Fetchmail is an
open-source software utility for
POSIX
The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming inter ...
-compliant operating systems which is used to retrieve
e-mail
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
from a remote
POP3
In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. POP version 3 (POP3) is the version in common use, and along with IMAP the most common ...
,
IMAP
In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by .
IMAP was designed with the goal of per ...
, or
ODMR mail server to the user's local system. It was developed from th
popclientprogram, written by Carl Harris.
Its chief significance is perhaps that its author,
Eric S. Raymond, used it as a model to discuss his theories of
open-source software development in a widely read and influential essay on software development methodologies ''
The Cathedral and the Bazaar''.
Design
By design, Fetchmail's only means of delivering messages is by submitting them to the local MTA/
Message transfer agent
Within the Internet email system, a message transfer agent (MTA), or mail transfer agent, or mail relay is software that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer to another using SMTP. The terms mail server, mail exchanger, and MX host ...
or invoking a
mail delivery agent A message delivery agent (MDA), or mail delivery agent, is a computer software component that is responsible for the delivery of e-mail messages to a local recipient's mailbox., ''Internet Mail Architecture'', D. Crocker (July 2009) It is also call ...
like
procmail,
maildrop, or
sendmail; delivering directly to mail folders such as
maildir
The Maildir e-mail format is a common way of storing email messages in which each message is stored in a separate file with a unique name, and each mail folder is a file system directory. The local file system handles file locking as messages are ...
is not supported.
Dan Bernstein,
getmail creator Charles Cazabon and FreeBSD developer Terry Lambert, have criticized Fetchmail's design, its number of security holes, and that it was prematurely put into "maintenance mode". In 2004, a new team of maintainers took over Fetchmail development, and laid out development plans that broke with design decisions that Eric Raymond had made in earlier versions.
See also
*
Mail retrieval agent
A mail retrieval agent (MRA) is a computer application that retrieves or fetches e-mail from a remote mail server and works with a mail delivery agent to deliver mail to a local or remote email mailbox. MRAs may be external applications by them ...
*
getmail
*
fdm
*
OfflineIMAP
OfflineIMAP is IMAP synchronization utility software, capable of synchronizing mail on IMAP server with local Maildir folder or another server.
Description
The synchronization is performed bidirectionally between two endpoints ("Remote" and "L ...
References
External links
*
Fetchmail at SourceForge
https://sourceforge.net/directory/os:windows/?q=fetchmail
Free email software
Mail delivery agents
{{network-software-stub