeps working" if you keep the surroundings
stable.
_ Booker C. Bense