Pegasus and Mercury Circling the Drain

Daemon Duck writes "One of the web's oldest and most respected email clients is flickering out of existence. Pegasus mail and its companion SMTP server, Mercury32, have been discontinued due to lack of funding for the ongoing development. On the website, the author David Harris states that if some funding becomes available he would consider opening the source code or continuing the development."

Comments

What does funding have to do with making it open?

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I went to the web page and see that, as reported by Scuttle Monkey, the author says he might continue working on it or make it open source with some funding. What does funding have to do with making it opern source? He could make it open source today if he really wanted to. It just seems to me that he's yet another guy who's pissed off that he can't make a living off the internet, so he's holding his source code hostage. I have to admit I know nothing about his program, but I fail to see the connection between open source and him getting paid.

Pegasus for windows

[Claws Of Doom]

It was a godsend for me when I first found it. Working for a rural publisher meant we got *big* files down our 56k line. The ability to see and manipulate the mail queue for those of us not fortunate enough to be on *nix was truly empowering. There was no webmail, no alternative. We had been downloading 30Mb files overnight to try and get at our email... Heh. Good old simple "viruses come on floppies" days :)

More details here

[alexgieg]

You can find more detailed information on this move the following link, by a Pegasus Mail beta tester:

http://www.vandenbogaerde.net/pegasusmail/dh_upd1. html

By the way, I'd love to see Pegasus Mail open sourced. It's a marvelous e-mailing package. It's UI isn't the most intuitive around, but once you get used to it, it becomes a very powerful tool for your mail needs. Many years ago I evaluated a lot of e-mail softwares, including Eudora, and ended up choosing Pegasus Mail. It's really worth it.

I would surely help if a fund for purchasing and open sourcing it was established.

Re:More details here

[peeping_Thomist]

From http://www.vandenbogaerde.net/pegasusmail/dh_upd1. html:

"I will probably never be able to describe just how horrible it has been to be me for the last three or four years, and I certainly will not insult you now by attempting to do so; suffice it to say that anything must be better than this dubious existence. [...] I will be shutting persephone down for an indeterminite period while I try to work out whether I have a future."

That sounds to me like the guy is borderline suicidal. It's sad.

Yes, I'll miss Pegasus

[rueger]

In the year since I moved to an Apple machine I've come to understand how solid and useful Pegasus Mail had become. In twelve months I've moved from Apple Mail (which I found much too limited), to Eudora (what a bizarre interface, at least for me) to Thunderbird, and now to Gyazmail.

Each of these lacks at least a couple of must have features that I used extensively on Pmail. Thunderbird tries hard, but it always seems that the feature that I need most isn't quite finished.

Gyazmail comes close, but still has some gaping weaknesses, like the apparent inability to add addresses to the Addressbook from within the program, and a good Search function.

Ultimately Pegasus was probably best loved by those who live and breathe e-mail, and who need power and flexibility, as well as reliability. yes it was free, but it was one of those programs that I would have paid for because it suited my needs so well.

Re:A rather hasty reaction

[King_TJ]

I think "it takes money to make money" is still as valid a saying as ever. The problem David Harris has is shared by MANY software developers out there. They initially get motivated to "build a better mousetrap", and they succeed. Their product is adopted by millions of users (often because it costs them nothing to use it, but has obvious benefits worth the switch and learning curve). Over time, the author feels that he/she deserves financial compensation for the now highly-regarded product and becomes disenchanted with the situation. Development stagnates, and new products overtake it.

To overcome this, I think the real answer is to invest some money in advertising a newer, more advanced version of the software product. (The old one can then serve as a "lite" version, maintained simply to help keep your "brand" alive, and to introduce new people to the product's existence.) Otherwise, you can't really break free of the "development/ascent/decline" lifecycle that all products undergo.

Open Letter to David Harris

[arete]

I've just heard on Slashdot about the end of Pegasus Mail and Mercury. Being often in the Linux and OS X worlds, I liked PMail and it seemed extremely well written, but I was never the most hardcore user. I never had a need to use Mercury. I'm also a professional developer.

