GNUmail.app, the NeXT Mail clone for GNUStep, also runs on OS X.
Funny what can happen when a brand new operating system has a 15 year history. :-)
The charge is often made that free software only imitates, never innovates. Of course, I think most of us know that is not true. However, free software imitation is a strong and useful tradition.
When Stallman set out to write a free OS, he copied UNIX. LessTif and Harmony are two examples of GUI toolkits created to be clones of proprietary systems. There are free Java interpreters, like Kaffe. More recently, mono is a staggering example of imitation (and particularly exciting, too, I think). If you look around you can find more obscure imitations: ReactOS hopes to someday be a clone of NT, the Harbor project is cloning xBase/dBase.
GNUStep has a lot of potential. I've often wondered what would happen if someone made a determined effort to make a free version of MacOS.
I was rereading Paul Graham's article about ViaWeb this morning, where he claimed his company's system of using Lisp allowed them to bring out new features and rapidly duplicate everything his competitors thought of. One day I really expect free software to be all that is left, precisely because there is more potential to both innovate and imitate.
Re:Innovation and imitation
ziggy on 2002-09-06T17:04:22
I don't think there's a problem admitting that open source software spends a lot of time immitating previously developed applications. That's because most software is a clone of something that came before. Lotus 1-2-3 and Multiplan/Excel are clones of VisiCalc (with lots of new stuff added to be sure, but the basics innovation came from elsewhere). The Web is nothing more than the most successful immitation of a grand concept called hypermedia, first described in Xanadu, and implemented before with HyperCard, Notes (to a degree), Macromedia Director and other packages.However, free software imitation is a strong and useful tradition.What's interesting about something like GNUmail.app is that it can evolve to meet user needs/expectations/demands/requirements faster than something non-open. With all of the work people like Paul Graham are putting into Bayesian spam filters this month, I'd suspect it'd be easier to integrate that into GNUmail.app than Apple Mail. (I read somewhere that Apple's spam filtering doesn't work that well yet; they'll probably integrate Bayesian filters at some point, but we'll have to wait for a big upgrade.)
Re:Innovation and imitation
jdavidb on 2002-09-06T17:17:19
What's interesting about something like GNUmail.app is that it can evolve to meet user needs/expectations/demands/requirements faster than something non-open.
Yes! And that's why free/open imitations of proprietary software are often so exciting to think about!
Re:Innovation and imitation
Matts on 2002-09-06T17:45:06
Apple's Mail.app *does* use bayesian filtering techniques. That's why it needs training. That it's not all that great is more logs for the fire I lit in a previous journal entry.
The trouble with bayesian filters is you have to get them right first time (if you're doing it in a client), because you can't just release an upgrade and expect to change the way you're parsing emails and have it just magically work with your past training data. It just doesn't work that way.Re:Innovation and imitation
hfb on 2002-09-08T02:58:01
Hey, what's with injecting reality into this?
:) C'mon man, didn't you drink your tanker of kool-aid today? My only problem with filtering is that it doesn't solve the source of the problem rather the symptom.
Re:Innovation and imitation
Matts on 2002-09-08T08:51:10
Only shotguns can solve the source of the problem;-)
Actually we've been doing some interesting analysis of where spam comes from at MessageLabs. Basically there's some interesting stuff you can pull out of 300K spams a day. More on this later;-) Re:Innovation and imitation
hfb on 2002-09-08T14:41:34
Well, a pair of sharp cable cutters and a backhoe would be a fate more painful than death...nyetwork!
:) I'll be intrested to see what analysis you have to share. Since my landline telephone is only answered by the answering machine and I pay for cable TV to enjoy fewer commercials I suspect the way of the future is to simply pay a premium to enjoy email without spam. The people I'd really like to lock in a cave are the pop up web ad folks...:)
Re:Innovation and imitation
Matts on 2002-09-08T15:53:51
People still see popups?
I agree with the premium thing, but then that's the business model of the company I work for.
