Further development of an app

I use a nifty little program for checking my emails at my server which shows what is available and I can select which ones to delete before opening OE to retrieve the good ones.

Now this app hasn't been developed in 4 years and their forum is down.I tried to contact the contact the author asking if he would mind if I could develop it further.

Needless to say I haven't been able to contact him so what do you think would be the proper protocol here.

Search for the source code if it's an open source program. Or browse SourceForge.net for an alternative, or an alternative that you could add your likings into as a side project, etc.

I use a nifty little program for checking my emails at my server which shows what is available and I can select which ones to delete before opening OE to retrieve the good ones.
Yeah, I wish someone would make a plugin for Trillian that would do that. I have it check all my email accts now. It will show a list of what is there. You can delete them but not on the server side.

Thanks for the reply fellas. :)