Pine is a

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

text-based In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an ear ...

email client An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email. A web application which provides message management, composition, and reception functio ...

which was developed at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

. The first version was written in 1989, and announced to the public in March 1992. Source code was available for only the

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

version under a license written by the

. Pine is no longer under development, and has been replaced by the Alpine client, which is available under the

Apache License The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). It allows users to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software ...

Supported platforms

There are

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, and

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

versions of Pine. The Unix/Linux version is

text user interface In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an ear ...

based—its message editor inspired the text editor

Pico Pico may refer to: Places The Moon * Mons Pico, a lunar mountain in the northern part of the Mare Imbrium basin Portugal * Pico, a civil parish in the municipality of Vila Verde * Pico da Pedra, a civil parish in the municipality of Ribe ...

. 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 Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

application.

Etymology

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 A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...

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''. The original announcement said: "Pine was originally based on Elm, but it has evolved much since, ('Pine Is No-longer Elm')."

Licensing and clones

Up to version 3.91, the Pine license was similar to

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

, 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 A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...

for the Pine name with respect to "computer programs used in communication and electronic mail applications" in March 1995. 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. The trademark for the Pine name was part of their position in this matter. 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 The GNU Project ( ) is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and Computer hardware, computing dev ...

adopted it as GNU Mana.

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman ( ; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

claims that the University of Washington threatened to sue the Free Software Foundation for distributing the modified Pine program, resulting in the development of MANA ceasing and no versions being released. The Pico clone

GNU nano GNU nano is a text editor for Unix-like computing systems or operating environments using a command line interface. It emulates the Pico text editor, part of the Pine email client, and also provides additional functionality. Unlike Pico, nano i ...

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. The University of Washington later modified their license somewhat to allow unmodified distribution of Pine alongside collections of

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

, but the license still does not conform to the Open Source and the Free Software Guidelines so it is source-available software.

Alpine

In 2006, the University of Washington announced that it stopped development of Pine with Pine 4.64, although Pine continues to be supported. In its place is a new family of email tools based upon Pine, called Alpine and licensed under the

, version 2. November 29, 2006 saw the first public

alpha release The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

, 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.Public Git Hosting - alpine.git/commit
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References

External links