UW IMAP

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The UW IMAP server is the reference server implementation of the IMAP protocol, developed at the University of Washington. Unlike other server implementations, it is designed to be aggressively compatible with existing legacy mail stores and systems, and to be "plug-and-play" installable without requiring any site-specific configuration.

UW IMAP uses the c-client mail engine that is also used by the Alpine and Pine e-mail clients. c-client supports multiple mail store formats including mbox, MIX, mbx, MMDF, tenex, mtx, mh, mx, and Usenet news spools. c-client also includes support for IMAP, POP3, NNTP, and SMTP Internet protocols.

Also bundled with UW IMAP are POP2 and POP3 servers, the mailutil utility program, and the dmail and tmail mail delivery agents.

UW IMAP is licensed under the Apache License 2.0

Future of UW IMAP

The most recent version of UW IMAP on UW's FTP server is imap-2007f, which has some bug fixes from the previous version.

On 4 August 2008 the University of Washington Alpine team announced[1] that they would "shift our effort from direct development into more of a consultation and coordination role to help integrate contributions from the community." in the wake of layoffs at the University of Washington's technology division.[2]

Mark Crispin, the former developer of UW IMAP, announced[3] a fork called Panda IMAP and that "an open source distribution is under consideration". Mark provided a download link to Panda IMAP for people who donated to its development, but kept Apache 2.0 licensing terms in place until his death in 2012.

An unofficial GitHub repo has been created that provides the entire public history of UW IMAP and Panda IMAP development, up until Mark's final release.

Additional Drivers Support

UW IMAP can be extended by adding drivers that support other formats, such as maildir. UW IMAP does not officially support the maildir format, but there exist patches that support such extension. The patch from Gluelogic is a patch for Pine, not for UW IMAP, in the sense that UW IMAP will not build unless Pine is patched. Even after patching Pine, the corresponding IMAP server will not work well, and for example, will not distinguish between Unseen and Recent messages, marking Unseen messages as Recent, contrary to the definition of what a Recent message is. A better patch can be found at Patches for Alpine.

External links

References

  1. ↑ "Alpine status". Retrieved 2008-08-04. 
  2. ↑ Perry, Nick (2008-05-21). "UW lays off technology workers". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2009-04-04. 
  3. ↑ "Panda IMAP home page". Retrieved 2008-09-23. 


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