[Alpine-info] Unknown charset still not working as expected in 2.00

[Mark Crispin]

> From: alpine at dstoecker.de

> So how is the future of alpine? Will there be an open repository?

> I always hear, that nobody at UW continues alpine, but the necessary steps 

> to allow others to participate are not taken. Why?


I don't know, but at least you are asking in the right place because at
least some of the UW people still read this mailing list.  They can't read
the newsgroups (e.g., comp.mail.pine) any more because UW shut down
their news server.

I think that it would be foolish of you, or anyone else, to depend upon UW
to do anything with Alpine any more.  If you want to see future development
of Alpine, download the sources from UW while that server is still alive, and
start your own distribution mechanism.  I doubt very much that any further
changes will be made on their repository.

Don't blame the people in the Alpine development team, who did their best
to make a graceful transition from a UW project to a community project, and
were hoping to have some ongoing role.  The entire department of which they
are part is in turmoil and transition:

http://www.washington.edu/uwtech/workgroup.html

Given what's been going on, it's amazing that Alpine 2.00 saw the light of day.
The only reason why the plug wasn't pulled on Alpine at the same time as
IMAP was that they had to deliver Web Alpine 2.0 to fulfill the Mellon grant.
That has now been done, and UW's resources are going into transitioning to
Exchange.  I doubt that UW will ever run Web Alpine 2.0 on their own servers!

Instead of complaining, you should thank Mike, Jeff, and Steve for delivering
such an excellent product with Alpine 2.00.  This isn't the way that they wanted
it to end (nor I, when I was part of the team).  But it has ended.  I doubt that
they will be allowed to spend non-trivial time on Alpine; assuming that they
stay at UW.

As for the decision-makers at UW, it's more likely that they'll shut down the
FTP server and web pages than make a community repository.  Hence my
advice that you get a copy while you can, and start a non-UW repository.
Nothing stops you from doing it.  Why do you think that UW needs to do it?

-- Mark --

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