Email and USENET RSS Converters

Creation of mail2feed and news2feed utilities, per the rough-cut manpage prose found in the attached .zip file. Basically, mail2feed grabs messages out of a POP3 or IMAP inbox and converts them into an RSS 2.0 feed, while news2feed grabs postings out of one or more newsgroups (where the postings are newer than the last news2feed invocation) and converts them into an RSS 2.0 feed. Please read the attached manpage for details on command-line options and overall operation of the utilities. These utilities should be written to run, in theory, on any platform, with Linux as the testbed. In other words, the utilities should have no undocumented platform dependencies and should be written in programming languages available on major platforms, but the only one required to be tested is Linux (Fedora Core 2 recommended). In terms of programming language, developer should use Java, Python, or Ruby. Perl will be accepted, with additional comment requirements (see Deliverables). Other programming languages can be proposed but may not be accepted. Please specify the language you intend to use in your bid. Acceptance testing will include the following, among other tests: * Testing retrieval and conversion of mail from an IMAP and a POP3 inbox * Testing retrieval and conversion of newsgroup postings from one or more NNTP servers * Confirmation that the feeds are syntactically valid via [login to view URL] or similar test * Confirmation that all command-line options work as described in the draft manpage (or as negotiated during work) Please ask any questions regarding the requirements and deliverables up front! ## Deliverables * Complete and fully-functional working program(s) in executable form as well as complete source code of all work done. * All deliverables will be considered "work made for hire" under U.S. Copyright law. Buyer will receive exclusive and complete copyrights to all work purchased. To confirm this, developer will be required to sign a copyright assigment form. * All source code should be liberally commented. Perl source code needs one meaningful line of comment per line of actual source code (e.g., not counting blank lines). Java, Python, and Ruby only need one meaningful line of comment for every 3 lines of actual source code. * Documenation and comments must be in English, sufficient for the buyer to understand. * The package of deliverables from developer should include the source, a configure script and makefile (for ./configure, make, make install as a build process), manpage (installed as part of 'make install'), and INSTALL file (documentation of the installation process) Interim payments for partial completion will be available as follows: * 10% of fee for a basic working mail2feed utility, albeit one without all command-line options working * 10% of fee for a basic working news2feed utility, albeit one without all command-line options working * 5% of fee for a complete mail2feed utility per this deliverables section * 5% of fee for a complete news2feed utility per this deliverables section * Balance of fee upon completion of all the above **and** receipt of signed copyright assignment (blank form included in attached .zip file in PDF and [login to view URL] SXW formats) ## Platform Linux (Fedora Core 2 will be the distribution used for acceptance testing). Utilities must document any known platform dependencies that would prevent them from working on Windows (2000/XP) or Mac (OS X).