This operating system ran on older IBM mainframes. Anyway, for financial reasons the University of Washington had to essentiallly get rid of their MVS mainframes, and invest in UNIX systems. UNIX is another operating system, and it is much like MVS, in that it is run on large mainframe computers. However, the University of Washington had trouble finding an email program they liked for use on the new Unix operating system. Thus they decided to create their own.
Users get a hard time using the Internet, like in trying to connect to it, or just access a file.
However PCs have programming that enables them to speak the same language. However there are often errors because of a mistranslation. The computer you are using right now is a part of the Internet and it is trying it's best to speak the foreign language of Unix. Well it explains why Pine has survived to this day. Because many Government, Educational and Private Instituations and Internet Service Providers, use Unix computers, and thus they have used Pine for their Department and Internet Electronic Mail needs.