Just Doesn't seem Right

Today, September 28, 2009, the University of Washington activated Google Apps with Gmail for their students and laid the groundwork for a allowing faculty and staff the same service. This is not an unusual service offering for Universities, but for the University of Washington it is very significant, at least it is for all of us old UNIX users who cut their teeth on PINE which was written at UW in 1989. It looks like budget cuts are to blame for UW transitioning away from support for home grown apps like PINE. Maybe it was way overdue, but I did always admire UW's commitment to maintaining and using their various open source contributions.

Now the bigger story could have been that UW, in Microsoft's backyard, chose to go with Google, however, they handled that issue by offering both Microsoft Live along with Google.