Re: [Nmh-workers] Should I learn nmh or GNU mailutils?

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Ken,

In message <address@hidden> you wrote:
> >I have decided to learn the MH system and use it for all my 
> >(non-professional) email needs.
> > From what I understand, there are two different modern-day incarnations 
> >of MH: nmh and GNU mailutils.
> >I need your advice because I can't make up my mind on which to choose. 
> >Since I have to learn from scratch, and it will entail some serious 
> >investment of time, I would like to be sure I make the right choice.
> 
> So, this is a bit of an awkward question, because we're kind of
> competitors.  Our relationship with the GNU Mailutils people is ...
> well, I wouldn't call it "friendly" competition, because mostly we don't
> interact.  This isn't out of any animosity (at least not on our end, and
> AFAICT on Sergey's end).  We're all busy, these are part-time projects,
> and I personally think it's a dick move to go and trash your competitor
> in public.  I never see any messages from Sergey trashing nmh, so I'm
> assuming he feels the same way.  I'd rather people look at the projects
> objectively and make their own decision based on their needs and
> requirements.  Obviously the developers of a project are biased toward
> the implementation they're working on.  So I would say our stance toward
> each other is "polite awareness".

I'm just a user of nmh (as workhorse for exmh) and not involved with
the development of either nmh nor GNU mailutils.  In such an "external"
position I usually find it quite informative to look at the project
statistics for example collected by Oloh [1]; you can find the data
for nmh at [2] and those for GNU mailutils at [3]

[1] http://www.ohloh.net
[2] http://www.ohloh.net/p?ref=homepage&q=nmh
[3] http://www.ohloh.net/p?ref=homepage&q=mailutils

Short comparison of the Oloh data:

                        nmh                     GNU mailutils
-------------------------------------------------------------------
lines of code           163K                    164K
current contributors    6                       1
activity                high                    very low
Total Summary:          ... 2,221 commits       ... 6,913 commits
                        made by 35 contributors made by 13 contributors 

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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