Squirrelmail Leadership

[Paul J. T. <cap...@sq...>]

I send this message to the list with great regret as I hoped that the
situation would not come to this. It appears that there is no other
option at this time.

Peter and I have been discussing the status of Squirrelmail
leadership for the for the past several weeks. I feel it would be
best for Squirrelmail at this time if I were to take on a portion of
the leadership responsiblities within the Squirrelmail development
team. Peter, however, does not wish to relinquish these
responsiblities to me.

As a result of my recent development activity, Peter has asked that
we turn to you, our fellow developers of Squirrelmail, to give your
opinions on this situation.

My reasoning for wanting to become the leader of the Squirrelmail
project is that, basically, I want to see things get done. I am tired
of hearing good requests for features and improvements on the lists,
and then see nothing happening because development has stagnated.

I appreciate the hard work Peter has done. I even want to keep him
active as a part of my leadership. However, I can not sit by as
Squirrelmail goes nowhere fast.

I hope it can be seen by the activity that has been going on for the
past several weeks that when I say it is time for action, I mean it.
The team working on the API and php code that will form the backend
for Squirrelmail 2 has been working very hard. They have been coming
up with great ideas and doing some good coding.

Anyways, following is a brief telling of my history within the
Squirrelmail project. I include this here for the more lengthy
readers because I thought it would be appropriate for you to know how
I got to this point within the project.

History:
=======

I first became a part of the Squirrelmail project in the Fall of
2000. At that time, I was finishing my last year of college as well
as working full-time to provide for a wife and a newborn daughter.

Having experimented with many Open Source webmail products (and
having been thoroughly disappointed for one reason or another), I was
thoroughly impressed with Squirrelmail. It was hands above better
then the others. :)

Well, I emailed Luke with some ideas that I had for Squirrelmail. I
was basically asking to become part of the development team so that I
might implement some of these ideas. Well, he, as Luke always does,
accepted me readily into the team.

Over a period of time, Luke and I got to know each other more and
more as we discussed ideas for the future of Squirrelmail. Very early
on in our discussions, we mutually came ioon the conclusion that,
while Squirrelmail was great, it's potential was being limited by a
first generation architecture that had many areas that could be
improved upon. Squirrelmail seriously needed to undergo a rewrite.
Thus the idea for Squirrelmail 2 was born.

To sum up the next 6 monthes or so, Luke and I spent numerous hours
chatting, via ICQ, IRC, and on the phone, about our ideas for
Squirrelmail. The ideas we came up with spanned from total bloat
(turning Squirrelmail into a Groupware application), to finally what
they are today - the desire to abstract various pieces of
Squirrelmail into descrete API and backend modules. That is the work
being done with sm2-api/zookeeper.

Around that time last Spring Luke asked me to be coleader of the
Squirrelmail project with him. I said yes and Luke announced it to
the world. Well, turns out that was probably unwise timing as I was
in the middle of graduating from college, moving, and starting a new
job.

Now turn the clock forward five monthes and we have the present. I am
now a graduated person, have completed moving, and have started my
new job. Things have settled down tremendously and I now have the
time to lead Squirrelmail in the way that Luke asked me to last
spring.

So, anyways, that is my story.

-- 
            Paul Joseph Thompson
            cap...@sq...