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Patches For Pine Going Away
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Nov 19, 2006 05:35 AM
from the pining-for-the-fjords dept.
from the pining-for-the-fjords dept.
md8mart writes to let us know about the imminent shutdown of the site that distributes Pine patches. From the RSS feed of Patches for Pine we read the following bad news for all Pine users: "The Department of Mathematics of the University of Washington will close the account that hosts my Patches for Pine site. I would like to thank the Department of Mathematics for having hosted this site for so many years. I do not have current plans to move this site, but this site will disappear on December 15, 2006. Thank you to everyone who supported me by positive feedback and encouragement to do this work through the years. I will update this information as it becomes available."
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oh god no! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:oh god no! (Score:5, Informative)
(http://2130706433/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 19, @10:29AM)
Except that it isn't. It's the user site "patches for pine" that goes away, not pine, nor the pine web site, nor pine itself.
The official web site is at http://www.washington.edu/pine/ [washington.edu]
The site that will be closed is http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/ [washington.edu]
Regards,
--
*Art
Re:oh god no! (Score:5, Informative)
(http://iki.fi/teknohog/ | Last Journal: Tuesday August 14, @06:49PM)
These patches have been around for a long time, and I'm sure the author has suggested them for upstream merger already.
You're on the right track concerning legal reasons, which is why there's so much fuss about Pine patches compared to other software patches. In my understanding, the license [washington.edu] forbids the distribution of unofficial versions, except for local use. You can only distribute your own version of Pine as a set of patches against the official version.
Distributions like Gentoo get around this nicely by automatically patching and compiling upon install. But the fact remains that Pine is not Free software in the sense that you would be free to distribute your improvements.
Personally, I'm not too worried as I believe the patches will find another home. I've used Pine since 1998, I think it strikes a very good balance between convenience of use and customizability, and I haven't found a decent alternative.
Crap, so now I have to choose (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday July 29, @04:31PM)
Re:Crap, so now I have to choose (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Crap, so now I have to choose (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.drivesentinel.co.uk/)
upgrade (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://zdzichubg.jogger.pl/ | Last Journal: Friday July 18 2003, @02:30PM)
Mutt's a pain in the ass to set up for SMTP. (Score:4, Informative)
I know the arguments behind not adding such support, and having been a Mutt user myself for a while I understand the raw power it offers. But I also understand that many people don't want to spend a lot of extra time setting up their mail client just because it doesn't include some core functionality.
How about a change of license? (Score:2)
(http://dattaway.us/)
http://www.washington.edu/pine/overview/legal.htm
Now is a great time to switch to mutt (Score:3, Informative)
(http://ptaff.ca/)
As Pine is not free software [linuxtoday.com], time to move on to mutt [mutt.org] or its next-gen friend, mutt-ng [supersized.org]. No need to use a bloated GUI app to read mail.
As for what "pine" means, here is the truth: "Pine Is Not Enough".
That's not what "pine" means (Score:5, Funny)
I don't care if pine is free or not. It's served me for many, many years. I use it daily, and it works well. It's not a gui app, either, though I'm not sure you were implying that it was.
As for what "pine" means, here is the truth: "Pine Is Not Enough".
That is false, and not terribly amusing. I had the great fortune to work for a number of years with one of pine's original developers. Over lunch one day, he told me that 'pine' isn't an acronym at all. But, he said, if it were to be made into a backronym [wikipedia.org], it was generally agreed that it should stand for "Pine Is a Neologist's Elm".
You all can figure out what 'pico' doesn't stand for.
-B
Re:That's not what "pine" means (Score:4, Informative)
(http://sorcererx.net/)
Re:Now is a great time to switch to mutt (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it so difficult to allow other people to say what they think, rather than pushing your values onto them?
Re:Now is a great time to switch to mutt (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://eridanus.net/ | Last Journal: Monday September 15 2003, @07:39AM)
From TFWP : "In late 2005, Computing & Communications at the University of Washington began a project to create a new family of email tools built upon the Pine® Message System. This family of tools is called Alpine. Alpine consists of a UNIX command-line program, a PC version, and a Web version.
Alpine will be licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0."
