Unfortunately, enthusiasm wanes and the web eco-system evolves, sometimes rapidly and radically. The application finds many users, some as enthusiastic as the developers, others looking for either function or cheap options and all seems well. It’s released as an open-source application and others, sharing vision and enthusiasm, develop the core application and write add-ons that improve functionality. A developer has a bright idea and codes like a demon to realise that vision. The rise and fall of Squirrelmail is the story of open source software in microcosm. In 2015 Squirrelmail could still be found at the top of lists of recommended webmail clients, at a time when it hadn’t seen an update for two years. Being written in PHP and being an open-source application, others developed add-ons and plug-ins that increased its functionality beyond that originally envisaged by its developers. Squirrelmail grew beyond its initial intentions and found a wider audience. Their projection was that Squirrelmail would meet the requirements of around 5% of the then web’s mail users. ![]() Their aim was simple to produce a webmail application that was easy to use and administer and which made as few demands on computing resources as possible. Squirrelmail was the product of two brothers, Luke and Nathan Ehresman, who released the first version in 1999. ![]() ![]() It’s a story that is not unusual and it is a useful lesson. So why are we dedicating our valuable time and resources to this? The answer to that is to be found in the origins of Squirrelmail, its uses and the reasons for its ultimate demise. It’s written in PHP which may ring bells with those of you who are regular readers of our Insights.įewer of you will hear of Squirrelmail in the future as it is no longer supported and there hasn’t been an update released since May 2013. It was never intended to be a corporate tool and it is one of a number of web-hosted mail applications that can be deployed onto your server via cPanel. It’s entirely possible that you have never heard of Squirrelmail.
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