Google Open Sources reMail

Google acquired reMail recently. There are two major activities which followed the acquisition: removal of the application from the App Store and open sourcing it.

Existing users were able to keep using it because reMail is a client-only application. The software has been released as a open source project on Google Code as remail-iphone under the Apache 2.0 License.

Gabor Cselle, founder of reMail, writes on his official blog, "As someone who is passionate about mobile email, my hope is that developers interested in making email-related apps can use reMail code as a starting point. Part of the reason email apps are hard is because you have to pay the tax of figuring out how to download email via IMAP, parse MIME messages, handle attachments, and store data. reMail has already solved these problems. If you have a great mobile email idea, I hope you will find reMail's source code helpful in your quest."

He adds, "I put some effort into documenting the source code so you can get started on your ideas quickly. If you like reMail and want to improve it, I have also listed some potential projects with implementation tips. Most of these projects are features that users have requested in the past. I encourage you to contribute improvements back to the project. I've also created the group remail-iphone on Google Groups, which is a great place to ask questions. Best of luck with your projects!"

Muktware (aka Free Software) or Open Source is the future.