Talk:SquirrelMail

Update

Good work BirdbrainedPhoenix! StephenFalken 12:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Nutsmail

Nutsmail is not "3rd party implementation of SquirrelMail". It is GPL abuse and maybe even violation. See their EULA

It can't be violation because the source and binaries are the same, so they can't not ship source to anyone they ship binaries to. Their EULA is unenforceable because the very act of distributing a set of files which can only work with Squirrelmail means that their right to use Squirrelmail at all is revoked should they try to prevent Nutsmail's redistribution. In fact, such distribution implicitly licensed Nutsmail itself under the GPL.

This is hardly surprising. Quite a lot of weenies fail to understand what the GPL obligates one to do. The important thing is not to give them any free advertising. Chris Cunningham 12:57, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

SquirrelMail and all of it's email provided services are way under par and they need upgrade their technology.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-420290.html . Yet they are trying to enforce their copyrights with images. Nutsmail tries to abuse GPL by linking copyrighted binary objects (images) to GPLed scripts. Theoretically scripts can function without images, but interface will look broken. All features listed in their pages are provided by some SquirrelMail plugin. SquirrelMail 1.4.x skins can't be implemented without lots of mofications in core scripts. I am former SquirrelMail developer and I do think that Nutsmail abuses GPL. It is hard to prove, but if they do that to my plugins or my copy of SquirrelMail, they will be stopped.(Tokul 20:15, 29 November 2006 (UTC))

notability

At least one editor seems to have confused notability with existence. There are about 20,000 packages provided in each of the major Linux distributions. Probably no more than 5% of those are notable Tedickey (talk) 20:02, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Being able to find information facts for a tool or product on Wikipedia often gives me an invaluable source from an outside perspective where an effort has been made to be unbiased. I generally also look for links to competing tools/products on Wikipedia, something that is generally hard to find anywhere else in a single location. As a tool, SquirrelMail is active, free, new, and solves a problem I couldn't solve years previously on my server. I heard about it from another small site operator. As for notability, I see entries on CNet and FreshMeat, are these good enough to meet Wikipedia criteria for notability? I know I needed a tool like SquirrelMail for many years, and now one is available, and I'd like to see it historically documented (not advertised or evangelized) as current history with appropriate links and references for other seekers, users, and historians. Stay neutral, and just provide the facts. SquirrelMail will live or die on it's own merits, and it is big enough now in my opinion to be history. I agree, the presentation / style of Wikipedia's presentation is useful to me for things like SquirrelMail. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Craigarno (talk • contribs) 22:52, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Every time I want to learn something about a port (I use FreeBSD), I am very happy to see a Wikipedia entry on it. Often, I find an encyclopedia style of description to be better than the description on the port's own web site. I see no problem if all of the (less than) 20,000 ports have a Wikipedia entry. Squirrelmail is a widely used web mail client (including ~737,000 Google results when searching on "Squirrelmail"), one which has been in existence for a very long time, and it fully deserves a Wikipedia entry. I am curious as to what contribution to an improved state of the world would be made if you somehow managed to remove the Squirrelmail entry from Wikipedia? How will this lead to a better world? (Iv Ray, July 26, 2010) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.167.221.14 (talk) 23:31, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

hmm - so far, there's been a tiny bit of effort spent on finding evidence of notability, and a lot of verbiage attacking me. Tedickey (talk) 00:06, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, because you, on first place, are attacking a project loved and used by many people, what for? Is this the single piece of "junk" in Wikipedia, which, if removed, will make the world so much better, that it is worth your time and energy? Iv Ray —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.116.183.50 (talk) 07:23, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Are you kidding me? Your saying Squirrelmail doesn't meet the wiki standards for having an article but every man and woman that hits a television screen does? I would say less then 1% of those are notable or will even exist after one or 2 shows yet they all seem to have wiki articles. Squrrielmail is probably the most well-known and secure webmail program used today.Woods01 (talk) 02:17, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

