What is the history behind nano?
Funny you should ask! In the beginning… For years Pine was THE program used to read email on a Unix system. The Pico text editor is the portion of the program one would use to compose his or her mail messages. Many beginners to Unix flocked to Pico and Pine because of their well organized, easy to use interfaces. With the proliferation of GNU/Linux in the mid to late 90’s, many University students became intimately familiar with the strengths (and weaknesses) of Pine and Pico. Then came Debian… The Debian GNU/Linux distribution, known for its strict standards in distributing truly “free” software (i.e. software with no restrictions on redistribution), would not include a binary package for Pine or Pico. Many people had a serious dilemma: they loved these programs, but they were not truly free software in the GNU sense of the word. The event… It was in late 1999 when Chris Allegretta (our hero) was yet again complaining to himself about the less-than-perfect license Pico was distr
