Patches For Pine Going Away

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."

Comments

Now is a great time to switch to mutt

[ptaff]

As Pine is not free software, time to move on to mutt or its next-gen friend, mutt-ng. No need to use a bloated GUI app to read mail.

As for what "pine" means, here is the truth: "Pine Is Not Enough".

Re:oh god no!

[arth1]

MollyB (162595) wrote:

I haven't used Pine for 12 years or so, but this feels like the folks writing to say that old Rover is gone...

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/
The site that will be closed is http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:Crap, so now I have to choose

[CaptainAvatar]

Check out Alpine:

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. The target date for the release of Alpine is October 1, 2006.

Obviously they didn't meet the target date, but if you can't live without pine it looks like it's still going to be around, and more sensibly-licensed too.

It's not Open Source

[Crasoum]

Because Pine is not GPL/BSD Licensed open source program, it is owned by the Washington University and they allow you to make local changes, distribute free of charge, or charge in a packaged distribution for the packaging of the programs (IE not for pine/pico), but you are not allowed to comercially sell it, and must apply a local tag (L) to the patches or versions you change and distribute. Source

Granted it is a pretty open license, but UW Still owns it.

Re:Crap, so now I have to choose

[mustafap]

Its the patches site thats going, not pine itself.

Re:oh god no!

[TeknoHog]

I'm not up on the pine scene but why aren't the patches folded into the upstream? Seems if you're checking out, you'd submit them all before you turn off the lights, but perhaps there is some legal reason.

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 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.

Just switch to CONE - nearly same interface

[ballermann]

I switched from pine to CONE a long time ago. It looks nearly like Pine, but has integrated GPG support and works fine with IMAP folders.

See http://www.courier-mta.org/cone/cone00index.html for the website and http://wiki.splitbrain.org/cone for some info on compiling it.

Mutt's a pain in the ass to set up for SMTP.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mutt is simple enough to configure when using IMAP to access a mailbox, but it starts to become a hassle when you want to send mail via SMTP. While Pine includes SMTP support, you have to use one of a number of third-party MTAs with Mutt for similar functionality. Setting all that up is often a hassle.

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.

Re:Mutt's a pain in the ass to set up for SMTP.

[water-and-sewer]

I agree, although frankly, Mutt is one of the things that keeps me using Linux. I really love it. This is as good a place as any to plug my Woodnotes Guide to Using Mutt, available at my website in HTML and PDF format: http://therandymon.com/content/view/42/79/

It goes into setting up SMTP as well as walking you through Mutt usage and configuration in general and is released under a creative commons license. Enjoy.

As for Pine, I don't like it as much as Mutt but still use it from time to time, particularly when I'm setting a new system, haven't gotten Mutt configured right, and want to check to see if I'm able to connect using Pine instead. It's not configurable enough to float my boat, but I would switch in a second if for some reason Mutt disappeared. I am far more productive at a non-GUI interface.

Re:That's not what "pine" means

[SorcererX]

According to the PINE website ( http://www.washington.edu/pine/ ) PINE stands for "Program for Internet News & Email".

Re:OMG Bloated!!1

[Thomas Shaddack]

Pine is useless for the mouseheads who never needed to access their email on the go and didn't want the constraints of the often inferior mail clients on portable devices, which often lack support of proper link encryption.

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.