Once upon a time, there was an email program named PINE. Wikipedia says that its recursive acronym, “Pine Is Not Elm” (another early email program) has been disavowed by the creator the application, saying that it never stood for that, but it remains my favorite recursive acronym to this date.
PINE was created around 1990 by the University of Washington, back before webmail was popular and even before email clients like Eudora, Juno, or Outlook became popular. It was completely text-only, and could be used on one of those old computer terminals that didn’t even have a processor, that was simply one of hundreds of screens into a massive computing framework called Unix. My first experience with email was using a terminal emulator, connecting to a Unix-like computer called VAX at a local medical university. The program they used for email was PINE.
Over the years, I’ve used a lot of different email programs. But I seem to always come back to PINE. The reason is partially due to its simplicity, but also due to the flexibility of being able to run it in a terminal emulator. That means that, anywhere I am in the world, I can ssh into my home computer and check my email over an encrypted connection, without having to use a web browser or ever click the mouse. For such a text-centric application as email, freedom from the mouse is a godsend.
Unfortunately, PINE is not Free Software. It doesn’t cost any money, but you can’t modify it or redistribute it in some cases. Over the years, development has lagged considerably, with some modern features (such as Unicode support) being left out. But today, I discovered that the University of Washington has been developing a replacement for PINE, called Alpine. Fully Open Source, and fully Free, this new program, once completed, should provide PINE fanatics like me with a fully-featured email client that will stay up to date for many years to come. I’ve already signed up for the alpha mailing list, and I’ll keep you posted on their progress.
I’m taking the Alpine slide!
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