[Alpine-info] Cannot save messages into INBOX on local spool?

[Mike Miller]

On Wed, 30 Jul 2008, Mark Crispin wrote:


>> Of course, the "free" in "free software" refers to user rights or kinds 

>> of freedom rather than to price.

>

> That statement is nonsense, although the FSF/GNU people like to 

> propagate it.  "In order to safeguard the revolution that overthrew the 

> dictator, we must establish a new dictatorship."


It isn't nonsense.  That's what the license provides -- rights to users of 
the software.  The GPL doesn't prevent someone from selling the software.



> There is also equivocation: "what can be more affordable than free 

> software? To make sure that it remains free, that users can do what they 

> like with it, we must place a license on it that restricts what users 

> can do with it."


Users can do whatever they want with GPL programs.  The license does 
little more than require that re-distributions of modified code include 
the source under the same license.



>> The big projects mostly need to get revenue from some source -- like 

>> support contracts or sales of an improved version -- but those also can 

>> thrive.

>

> All that assumes that there is a market of paying customers for such 

> efforts. I have friends who went bankrupt trying to make money in the 

> Internet email market.

>

> I investigated the economics of continuing my work on IMAP after I was 

> laid off.  The available funding wasn't even close; the shortfall was 

> two orders of magnitude!!


That is unfortunate.  It is probably hard to get money for something like 
Alpine when so many people have switched over to a different approach 
using Thunderbird or free webmail services like Gmail.  It must be mostly 
Linux/UNIX users who want Alpine and they probably don't want to pay you.



>> Why didn't they want to open the source earlier? That might have given 

>> you them more assistance from the developer community.

>

> That is a loaded question, based upon the fallacy of presupposition. 

> As such, there is no answer.


What is presupposed in that question?  That they did not want to open the 
source earlier?  Maybe you are saying that they did want to open the 
source earlier but were prevented by something.  Can this question be 
answered?:

Why didn't they open the source earlier?

Mike