But my point was not so much that he's a bad developer but that his software resume is not as impressive as those he compares himself to.

Edit: Yes, it was written by a guy named Carl Harris and ESR took it over when Harris no longer wished to maintain it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetchmail

http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=585008+0+archiv...

http://www.fetchmail.info/design-notes.html