I still need to test this out myself and i’ll post a summary when i have everything up and running, but in the meantime you can find some interesting reads here:

– http://www.dissociatedpress.net/2009/02/18/back-up-gmail/
– http://lifehacker.com/software/gmail/geek-to-live–back-up-gmail-with-fetchmail-235207.php
– http://grimstveit.no/jakob/blog/2005/12/08/using-fetchmail-against-gmail-over-ssl/
– http://www.marksanborn.net/freebsd/using-fetchmail-to-backup-gmail-with-freebsd/
– http://www.wains.be/index.php/2008/03/19/backup-your-gmail-account-in-maildir-format-using-fetchmail/