I plan on hosting my own email with the help of CS friends. VPS's are getting cheaper. Other options include hosted email from a provider you trust. As an asid

I plan on hosting my own email with the help of CS friends. VPS's are getting cheaper. Other options include hosted email from a provider you trust. As an aside- does anyone have a good guide for downloading all email from GMail to Thunderbird, including attachments? I won't use closed source tools and the guides/howto's out there contradict each other..