PINE was my first UNIX mail reader on the now defunct MRC HGMP server circa 1995 (how I miss that account) so I grew to love it. That was around the time I still thought PICO was a neat editor. Then I found vi, them vim, then mutt, and I've not looked back
well geez... (Score:2)
(http://robotmonkeys.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 26 2004, @03:23AM)
Just pass the torch man!
Re:well geez... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.productrecallwatch.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 09, @10:26PM)
15 years after his account closed (Score:2)
(http://eth1.org/)
Not the end of pine (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not Open Source (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Sunday October 20 2002, @06:08PM)
Granted it is a pretty open license, but UW Still owns it.
The Project Is Not Dead... (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Sunday March 02 2003, @12:09PM)
Well, I guess all that's left.. (Score:5, Funny)
Question from a Pine user. (Score:2)
And no, don't tell me what other program I should use instead!
A good think for us, I say (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Monday October 23 2006, @03:10AM)
Sourceforge anyone? (Score:1)
(http://www.angelfire...epublican/index.blog | Last Journal: Thursday July 27 2006, @12:00AM)
LK
A shame, regardless of the status of the main proj (Score:1)
Pine is the best email client I've used (Score:3, Insightful)
Since 93, I've used a dozen different email clients. In most cases, they were not of my chosing. When I have a choice, I use pine. I have yet to find a small, capable client with such a straightforward, intuitively designed, user friendly interface. I have high hopes of Alpine but mutt, elm and emacs' rmail are inferior to pine.
Importance (Score:2)
(http://www.coppit.org/)
No more patches for pine? (Score:3, Funny)
Sourceforge.net? (Score:2)
(http://rg03.wordpress.com/)
Pine was great, until... (Score:1)
(http://www.midaregami.net/log/)
I used pine quite a lot at the beginning of my email career, and it certainly does do nearly all of what you'd need an email client to do, and has an interface that is significantly better than it might seem at first blush.
But one thing it doesn't do--or at least, requires so much kludging to achieve that it might as well be impossible--is handle multibyte characters and alternative encodings. If I can't read and write email in Japanese, then I flat-out cannot use whatever client it is that lacks the feature.
So I guess I'll survive, insofar as I've been surviving for coming on a decade now.
I'm at UW... (Score:2)
I can understand why some people would choose pine (or mutt, or another console-run mail program), although I am not one of them. But if you've ever used any web email client other than webpine, you know what a dog webpine is. It's hard to find a web-based email that's worse than webpine.
The only thing I can figure is webpine was invented here, while squirrel mail (for example) wasn't. But it's not hard to come up with a handful of free, IMAP-aware web mail programs that are demonstrably better than webpine after about two minutes of use...
Decorating early I see... (Score:1)
(http://www.freshdv.com/)
But seriously...pine still has a large install base? Wow.
-MJ
Mirror Available (Score:2)
(http://scovetta.blogspot.com/)
Re:This is what non-OSS warns about (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Thursday July 25 2002, @08:36AM)
Re:well there's always /usr/bin/mail (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Friday June 11 2004, @11:15AM)
Re:OMG Bloated!!1 (Score:3, Interesting)
But what if I don't want a GUI e-mail client? Sure I can afford the CPU usage, but I'd rather have something small that lives in an SSH window or can even be used on systems where X isn't installed. And most of the graphics sent to me in e-mails are either (a) spam or (b) crap like signatures. The other 1% I can view in webmail should I need to.
Pine is just useless, and it should be abandoned.
Useless how? It allows you to read e-mail and organize it into different folders. What else is needed? A decent search function would be nice, I'd admit, but it's nothing that can't be easily written. That's like saying a 1960s car is useless because it doesn't have power windows, A/C, or ABS brakes...
-b.
Re:OMG Bloated!!1 (Score:3, Informative)
When you have pine on a server, you can use anything that can run a SSH client to connect there. Which, due to the wonders of MidpSSH, can be any device that supports J2ME, which means most of cellphones.
Which also means no need to lug a laptop for mere mail, which is a good theft prevention/damage mitigation (a cellphone is cheaper than a laptop, easier to replace, and easier to take care of - try to put a laptop in your shirt pocket, not mentioning longer battery life), and important security improvement especially in the age of nosy customs (see other articles here). Also, when stationed somewhere where a computer is available, a Knoppix CD will provide a relatively secure terminal free of software keyloggers, with comfortable big screen and qwerty keyboard as an alternative to a cramped eyestraining cellphone screen.