3 # indexgen.sh -- generate current version of fetchmail home page.
5 version=`sed -n <Makefile.in "/VERS=/s/VERS=\([^ ]*\)/\1/p"`
6 date=`date "+%d %b %Y"`
9 <!doctype HTML public "-//W3O//DTD W3 HTML 3.2//EN">
12 <TITLE>Fetchmail Home Page</TITLE>
13 <link rev=made href=mailto:esr@snark.thyrsus.com>
14 <meta name="description" content="The fetchmail home page.">
15 <meta name="keywords" content="fetchmail, POP, POP3, IMAP, IMAP2bis, IMAP4, IMAP4rev1, ETRN, OTP, RPA">
18 <table width="100%" cellpadding=0><tr>
19 <td width="30%">Back to
20 <a href="http://www.ccil.org/~esr/esr-freeware.html">Freeware</a>
21 <td width="30%" align=center>Up to <a href="/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
22 <td width="30%" align=right>$date
29 <center><img src="bighand.gif"></center>
33 <H1>The fetchmail Home Page</H1>
36 <H1>What fetchmail does:</H1>
38 Fetchmail is a free, full-featured, robust, well-documented
39 remote-mail retrieval and forwarding utility intended to be used over
40 on-demand TCP/IP links (such as SLIP or PPP connections). It supports
41 every remote-mail protocol now in use on the Internet: POP2, POP3,
42 RPOP, APOP, KPOP, all flavors of IMAP, and ESMTP ETRN. <P>
44 Fetchmail retrieves mail from remote mail servers and forwards it via
45 SMTP, so it can then be be read by normal mail user agents such as
46 elm(1) or Mail(1). It allows all your sytem MTA's filtering,
47 forwarding, and aliasing facilities to work just as they would on
50 Fetchmail offers better security than any other Unix remote-mail
51 client. It supports APOP, KPOP, OTP, Compuserve RPA, and IMAP RFC1731
52 encrypted authentication methods to avoid sending passwords en
55 Fetchmail can be used as a POP/IMAP-to-SMTP gateway for an entire DNS
56 domain, collecting mail from a single drop box on an ISP and
57 SMTP-forwarding it based on header addresses. (We don't really
58 recommend this, though, as it may lose important envelope-header
59 information. ETRN or a UUCP connection is better.)<p>
61 Fetchmail can be started automatically and silently as a system daemon
62 at boot time. When running in this mode with a short poll interval,
63 it is pretty hard for anyone to tell that the incoming mail link is
64 not a full-time "push" connection.<p>
66 Fetchmail is easy to configure, fast, and lightweight. It packs all
67 its features in less than 90K of core on a Pentium under Linux.<p>
69 (Fetchmail is the successor of the old popclient utility, which is
72 <H1>Where to find out more about fetchmail:</H1>
74 See the <a href="fetchmail-features.html">Fetchmail Feature List</a> for more
75 about what fetchmail does.<p>
77 See the <a href="fetchmail-FAQ.html">HTML Fetchmail FAQ</A> for
78 troubleshooting help.<p>
80 See the <a href="http:design-notes.html">Fetchmail Design Notes</a>
81 for discussion of some of the design choices in fetchmail.<P>
83 Finally, see the distribution <a href="NEWS">NEWS file</a> for a
84 description of changes in recent versions.<p>
86 <H1>How to get fetchmail:</H1>
88 You can get any of the following here:
90 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$version.tar.gz">
91 Gzipped source archive of fetchmail $version</a>
92 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$version-1.i386.rpm">
93 Intel binary RPM of fetchmail $version</a>
94 <LI> <a href="fetchmail-$version-1.src.rpm">
95 Source RPM of fetchmail $version</a>
98 (Note that the RPMs don't have the POP2 or Compuserve RPA support
99 compiled in. To get that you will have to build from sources.)<p>
101 The latest version of fetchmail is also carried in the
102 <a href="http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/mail/pop/!INDEX.html">
103 Sunsite remote mail tools directory</a>.
105 <H1>Getting help with fetchmail</H1>
107 There is a fetchmail-friends list for people who want to discuss fixes
108 and improvements in fetchmail and help co-develop it. It's at <a
109 href="mailto:fetchmail-friends@thyrsus.com">fetchmail-friends@thyrsus.com</a>.
110 There is also an announcements-only list, <em>fetchmail-announce@thyrsus.com</em>.<P>
112 Both lists are SmartList reflectors; sign up in the usual way with a
113 message containing the word "subscribe" in the subject line sent to
114 <a href="mailto:fetchmail-friends-request@thyrsus.com?subject=subscribe">
115 fetchmail-friends-request@thyrsus.com</a> or
116 <a href="mailto:fetchmail-announce-request@thyrsus.com?subject=subscribe">
117 fetchmail-announce-request@thyrsus.com</a>. (Similarly, "unsubscribe"
118 in the Subject line unsubscribes you, and "help" returns general list help) <p>
120 Note: before submitting a question to the list, <strong>please read
121 the <a href="fetchmail-FAQ.html">FAQ</a></strong> (especially item <a
122 href="http:fetchmail-FAQ.html#G3">G3</a> on how to report bugs). We
123 tend to get the same three newbie questions over and over again. The
124 FAQ covers them like a blanket. Actually, I'll answer the most common
125 one right here: <em>If you've tried everything but can't get multidrop
126 mode to work, it is almost certainly because your DNS service (or your
127 provider's) is broken.</em><P>
129 Fetchmail was written and is maintained by <a
130 href="../index.html">Eric S. Raymond</a>. <a
131 href="mailto:funk+@osu.edu">Rob Funk</a>, <a
132 href="mailto:alberty@apexxtech.com">Al Youngwerth</a> and <a
133 href="mailto:imdave@mcs.net">Dave Bodenstab</a> are fetchmail's
134 designated backup maintainers. Other backup maintainers may be added
135 in the future, in order to ensure continued support should Eric S.
