[Users] Why do some users prefer Sylpheed over Claws Mail ?!?

[Paul]

On Sat, 13 Jun 2015 21:18:43 +0200
anton92 at gmx.ru wrote: 

> I was very surprised to discover that Sylpheed (instead of CM) was
> chosen by the Fedora distro.

It's impossible to answer your question in the subject by anyone who
hasn't made that choice, and since this is the Claws Mail list then
one can guess that everyone here prefers Claws Mail. Try asking on
the Sylpheed mailing list.

> From what I understand CM is much better than Sylpheed, because it
> has many plugins and a more vibrant community, so I really don't
> see why Sylpheed could be preferred over CM. 

AFAIK, there is a Japanese community around Sylpheed. Whether it's
vibrant or not I cannot say.

> I was not able to find
> much info on the internet about the difference between the two
> programs. All one finds is that CM was forked from Sylpheed and is
> now managed by a community.

To say CM is managed by a community is a slight stretch. It is
managed by a small team of people, some of which have been there
since before sylpheed-claws days, some others not quite so long.

> Could you please provide some info
> about the differences?

It's been a long time since I paid any attention to what is happening
in Sylpheed development, but I can list a few things without having to
do investigation.

IMAP and NNTP are completely different in Claws.
The cache system is completely different in Claws.
The folder management is completely different in Claws.
Filtering is completely different in Claws.
GnuPG messages are handled completely differently in Claws.

plus lots of other stuff.

I would say that CM has easily in excess of 50% new, completely
rewritten code.

CM is also licensed under GPLv3 whereas Sylpheed (last time I looked)
iirc is LGPLv2.

Sylpheed's LGPLv2 is probably there to facilitate the development of
Sylpheed Pro, which is the proprietary version of Sylpheed, which is
for sale and is not offered for free.

> Above all, is there some area where Sylpheed
> is actually better than CM? Any particularly feature? 

I'm not aware of any.

> Is Sylpheed
> also mono-threaded like CM?

Neither are mono-threaded, they're are just not completely
multi-threaded. And, afaik, they both share this trait.

Originally there was Sylpheed, back in c. 2001 it was perhaps the
only GUI MUA for linux that offered multiple accounts. It was basic,
but the best there was. Because a few people wanted to help make
Sylpheed better, a lot of patches were being sent. Then, to handle
the number of patches, The Sylpheed Patch Page was created - quite
basic in today's terms, but quite innovative in those days. After
some time we needed some way to effectively test all the patches,
without having to spend a lot of time applying patches to Sylpheed.
So Sylpheed-Claws was created as the development version of Sylpheed.
This worked quite well for some time, when features were considered
stable in Sylpheed-Claws, Hiroyuki would integrate them into
Sylpheed -  features such as Actions, Templates, Colour labels,
address book, and so on, all originated in Sylpheed-Claws.

Unfortunately, after a while features - good, stable features -
stopped being integrated in Sylpheed. After several months with
trying to find out the reason for this, but failing to get a
response, it was decided that we should fork and create Claws Mail.
Our hand was forced, and we we weren't ready to give up.

Anyway, enough of this already, I think.

with regards

Paul