If it's notable, you'll find it simple to provide reliable sources discussing it (no anonymous blogs or random newsgroup comments of course). Tedickey (talk) 09:09, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Well a quick google search of SquirrelMail would have revealled a number of sources. Let's start. SquirrelMail is the main email program used by students at University College London (one of the world's leading research institutions) [url]http://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/common/mail/squirrelmail[/url]. Actually most institutions in the UK's Russell Group use SquirrelMail for students. Tedickey, maybe a quick Google might display the notability. Perhaps instead of having the God complex that 1 in 100 Wiki editors have, you might actually start to understand that Wiki was intended to be a resource that displays information for people to find out about various topics; 246,000 people search for "SquirrelMail" each month on Google according to the Google AdWords Keyword tool. Maybe you should realise that the reason Wikipedia is so popular is because millions of people like me come to find out about the many interesting things out there, and not, despite what you may believe to allow you to exercise your "power". Removing a page on a piece of software which is of interest to 246,000 people a month just to satisfy your own ego just demonstrates a lot about your own view of the world (and your own perceived self-importance), and very little about the high quality SquirrelMail system. 91.108.169.140 (talk) 19:02, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

There are in fact lots of web articles (and print magazine articles) I've seen over the years that compare SquirrelMail to this and that different webmail package and there are endless numbers of HOWTOs that show how to build an email system that often contains SquirrelMail. However, I don't think those kinds of links are relevant to the content (they don't necessarily serve as appropriate footnotes for anything) of the Wikipedia page that describes this software. Pdontthink 22 July 2010

Googling revealed two howtoforge.com articles within the first five results I checked (I used linuxtoday as a keyword). http://www.howtoforge.com/squirrelmail_ispconfig and http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-configure-squirrelmail-to-allow-users-to-change-their-email-passwords-on-an-ispconfig-3-server 74.233.225.153 (talk) 20:39, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

It's not notable because it's included in some Linux distributions. It's notable because lots of ISPs use it to handle webmail, and people will come here for info when they get an unexpected Squirrelmail error page. That's why I arrived here. --Ef80 (talk) 14:51, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

odd - coming to Wikipedia looking for explanations is something I wouldn't do. About all it's useful for is a guide to further reading Tedickey (talk) 20:35, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

That's a disingenuous response. It doesn't matter if Ef80 arrived here for odd reasons or not. The point is that, as Ef80 noted, SquirrelMail is used by many ISPs, universities, businesses, and individuals who host their own email. My own email INBOX each morning (as a maintainer of this software) attests to the continued widespread use of SquirrelMail (not always branded as such, which might be why Joe Public won't always know about it, but mail system administrators almost always do). To me, it seems like Tedickey is the only one who wants to take this page down. Pdontthink 22 July 2010

Given that you're the author of the page, it's unlikely that you're presenting a neutral point of view Tedickey (talk) 12:21, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Just because an author defends his page, does not mean that he's automatically wrong. sohmc (talk) 14:48, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Given that you're the one requesting deletion of the page, it's unlikely that you're presenting a neutral point of view. Zinob (talk) 14:44, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

What YOU would do or would not do is totally irrelevant. Are you some kind of God? Should Wikipedia do/contain only what YOU feel useful? Iv Ray —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.116.183.50 (talk) 07:26, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I arrived here interested in more information about SquirrelMail since my hosting provider (bluehost) uses it. I found this link. Wikipedia tends to rank pretty high on Google searches (3rd today for SquirrelMail). It seems moving off Yahoo mail (my current webmail provider) may not be a problem. It's also not important how used this SquirrelMail is on Linux desktop distros if it happens to be used frequently in the actual relevant server market. How many other more notable open source webmail offerings are there? Open source fulfills a unique spot among software. It's the only type of software available to every single user and every single developer virtually without constrains and charge. And for what it's worth, I had heard of SquirrelMail at multiple times in the past few years without ever having used it or looked into it very much, so apparently people are writing about it and the product caught my attention enough to have remembered that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.233.225.153 (talk) 20:27, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

If SquirrelMail is not notable what other webmail software can be considered notable using the same parameters? Hypertrek (talk) 07:20, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Me thinks, what other web mail is worth running? ISPs use it, hobbiests like me use it. Reasonably easy to setup. Even used it in businesses. It certainly deserves a Wiki entry. DaveA 23 July 2010. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.145.168.233 (talk) 03:31, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Recap'ing the various comments: one or more distinct individuals states that they're satisfied users, and want to have a page reflecting their position Tedickey (talk) 12:23, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Tedickey: be respectful of other posters. Your (groundless) stride remark is totally useless in this discussion, and won't help us establish notability. --Lou Crazy (talk) 17:13, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm interested to see that someone takes the time to improve it; however so far the nature of the responses in this discussion hasn't focused on improvement, but argument. Tedickey (talk) 17:33, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree that this whole section of the talk page was focused on argument for the sake of argument. Read the first entry dated march 13. It's not an exercise in improvement, just an attack on previous editors.

