So long, and thanks for all the fish!

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.

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.

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 <mrc@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.



>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!

And too bad all of that work will likely go to waste.



>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 --

On Wed, 6 Aug 2008 23:09:25 -0700, Mark Crispin <mrc@Panda.COM> wrote:

>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"]

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.

JMO; YMMV...

--
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).

Harold Stevens <wookie@aces.localdomain> writes:

>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.

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"?

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.

-- 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.

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

Mark Crispin <mrc@Panda.COM> writes:

>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?

On Fri, 8 Aug 2008, Unruh posted:
> 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.

-- 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.

In article <slrng9lreo.5db.wookie@aces.localdomain>,
Harold Stevens <wookie@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