pine (email client)

There are Unix, Windows, and Linux versions of Pine.{{cite web|title=Pine Information Center--Obtaining Pine software|url=http://www.washington.edu/pine/getpine/|publisher=University of Washington|access-date=2 September 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120921003243/http://www.washington.edu/pine/getpine/|archive-date=21 September 2012|url-status=dead}} The Unix/Linux version is text user interface based—its message editor inspired the text editor Pico. The Windows (and formerly DOS) version is called PC-Pine. WebPine was available to individuals associated with the University of Washington (students, faculty, etc.)—a version of Pine implemented as a web application.{{cite web|title=Pine Information Center--Obtaining Pine software|url=https://itconnect.uw.edu/connect/email/resources/uw-email/retirement//|publisher=University of Washington|access-date=23 September 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180923162921/https://itconnect.uw.edu/connect/email/resources/uw-email/retirement/|archive-date=23 September 2018|url-status=dead}}

Many people believe that Pine stands for "Pine Is Not Elm". One of its original authors, Laurence Lundblade, insists this was never the case and that it started off simply as a word and not an acronym, and that his first choice of a backronym for pine would be "Pine Is Nearly Elm". Over time, it was changed by the university to mean Program for Internet News and E-mail.{{Cite web|url=http://www.island-resort.com/pine.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110607212819/http://www.island-resort.com/pine.htm |archive-date=2011-06-07|access-date=2012-11-03|title=Laurence's home page: Naming Pine}} The original announcement said: "Pine was originally based on Elm, but it has evolved much since, ('Pine Is No-longer Elm')."

Up to version 3.91, the Pine license was similar to BSD, and it stated that

: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 …

The university registered a trademark for the Pine name with respect to "computer programs used in communication and electronic mail applications" in March 1995.{{cite web|url=https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=74336887&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch|title=SN 74336887|website=Trademark Status & Document Retrieval}}

From version 3.92, the holder of the copyright, the University of Washington, changed the license so that even if the source code was still available, they did not allow modifications and changes to Pine to be distributed by anyone other than themselves. They also claimed that even the old license never allowed distribution of modified versions.{{Cite mailing list|url=https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/11/msg00138.html|first=Branden|last=Robinson|title=Re: DFSG vs Pine's legal notices: where exactly is the gotcha?|mailing-list=debian-legal|date=2002-11-12|access-date=2009-08-06}}

The trademark for the Pine name was part of their position in this matter.{{Cite web|url=http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/warez.html#pine|title=What's wrong with Pine|website=Rick's Rants|first=Rick|last=Moen|access-date=2016-10-13}}

In reaction, some developers forked version 3.91 under the name MANA (for Mail And News Agent) to avoid the trademark issue and the GNU Project adopted it as GNU Mana. Richard Stallman claims that the University of Washington threatened{{Cite mailing list|url=https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2000/09/msg00014.html|title=Re: Free Pine?|mailing-list=debian-legal|first=Richard|last=Stallman|date=2000-09-02|access-date=2006-12-14}} to sue the Free Software Foundation for distributing the modified Pine program, resulting in the development of MANA ceasing and no versions being released.{{Cite web|url=http://members.tripod.com/pooka_regent/ethics.html|title=The Golden Rule as Applied to Intellectual Property|access-date=2006-07-17|date=2002-12-12|first=David|last=Ramsey}}

The Pico clone GNU nano was also written due to the change in licensing terms of Pine and Pico, as explained by nano's author in a blog post criticizing the license in 2001.{{Cite web|url=https://www.asty.org/archives/123|title=When Non-Free is "Free Enough"|website=asty.org|first=Chris|last=Allegretta|date=2001|language=en-US|access-date=2018-04-18}}

The University of Washington later modified their license somewhat to allow unmodified distribution of Pine alongside collections of free software, but the license still does not conform to the Open Source and the Free Software Guidelines so it is source-available software.

{{main|Alpine (email client)}}

In 2006, the University of Washington announced that it stopped development of Pine with Pine 4.64, although Pine continues to be supported.{{Cite web|url=http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/pine-info/2006-November/055017.html|title=Steve Hubert answers that Pine development is frozen in favour of Alpine|access-date=2006-12-14|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070101071238/http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/pine-info/2006-November/055017.html|archive-date=2007-01-01}}

In its place is a new family of email tools based upon Pine, called Alpine and licensed under the Apache License, version 2. November 29, 2006 saw the first public alpha release,{{Cite web|url=http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.mail.pine.general/3602|title=Announce of Alpine 0.8|access-date=2006-12-14|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120122062941/http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.mail.pine.general/3602|archive-date=2012-01-22|url-status=dead}}{{Cite web|url=ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/alpine/|title=Alpine FTP download directory|access-date=2006-12-19}}{{dead link|date=March 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} which forms a new approach, since the alpha test of Pine was always non-public.

Alpine 1.0 was publicly released on December 20, 2007. The most recent version 2.26 was released on June 3, 2022.[https://repo.or.cz/alpine.git/commit/9726c098a739edfdca6218bc5dee104c310957e9 Public Git Hosting - alpine.git/commit]

• Alpine (email client)
• Comparison of email clients
• Text-based email client
• UW IMAP

{{Reflist}}

• [http://alpine.x10host.com/pine/ Patches for Pine] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200127012639/http://alpine.x10host.com/pine/ |date=2020-01-27 }}

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