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That’s a real shame about Newton Mail. Anything that provides more user choice and adds innovation in a saturated market is a good thing in my book. I hope Esse

That’s a real shame about Newton Mail. Anything that provides more user choice and adds innovation in a saturated market is a good thing in my book. I hope Essential open sources it, as well. From TFA: “As part of the company wind down, the security update for PH-1 released on February 3 is the last update from the Essential software team. Your PH-1 will continue to work but we will not be providing any additional updates or customer support. Current Newton Mail users will have access to the service through April 30, 2020. For developer fans, a prebuilt of our vendor image and everything else needed to keep hacking on PH-1 will be hosted on our github.”

bdcravens 7y ago
Prior to the Essential acquisition, Newton was shut down. I assume Cloud Magic (Newton creator) was pretty dead in the water, and the acquisition was the best chance they had at resurrection.
notyourday 7y ago
It is too bad they don't release all the source code.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  This is a big part of why it's so important we support efforts like the pine phone and librem 5. When these companies go belly up the perfectly functional devices we own shouldn't become effectively unservicable.
  - notyourday 7y ago
    They need to start by having a working computer in a form of a phone that runs Android applications from Google Play, has support for 4G LTE. Until that happens, pine phone and librem are non-starters.
- ReverseCold 7y ago
  Is there a reason they can't? I'd imagine it'd have to do with NDAs and such, but the actual modified software that they wrote should be fine, right?
  - notyourday 7y ago
    In my experience it is 99% of the internal politics and 1% of the legal. People in software related business ( including software engineers ) like talking about open source, GPL, etc the same way as think tanks like talking about eradicating poverty and homelessness, but any attempt to actually do something about it (release the source, build a few shelters, hire janitors) results in massive hand waving rather than action.
Fnoord 7y ago
50 EUR a year for an e-mail client? No wonder that never took off. Which features of Newton Mail did you use/need? I can recommend p≡p (K-9 fork) [1] and FairEmail [2]. Both FOSS. FairEmail Pro features cost a one time fee of, I don't remember, less than 10 EUR (hence I don't remember). Supporting FOSS like that felt great. [1] https://www.pep.security/ https://www.pep.security/ [2] https://github.com/M66B/open-source-email https://github.com/M66B/open-source-email

bdcravens 7y ago

Prior to the Essential acquisition, Newton was shut down. I assume Cloud Magic (Newton creator) was pretty dead in the water, and the acquisition was the best chance they had at resurrection.

notyourday 7y ago

It is too bad they don't release all the source code.

newnewpdro 7y ago
This is a big part of why it's so important we support efforts like the pine phone and librem 5. When these companies go belly up the perfectly functional devices we own shouldn't become effectively unservicable.
- notyourday 7y ago
  They need to start by having a working computer in a form of a phone that runs Android applications from Google Play, has support for 4G LTE. Until that happens, pine phone and librem are non-starters.
ReverseCold 7y ago
Is there a reason they can't? I'd imagine it'd have to do with NDAs and such, but the actual modified software that they wrote should be fine, right?
- notyourday 7y ago
  In my experience it is 99% of the internal politics and 1% of the legal. People in software related business ( including software engineers ) like talking about open source, GPL, etc the same way as think tanks like talking about eradicating poverty and homelessness, but any attempt to actually do something about it (release the source, build a few shelters, hire janitors) results in massive hand waving rather than action.

Fnoord 7y ago

50 EUR a year for an e-mail client? No wonder that never took off. Which features of Newton Mail did you use/need? I can recommend p≡p (K-9 fork) [1] and FairEmail [2]. Both FOSS. FairEmail Pro features cost a one time fee of, I don't remember, less than 10 EUR (hence I don't remember). Supporting FOSS like that felt great. [1] https://www.pep.security/ https://www.pep.security/ [2] https://github.com/M66B/open-source-email https://github.com/M66B/open-source-email