The Mulberry email client has recently been rereleased as a free download. Mulberry has long been a favorite of IMAP aficionados and users who value an extensive set of low-level IMAP configuration options.

The client occupies an odd position in the email client market as it has many advanced options lacking in other clients — such as good support for shared folder ACLs, Sieve rules, and multiple identities. However, it lacks modern amenities such as HTML mail and anti-spam support. The rerelease is welcome news for existing users who now have hope for future development. However, new users would do well to evaluate other IMAP clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird.

The Mulberry product began in 1995. Eventually the company formed as Cyrusoft, and merged with ISELab to form ISAMET in May 2004. The Mulberry was produced until the company declared bankruptcy in September 2005. In August 2006 the original developer, Cyrus Daboo, purchased the Mulberry assets and rereleased the Mulberry client for free. None of the other Cyrusoft products, such as the Mulberry Admin Tool or SilkyMail, have been rereleased to date.

Currently, there is only one developer, Cyrus Daboo, who is working on the product in his spare time. He is considering making the product open source. This would be a welcome change as it should help with new development, bug fixes, and additional platform support.

The current 4.0.5 version of Mulberry is available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It includes PGP support through its GPG plugin as well as calendaring with iCalendar and WebDAV/CalDAV support.

Unlike the previous versions, there is no commercial support available — public mailing lists, a wiki, and a bug tracker fill in the support gap.

… Ben Gross