The future of Pegasus Mail

Golem.de: What is your personal view of the whole project - after all your software changed the lives of millons of people all over the world in giving them a means to communications.

Harris: Again, I find this comment surprising, because development has never ceased, and I have never shut down. The program has been available for download on a completely uninterrupted basis from February 1990, and there has never been a day since that time when development has officially ceased, or when anyone who wished to do so could not have downloaded the software.

In the early days of the program, I used to say that freedom of speech is worthless if nobody can hear you - that's what the programs have always been about. It may be that those priorities are less important now that there are so many more options available, but in the the modern world, the struggle is morphing into one of data security - providing a service where corporations aren't mining every message you send and receive to work out what they can sell you or advertise to you: a service where you can't have your mail secretly inspected by foreign government agencies; one where your data remains *your* data. There will always be people who really value privacy and integrity, and as long as there's a need to provide them with solutions, I'll always attempt to fill it as best I can.

Golem.de: As we´re a publication exclusively targeting a german speaking audience I have to ask: why was the client available in english and german of all languages?

Harris: One of my beta testers is an extremely talented man called Sven Henze: he puts in a huge amount of effort to provide a regularly-updated high-quality German interface to the program, for many of the same reasons that I provide the program in the first place. I have other translators who put in hard work as well, but Sven... Well, I really don't understand how he manages to devote so much time and do it so well.

Golem.de: What are your future plans with Pegasus Mail and how do you want it to be used and remembered?

Harris: My main plan is to get v5 out the door and show people that there really still is a place for a high-quality, independently-written mail program, that there are ways of doing things that aren't the Microsoft Way or the Google Way - that there can still be some variety in the world. And as long as people want to use it, I plan to carry on producing and supporting it. After all, what else could I possibly do?