Jan Klaverstijn <jan(_at_)klaverstijn(_dot_)nl>:
I think this special case of policy is not gearing fetchmail towards
becoming an interactive client. I read the FAQ where the requested
feature is said to be a Outlook Express - like feature. I'm afraid
that this way the request is falsely branded as an interactive
client like feature. Which it is not. If "keep" is not policy and
neither is "no keep", then why is "keep=2 days"? I place the request
in the same basket as the resource limit control options that allows
one to control the smooth working of the email infrastructure.
I didn't want to put those in, either. And the *reason* I didn't want to
put them in is because I knew they would be used as an argument for
including features like timed keep. And *that*, if I gave in, would
someday be used as an argument for including content-based filtering
and all manner of other extraneous crap.
The general form of these arguments is always: "You let in *his* bit of bloat.
So why not mine?" *Every* feature is a "special case". It never ends.
Now ssl is in I see my option list becoming dangerously similar to
fetchmail's.
Do you suppose there might be a message there? Is it teaching you anything
about why I'm so stubborn against feature creep?
And I'm only going to get nastier and more stubborn about this in the future.
Fetchmail is beginning to show a case of middle-age spread. I want to be
ripping out features, not putting them in.
Maybe I'll kill POP2 support. Not that that would remove much code, alas.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>