Re: [fetchmail-devel] Future of fetchmail

[Matthias A. <mat...@gm...>]

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Am 06.02.2013 20:14, schrieb John N Rayner:
> I have been following the development of version 7.0 of fetchmail and
> was very sorry to see the latest message by Matthias.  I, for one, would
> use it.  Has anyone done a survey of potential users?  From recent
> surveys by Linux Journal there are still a large number of pine (Alpine)
> and mutt users.  Presumably their email servers are using IMAP and pop.
> I hope someone will pick up the maintainer's job.  How about rfunk?
> That's Robert, isn't it?   John

John,

I believe there is a misunderstanding, and due to a past vacation that
was quite enjoyable, I have seen your concernful message only today.

To clarify: I have no plans to discontinue maintaining fetchmail.

I am, however, inclined to drop the MAPI support that never made an
official release.  I have never been able to test it, the response from
the contributor and another interested developer was too low to count on
them, and because there was virtually zero user interest.  I have, in
spite of repeated calls for test accounts, never received an Exchange
account to test against, and for these reasons, I have never really
integrated MAPI.

Note that MAPI (a Microsoft specific) is not to be confused with IMAP 4
(the IETF standard protocol).

POP3 and IMAP4rev1 will continue to be supported by fetchmail.

I will at some point in the not so distant future also cease development
of the 6.3.X versions, and only see to 7.0 and newer versions that may
break some compatibility (especially by removing support for systems and
protocols that got obsoleted more than a decade ago) so that fetchmail
can be made easier to use, in particular with respect to SSL/TLS.

For the majority of users, these plans should not cause any disruptions.
My dropping a feature that has never been part of an official release
has no impact at all, and removing corner cases and making the default
configuration more transparent and secure should help, rather than
impair, use of fetchmail.

Hope that resolves concerns.

Best regards,
Matthias
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