Interview mit Frode Gill
02.05.2004
Frode, Hauptentwickler von M2, dem Mailclient von Opera, berichtet von seiner Arbeit bei Opera und mit M2.
Please introduce yourself
Frode Gill, born in Kristiansand 29. May 1974. Got my first computer (a C-64) in August 1982. Been coding basic, assembler (Amiga, in the demo-group "Andromeda"), pascal, java, C and C++. After working a few years with an economy-system named Agresso, I started working at Opera June 2001.
Will it be possible to compose HTML mails in M2?
Personally: No. Realistically: Some formatting may sometime have to be allowed, but if it is HTML or something else, I don't know.
Will at least forwarding of HTML mails be possible?
Yes. As plain text, or sometime also as message/rfc822, MHT or EML.
How safe is M2?
If the server supports TLS, a master-password is used to protect mail account passwords and you mail is stored in an encrypted filesystem - *extremely* safe. For plaintext connections, CRAM-MD5 and APOP gives you at least secure authentication. DIGEST-MD5 and PGP will be added for the final touch of security.
Will support for PGP/GPG be added?
Yes.
Many users requested a "delete after X days" option. Will it come?
Accounts.ini has had the setting "Purge Age" since almost day 0. A clear indication that it will come.
The current IMAP support isn't that good, what do you plan to improve in near future?
Everything. IMAP is rewritten, but will unfortunately not make it for 7.50 final.
What do you see as M2s best feature?
That it does so much for you automatically. (indexing, access-points, encoding, most secure authentication etc)
Why should one use M2 instead of another client like Outlook (Express) or Thunderbird?
Outlook (Express): because they are quite simply horrible mail clients (just like Internet Explorer is a horrible browser) that annoys your friends because they do not follow internet standards. Thunderbird: because of everything M2 does under the hood for the user. Other than that, Thunderbird is a good mail client.
Google GMails description make it look like a online-M2. Do you think it can be a competition for M2?
No. It will be a competitor for Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, but online services will never be able to provide the privacy and security an offline client will offer (how is a PGP-encoded message going to be handled in GMail?)
