Bug#405762: no maildir support

*** Asheesh Laroia (asheesh@asheesh.org) wrote today:

Eduardo, I see that you have an Alpine Maildir patch at
http://staff.washington.edu/chappa/alpine/info/maildir.html . Do you
have any comment as to if it's suitable to include it into the Debian
Alpine package?

Dear Assheesh,

Thank you for your message. To be honest, I do not know the answer to
your question, in terms of the following issues.

* I do not have knowledge of anybody testing it in "pure" debian. I know
some people have tried it in things like potato, etc. They even
distribute it. So, I do not know how well it works in Debian, or if it
needs a special tuning.

* I do not know if Debian would force me to distribute my patch under a
specific license. I myself do not care what people do with the patch
as long as they don't claim ownership. I am happy to provide support
for it. I just don't want it to be under an imposed license.

* I am the author of the patch. It is based on old versions of the patch
(e.g. the one Debian distributes, or Suse used to distribute), but it
is completely different now. It has so many ways to configure it. The
one thing it is missing is UID support for IMAP. This is a big
shortcoming, in my opinion, and I am working on it. Having said this,
for local access it is great. The patch that Debian distributes has
UID support, but lacks other features and it is very unstable.

It seems that the washington.edu have reasons of correctness against
writing their own. Also, do you know if the author of this Maildir
patch is willing to allow Debian to redistribute his patch under the
Apache License 2.0?

As far as my reading of the license goes, all I ask about license is
compatible and allowed under the Apache 2.0 License; but I do not want my
work to be under such license.

I want to make sure also that you understand that this message represents
my personal opinion and solely my opinion. It is not meant to represent
the opinion of the (Al)Pine team, nor the University of Washington, or the
Department of Mathematics at the University of Washington. I owe in
gratitude to the University of Washington and its people more than I can
repay in any way.

--
Eduardo
http://staff.washington.edu/chappa/alpine/


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On Wed, 7 Mar 2007, Eduardo Chappa wrote:

> *** Asheesh Laroia (asheesh@asheesh.org) wrote today:
>
> Eduardo, I see that you have an Alpine Maildir patch at
> http://staff.washington.edu/chappa/alpine/info/maildir.html . Do you
> have any comment as to if it's suitable to include it into the Debian
> Alpine package?
>
> Dear Assheesh,
>
> Thank you for your message. To be honest, I do not know the answer to
> your question, in terms of the following issues.
>
> * I do not have knowledge of anybody testing it in "pure" debian. I know
> some people have tried it in things like potato, etc. They even
> distribute it. So, I do not know how well it works in Debian, or if it
> needs a special tuning.

That's something I can look into; don't worry about the Debian-specific
customizations, if any, that may be needed. (I doubt any will be.)

> * I do not know if Debian would force me to distribute my patch under a
> specific license. I myself do not care what people do with the patch
> as long as they don't claim ownership. I am happy to provide support
> for it. I just don't want it to be under an imposed license.

As the package maintainer, it's my responsibility to make sure that Debian
distributes only code that is legal to distribute (and that is Free
Software). We would not claim ownership, and I would make it clear in the
documentation that it includes your Maildir patch.

> * I am the author of the patch. It is based on old versions of the patch
> (e.g. the one Debian distributes, or Suse used to distribute), but it
> is completely different now. It has so many ways to configure it. The
> one thing it is missing is UID support for IMAP. This is a big
> shortcoming, in my opinion, and I am working on it. Having said this,
> for local access it is great. The patch that Debian distributes has
> UID support, but lacks other features and it is very unstable.
>
> It seems that the washington.edu have reasons of correctness against
> writing their own. Also, do you know if the author of this Maildir
> patch is willing to allow Debian to redistribute his patch under the
> Apache License 2.0?
>
> As far as my reading of the license goes, all I ask about license is
> compatible and allowed under the Apache 2.0 License; but I do not want my
> work to be under such license.

Because we'll be distributing copies of the patch, I want to make sure
that we are allowed to. You seem to have said that (a) the patch is your
work (meaning, you also hold the copyright to the work), and (b) that you
are willing to allow people to share changes in a fairly liberal way.

I don't understand what you mean by "an imposed license". The great thing
about copyright is that you can let different folk use your work under
different license terms. This means that if you let us Debian guys use it
under an Apache 2.0 license, then later on you want to let other people
use your work under some different license, you are allowed to do that.
All you can't do is revoke our license.

Does that make sense? It sounds like you'd be happy to let us include the
patch, and it sounds like our users would be well-served if we were to.
I would be most comfortable if you said, "Asheesh, you are allowed to use
and redistribute this patch under the same terms as Alpine," and I hope
you understand that saying that doesn't limit your rights to let everyone
else use it under even more liberal terms than the Apache 2.0 License that
Alpine itself is under.

So how can I get you to say the quoted sentence? (-:

> I want to make sure also that you understand that this message represents
> my personal opinion and solely my opinion. It is not meant to represent
> the opinion of the (Al)Pine team, nor the University of Washington, or the
> Department of Mathematics at the University of Washington. I owe in
> gratitude to the University of Washington and its people more than I can
> repay in any way.

Thanks for making that clear. (-:

-- Asheesh.

--
Q: What's a WASP's idea of open-mindedness?
A: Dating a Canadian.


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On Wed, 7 Mar 2007, Eduardo Chappa wrote:

> * I do not know if Debian would force me to distribute my patch under a
> specific license. I myself do not care what people do with the patch
> as long as they don't claim ownership. I am happy to provide support
> for it. I just don't want it to be under an imposed license.
>
> * I am the author of the patch. It is based on old versions of the patch
> (e.g. the one Debian distributes, or Suse used to distribute), but it
> is completely different now. It has so many ways to configure it. The
> one thing it is missing is UID support for IMAP. This is a big
> shortcoming, in my opinion, and I am working on it. Having said this,
> for local access it is great. The patch that Debian distributes has
> UID support, but lacks other features and it is very unstable.

It would be more convenient for us if you wrote, "Asheesh, you are allowed
to use and redistribute this patch under the same terms as Alpine."

Given both (a) you are the author of the patch, and (b) you wrote above
that you don't care what people do with it so long as they don't claim
they wrote the patch, I think we might be okay to distribute your patch.
If you won't be explicit about letting us use it with the same terms as
Alpine itself (the Apache 2.0 License), then I can try to get advice on
this from more experienced/legal-minded people in Debian.

No matter what, if we include your patch, we'll always mention the
original author of the patch (you!) in debian/copyright, and we'll
probably also mention you in README.Debian.

I would really prefer it if you just wrote the sentence above beginning
with "Asheesh, you are allowed...". It's no harm to you and it makes my
end of the process easier.

And by the way, thanks for all the work you've done for the PINE community
in the past!

-- Asheesh.

--
For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels,
each delved into a hill, and about each was set a wall, and in each wall
was a gate.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Return of the King"

[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to system overview.]



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I've found and successfully installed Alpine for centOS4.6, via the helpful post at http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=13650#forumpost47255
and now I need the Maildirs patch, but I cannot find an rpm for it.

How can I apply the patch (alpine was not installed via src)?

john