Ubuntu Touch Fully Forks Its Email Client

As one of the important apps to Ubuntu Touch is, of course, an e-mail client. Up to now the Ubuntu Touch email client has been based off the lightweight, Qt-based Trojita application but now it's being forked off entirely for Ubuntu.

Trojita is a Qt IMAP email client talked about for its speed and design. The Ubuntu Touch email app has been based off this code, but now the Ubuntu developers involved are distancing themselves from upstream.

Ubuntu Touch developers have stopped upstreaming their changes to Trojita but instead are now maintaining their own long-term fork of Trojita that's called Dekko. Dekko is the new Ubuntu Touch email client and the old Ubuntu Touch related code has been stripped out of Trojita.

As of Tuesday the Ubuntu Touch code was removed. "The developers who were originally working on this decided that they want to spend their time on their own fork instead. The fork is called Dekko for those who are interested in helping them. The reason for removeal of this code is that the Ubuntu-touch-specific version is outdated, unamaintained and buggy. There is no point in shipping code which nobody cares about, and thus it is going away now."

The apparent reason for forking Trojita full-on and not upstreaming the changes is to "create something tightly integrated into Ubuntu."

The forking of Trojita to Dekko happened during an Ubuntu Touch meeting last week. The new project site for this Ubuntu-specific email client can be found via Launchpad.net.

It will certainly be interesting to see how many more projects are forked by the Ubuntu (Touch) community in their plans to have a unique, convergence platform and very ambitious hopes to take on the mobile phone world. The first Ubuntu phone is expected to finally ship by the end of the year while the Ubuntu covergence strategy with the new Unity Desktop not premiering for at least another twelve months.