If you'll bear with me for a moment, I'll explain why I think you should probably Open Source these products. Not because it's good for the world, but because it's good for YOU. (I do think your creations have been good for the world, and I do think open sourcing them would be good for the world, but that isn't my main point.)

I wouldn't tell someone selling commercial software and making a big profit that it'll be better for them if it's Open Source. Indeed, if you promptly get a substantial monetary offer for continuing it or for selling the codebase I can understand why you might do that. But if you don't get one promptly, people are going to start migrating away in droves - so the chances are going to rapidly go down, not up.

You have basically two assets: A codebase and a userbase. (I'll include publicity with your userbase.) There are also many free competitors to your products. You have tough decisions to make that seem to involve: How can I turn these assets into money? Simply closing it down doesn't get you any money.

You could open source this project with minimal cost. As I understand there may be portions you can't release that way, simply remove them. With some luck, enough people will want to help that they'll fix it. If you strike while the iron is hot and you still have many users, I think this is quite likely. If it doesn't happen, you aren't out anything but a few hours work, and the world has your code. If so few people cared about it, you probably weren't going to get any more for it. But if it does happen:

1. You can continue to release new versions of the software, even if you do minimal work on it yourself. By keeping it alive, you set yourself up to continue getting support contracts, and you'll still be the prime source for them. (If you aren't charging enough for the support contracts, that's an independent problem...)

2. Since you have already created the majority of the code, you can use a MySQL type dual license, which would allow you to release embedded versions of the code for someone else to wrap into a closed-source pay product. This is a niche that a pure-GPL product can't fill.

3. You could even simply put up some ads on the site.

Re:What does funding have to do with making it ope

[Wilk4]

well said. (both you and the parent poster (LWATCDR))

David Harris has certainly provided an excellent set of email tools for *many* years now (17?) *for free*, being supported financially by *optional* support contributions and sales of manual (any other means?)

Remembering from the 'old' days when I used to help run our dept novel server for 120+ users, his programs were better and safer than many out there for years, and has always had powerful features. (both the email clients and email server) They were certainly better than the expensive and crappy email options offered by Novell at the time. I'm sure they have heavily influenced all of the other email clients & servers by the powerful features they introduced as well as their strong emphasis on security. I'm very sorry to hear that financial support for it has dwindled to this point, and I'm very sorry to see pmail go.

David Harris certainly deserves our thanks and respect for his many years of work and of providing his software for free, not the carping and accusations of motive seen here. (which seems to be mostly by those who have never even used his software, or heard of it?)

Open source has some great advantages, (especially for the user who doesn't have to do any work) but, like David's current model of development, it doesn't offer any guarantee of an income. Not everyone can work for free, especially full-time. Before carping at him, feel free to assign your trust fund over to him first. ;-) ... or try walking a great many miles in his shoes...

I'm sure that setting up his software tools as open source projects would entail some significant amount of up-front work, and possibly continuing efforts. His code is his, and it's certainly *more* than fair to ask for financial support or compensation in order to donate it to the public domain, and to put even more time, expertise and effort into the transition.

Anyway, thanks David, for your many years of effort, excellent software, and your generousity in sharing it with us for free.

I'm sorry it had to end for you on the down note that the past few years have evidently been.

Disclaimer: Yes, I've used Pegasus Mail for many years, though I've been using thunderbird lately. We're still using Pmail at home. And yes, I've put my money where my mouth is, sending financial contributions to DH several times. (though smaller than I would have liked to be able to)

Re:There's nothing wrong with making money.

[fait]

Frankly, I would be just as happy if he made Mercury commercial software. Many of his supporters, myself included, have already told him that we would be willing to pay an annual fee or pay for each upgrade or something like that. Mercury is a wonderful home-user MTA and I know of several companies (the one I work for included) that use it as well. It's easy to setup and has good 3rd-party spam filtering built for it. It's worked well for me for several years.