136 Raymond drop permanently off the net for any reason.<P>
138 <H1>Who uses fetchmail:</H1>
140 Fetchmail entered full production status with the 2.0 version in
141 November 1996 after about five months of evolution from the ancestral
142 <IT>popclient</IT> utility. It has since come into extremely wide use in the
143 Internet/Unix/Linux community. The Red Hat and Debian Linux distributions
144 include it. A customized version is used at Whole Earth 'Lectronic
145 Link. Several large ISPs are known to recommend it to Unix-using SLIP
146 and PPP customers.<p>
148 Over three hundred people have participated on the fetchmail beta
149 list. While it's hard to count free software users, we can estimate
150 based on (a) population figures at the WELL and other known fetchmail
151 sites, (b) the size of the Linux-using ISP customer base, and (c) the
152 volume of fetchmail-related talk on USENET. These estimates suggest
153 that daily fetchmail users number well into the tens of thousands, and
154 possibly over a hundred thousand.<p>
156 <H1>The fetchmail paper:</H1>
158 The fetchmail development project was a sociological experiment as well
159 as a technical effort. I ran it as a test of some theories about why the
160 Linux development model works.<P>
162 I wrote a paper, <A HREF="../writings/cathedral.html">The Cathedral
163 And The Bazaar</A>, about these theories and the project. It was well
164 received at <A HREF="http://www.linux-kongress.de"> Linux Kongress
165 '97</A> and the <A HREF="http://www.ale.org/showcase"> Atlanta Linux
166 Expo</A> two weeks later. I also presented it at Tim O'Reilly's
167 <A HREF="http://www.ora.com/perlconference">Perl Conference</A>
168 August 19th-21st 1997. A lot of people like it.<P>
170 <H1>Recent releases and where fetchmail is going:</H2>
172 After 4.0.1 I wrote: "Development has essentially stopped because
173 there seems to be little more that needs doing." This turned out to
174 be not quite true, I've added some minor option switches since, mostly
175 to deal with weird configuration situations. We've also fixed a hang
176 problem with Cyrus IMAP servers and enabled the code to work with the
177 <a href="fetchmail-FAQ.html#T5">(extremely broken)</a> Microsoft
178 Exchange POP3 server. And we've added support for Compuserve RPA.<P>
180 The present TO-DO list reads:<P>
184 Generate bounce messages when delivery is refused. See RFC1891, RFC1894.
190 Use the libmd functions for md5 under Free BSD? (Low priority.)
193 But these are frills. I'm not seeing serious user demand for any of them.<P>
195 Major changes or additions now seem unlikely until there are
196 significant changes in or additions to the related protocol RFCs.<p>
198 <H1>Where you can use fetchmail:</H1>
200 The fetchmail code was developed under Linux, but has also been
201 extensively tested under 4.4BSD, Solaris, AIX, and NEXTSTEP. It should be
202 readily portable to other Unix variants (it uses GNU autoconf). It is
203 reported to build and run correctly under AmigaOS and QNX as well.<p>
205 <H1>Fetchmail's funniest fan letter:</H1>
207 <A HREF="funny.html">This letter</A> still cracks me up whenever I reread it.
209 <H1>The fetchmail button:</H1>
211 If you use fetchmail and like it, here's a nifty fetchmail button you
212 can put on your web page:<P>
214 <center><img src="fetchmail.gif"></center><P>
216 Thanks to Steve Matuszek for the graphic design. The hand in the
217 button (and the larger top-of-page graphic) was actually derived from
218 a color scan of the fetchmail author's hand. <P>
220 <H1>Fetchmail mirror sites:</H1>
222 There is a FTP mirror of the fetchmail FTP directory (not this WWW
223 home site, just the current sources and RPM) in Japan at
224 <a href="ftp://ftp.win.or.jp/pub/network/mail/fetchmail">
225 ftp://ftp.win.or.jp/pub/network/mail/fetchmail</a>.<P>
228 <table width="100%" cellpadding=0><tr>
229 <td width="30%">Back to
230 <a href="http://www.ccil.org/~esr/esr-freeware.html">Freeware</a>
231 <td width="30%" align=center>Up to <a href="/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
232 <td width="30%" align=right>$date
235 <P><ADDRESS>Eric S. Raymond <A HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com"><esr@snark.thyrsus.com></A></ADDRESS>
240 # The following sets edit modes for GNU EMACS