mailpile : blog

Posted by Bjarni Rúnar on December 12, 2017 ( Content may be obsolete! )

Happy holidays, dear readers!

It's been way too long since I updated this blog. Way too long!

Back in August, the plan was to quickly post job ads and start looking for people to hire for our next stages of work - building minimal Windows and Mac GUIs, and installers.

That timeline didn't quite pan out, mostly because I was distracted by other work. My other job needed my attention, then the Icelandic government collapsed, so I volunteered some of my time to help the Icelandic Pirates campaign. I also moved back to Italy from Iceland, which always slows me down for a while.

But enough excuses already!

After some intensive introspection and deep analysis of the Mailpile project's structure and history, we have identified our biggest problem: I am a bottleneck. OK, I made that up. We didn't perform any analysis, it's been obvious for a while that this is a problem. However, empowered by Bitcoin's latest shenanigans, we have finally done something about it.

We've hired a project manager!

The talented Oktavía Hrund has been hired to make sure things get done in spite of me. She has a contract in hand, a budget to work with and Mailpile installed on her laptop... she's here to kick ass and chew bubblegum.

We have changed ownership!

Another recent development, is Mailpile ehf, the Icelandic company founded around the project has changed ownership. Mailpile ehf used to be fully owned by the original project founders: Smári McCarthy, Brennan Novak and myself. Since then, Brennan has moved on to other things. Recently he sold his shares to Daniel Yeow. Daniel should be a a familiar face to the the speed skaters amongst you (I hear Mailpile is huge in the speed skating community... huge!), but he has also been helping out with coordination of our Transifex community while researching whether it is possible to use Raspberry-Pi-like devices to make a Mailpile hardware product.

You made this happen!

Your encouragement, your belief in our vision and your gracious donations (including Bitcoin donations) are what makes Mailpile possible. Bitcoin prices have risen dramatically, so much so that we now have enough magical Internet money to fund another round or two of work after this one - assuming Bitcoin doesn't collapse completely in the meantime! So thank you again for your trust and donations. They have given us the motivation and courage we need to keep going and make Mailpile available, easy and accessible to you all! We may be late, but never isn't an option.

That's the news for now.

I'm sure Okta will make me blog again soon. Until then, I hope you enjoy Santaseason, spend some quality time with your loved ones and enter the Gregorian Calendar New Year full of joy and optimism...

Take care!