E-mails held hostage

2023-02-18, post № 270

software, freedom, #email

Joyous as my rose-minded, bit-loving self of a few years past might have dreamt up the present decade, I achingly am in the process of alienating myself evermore from common-place software solutions: my ethically- and aesthetically-founded longing for freedom in thought and harbour in minimalism is recognised by few and respected by fewer.

More jarringly still, in ever-growing tergiversation I find some bits most dear to me in peril: exfiltrating works from walled-off, proprietary, sometimes cloud-only ecosystems is a labour-intensive undertaking as is prying in carelessness foreign-hosted repositories out of the hands of giants (cf. 261) no easy feat.
Though most resilient it turned out is a monopoly on my electronic correspondence which by and large is powered by e-mail.

Irk is felt at whim, a plan hatched with more thought. It is thus no wonder I brooded quite some time. And as the moon imperturbably completed its rounds, a desparate but not blatantly doomed scheme solidified: freezing IMAP data as tangible filesystem nodes followed by embracing POP3 with a home-brewed, tailor-made e-mail client.
Auspiciously my toils were not engulfed by scheming alone as imaptar is feature-complete, proved already useful as well as development on brief is currently in full swing.

May the day soon come when I can rest.