--Lou Crazy (talk) 01:01, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. Following your suggestion, let's make Wikipedia topics for all 20,000 of those packages, since they meet your implicit guideline for notability Tedickey (talk) 01:06, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Please don't mock. It's not helping this discussion. See also Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a pointsohmc (talk) 14:48, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

If we had editors for all 20,000 packages, we probably should make topics for all of them. We know this isn't realistic, so we might as well make topics for the ones people are willing to maintain them following the normal Wikipedia guidelines. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad notability guidelines exist-- it filters out things like users creating articles for their family dog (which may only be relevant to half a dozen people). But continuing this analogy...there are hundreds of breeds of dogs-- some of which have their own articles because they have enough unique, factual, reliable information to share to back up their article, and they follow the rules. Same deal here... I believe an article is warranted. --Mbeckwell (talk) 04:45, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Me thinks this discussion has no relevance to the Talk section of Squirrel Mail, as stated at the top of this page by Wikipedia: "This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the SquirrelMail article." To the extent that it brings attention to Squirrelmail, it has value. But as a Wikipedia Talk contribution, it is off-topic. My $0,000,000.02's worth. FluffyNose (talk) 10:38, 26 July 2010 (EST) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.202.35.136 (talk)

A Google Books book search returns 759 books where Squirrelmail is mentioned. 200.152.43.196 (talk) 12:37, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Tedickey, I'm confused as to your reasoning as to why this article is not notible. Your original reasoning is that less than 5% of software packages included with Linux is notiable. I've read the notability guidelines and no where does it state that use of the software (or lack of it) makes it notable. In my opinion, SquirrelMail meets the guidelines for notability and the article should stay. I'm not attacking you; just confused as to which part of the notability guidelines you feel the article doesn't meet. sohmc (talk) 14:48, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

When I'm choosing a mail client (or any other piece of software), I like to visit Wikipedia to make comparisons. I've also read the notability guidelines, and it's unclear where the original editors' objection is coming from. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.55.76.19 (talk) 06:36, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm really wondering about the reason for this discussion. Obviously, this program is widely used as a webmail client, so it is important to many people and so, many people may want to know about it (new users, old users) => needs an article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.87.74.55 (talk) 06:13, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

One possible meassurement of notability is raw google numbers. So i tried googling the strings that shows up on the default long in page for squirrel mail and what must be the most common one, MS outlook. Ms Outlooks' webmail: "Connected to Microsoft Exchange"

That gives: 113 000 

Squirrel mail: "By the SquirrelMail Project Team" "SquirrelMail version"

Gives: 22 300

This does not signify that there are that many instalations since you can cange the login messages of both clients, and serveral hits seem to be pages talking about the clients in question. Still it should give you a hint that squirrelmail has some user base. It is something that mostly works behind the scenes, just like most people dont know, or care what there DNS resolver is they dont care about there webmail hence there are not that much flashy news or talk about it.

And i DO agree, with previous posters, the Wikipedia comparsion was invaluable to me when i was selecting which webmails to try out. Zinob (talk) 14:39, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Squirrelmail is invaluable to me in my business and each time I want to learn new things I turn to wikipedia. To not have infrmation about squirrelmail on wikipedia would simply be wrong. How this product can be considered to be not notable is beyond me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.145.71.63 (talk) 08:38, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

response to criticisms of squirrelmail wikipage

   Yeah Hello. I am not savvy to all this technology,I live on a mountain,.

However with the aid of sqirrelmail,I make a good living here . I love its simple interface compared to yooha etc.

                  Peter  (local peasant)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.147.42.107 (talk) 17:08, 2 September 2010 (UTC)