Pine [was Re: $35 LAN Party...]

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>

| I am under 40 and I know what pine is.
| 
| And apt-get install pine could only install one of them (not that you
| would want pine on your system, nor is it in debian due to license
| issues upstream).

Pine(tm) has been replaced by Alpine.  Alpine claims to have the
Apache license.
  <https://www.washington.edu/alpine/overview/story.html>

"Pine development has long since come to an end."
  <https://www.washington.edu/pine/>

Alpine development seems to be problematic too.  A ray of hope:
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.mail.pine/4w_f1ro6GRA/faiu1Egw_ywJ>

Different sources give different stories about the name Alpine.  A
couple say it stand for "Alternatively Licensed Program for Internet
News and Email".  The official web site says
    Why Alpine? We just liked the name and the closeness to Pine. The
    beautiful setting we enjoy here in the Pacific Northwest helped;
    that is Mt. Rainier on the Alpine logo.
But it does admit that licensing and trademark issues were involved.

You can track down some interesting licensing conflicts starting from
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_%28email_client%29>
According to Stallman, the U of W license stated:
    Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and
    its documentation for any purpose and without fee to the
    University of Washington is hereby granted …
but that U of W claimed that this didn't allow you to distribute modified 
versions!

Mark Crispin died in December.  I infer that he was a bright and
difficult character and that much of the Pine world was shaped by him.
But perhaps it was only the IMAP part.

Everyone seems to still call it Pine.  Program for Internet News and
Email.

I and my kids use Alpine.  They are under 40.  It is fast and
efficient and doesn't drown one in crappy HTML and attachments.
The chances of getting malware by just looking at mail with Pine are
low.

We use Alpine via SSH much of the time, something that is more awkward
with GUI mail clients.