Email wants & needs

In my previous post I noted that in the long term you really NEED to have a local copy of your emails and not rely on the Cloud for everything.  What follows then, is a search for an email client not a Cloud client.

I started to become disallusioned with my current email client for the following reasons:

1.    To prevent downloading spam, most of the time I was using the web browser interface, but that only stores my emails for a short time before they are automatically purged.
2.    Frequently I look at emails and think, I will get back to that or refer to it later, but I have no way of tagging it for future recall.  Sure..., I could use folders and filters, but it all seems like a lot of administration, just to order my emails as they arrive.
3.    Lot's of corporate email users these days encumber their emails with fancy signatures using graphics.  I don't want any of that.  Just the text of the message is all that's needed.
4.    It would be nice to have email conversations linked together in the same way that mailing lists have, so that they can be searched by thread.

Could there be a better way to handle my emails?  I began looking around at open source solutions and came across Roundup Issue Tracker  (http://www.roundup-tracker.org/).  It refers to itself as issue tracking software, which is just another name for bug tracking software. Still there's a number of things I like about it from an emailing perspective.

1.    Written in Python it's easy to customise.
2.    It uses a Web interface.
3.    It stores it's file attachments and messages on disk in id order separate from the database, so in future they can easily be purged.
4.    It can be customised so that all inward emails are automatically dropped if they do not match an existing email address.
5.    It has several levels of users.  I have customised it so that only privileged users are allow to create new issues.
6.    It uses multiple keywords, and three additional sort options called priority, status and user assignment to search for issues.
7.    It automatically threads email conversations.

What Roundup is most well known for is it's concept of the nosy list.  Nosy lists behave in a similar way to CCing somebody into a conversation and from then on always using Reply To All.  The difference is that Roundup keeps track of the recipient list rather than having to use Reply To All.  Just CCing someone into an email conversation means they will always remain part of the conversation until it finishes, typically in less than ten email exchanges.

The nosy list, automatic conversation threading and user assignments make Roundup a good candidate for workflow software, but what attracts me is Roundup's potential to limit information overload.