1 public-inbox - an "archives first" approach to mailing lists
2 ------------------------------------------------------------
4 public-inbox implements the sharing of an email inbox via git to
5 complement or replace traditional mailing lists. Readers may
6 read via NNTP, Atom feeds or HTML archives.
8 public-inbox spawned around three main ideas:
10 * Publically accessible and archived communication is essential to
11 Free Software development.
13 * Contributing to Free Software projects should not require the
14 use of non-Free services or software.
16 * Graphical user interfaces should not be required for text-based
19 public-inbox aims to be easy-to-deploy and manage; encouraging projects
20 to run their own instances with minimal overhead.
25 public-inbox uses ssoma[1], Some Sort Of Mail Archiver which implements
26 no policy of its own. By storing (and optionally) exposing an inbox
27 via git, it is fast and efficient to host and mirror public-inboxes.
29 Traditional mailing lists use the "push" model. For readers, this
30 requires commitment to subscribe and effort to unsubscribe. New readers
31 may also have difficulty following existing discussions if archives do
32 not expose Message-ID headers for responses. List server admins may be
33 burdened with delivery failures.
35 public-inbox uses the "pull" model. Casual readers may also follow
36 the list via NNTP, Atom feed or HTML archives.
38 Users of the ssoma[1] command-line tool may import mail into an mbox,
39 Maildir, or IMAP folder from git repositories periodically.
41 If a reader loses interest, they simply stop syncing.
43 Since we use git, mirrors are easy-to-setup, and lists are
44 easy-to-relocate to different mail addresses without losing/splitting
47 _Anybody_ may also setup a delivery-only mailing list server to
48 replay a public-inbox git archive to subscribers via SMTP.
50 [1] http://ssoma.public-inbox.org/
55 * anybody may participate via plain-text email
57 * stores email in git, readers may have a complete archive of the inbox
59 * Atom feed and NNTP allows casual readers to follow via feed reader
61 * uses only well-documented and easy-to-implement data formats
63 Try it out now, see http://try.public-inbox.org/
65 Requirements for reading:
67 * any software capable of NNTP or following Atom feeds
69 Any basic web browser will do for the HTML archives.
70 We primarily develop on w3m to maximize accessibility.
72 Requirements (participant)
73 --------------------------
75 * any MUA which may send text-only emails ("git send-email" works!)
76 Users are strongly encouraged to use the "reply-all" feature of
77 their mailers to reduce the impact of a public-inbox as a
78 single point of failure.
80 * participants do not need to install public-inbox, only server admins
85 See http://public-inbox.org/INSTALL
90 Source code is available via git:
92 git clone git://80x24.org/public-inbox
94 See below for contact info.
99 We are happy to see feedback of all types via plain-text email.
100 public-inbox discussion is self-hosting on public-inbox.org
101 Please send comments, user/developer discussion, patches, bug reports,
102 and pull requests to our public-inbox address at:
104 meta@public-inbox.org
106 Please Cc: all recipients when replying as we do not require
107 subscription. This also makes it easier to rope in folks of
108 tangentially related projects we depend on (e.g. git developers
109 on git@vger.kernel.org).
111 The archives are readable via NNTP or HTTP:
113 nntp://news.public-inbox.org/inbox.comp.mail.public-inbox.meta
114 http://public-inbox.org/meta/
116 You may also clone all messages via git:
118 git clone --mirror git://public-inbox.org/meta.git
120 Or pass the same git repository URL for ssoma using the instructions at:
122 http://ssoma.public-inbox.org/README.html
127 The maintainer of public-inbox has found SpamAssassin a good tool for
128 filtering his personal mail, and it will be the default spam filtering
129 tool in public-inbox.
131 See http://public-inbox.org/dc-dlvr-spam-flow.html for more info.
136 To discourage phishing, web bugs (tracking), viruses and other nuisances,
137 only plain-text content is allowed and non-text content is stripped.
138 This saves I/O bandwidth and storage, which is important as
139 entire mail archives are shared between clients.
141 As of the 2010s, successful online social networks and forums are the
142 ones which heavily restrict users formatting options; so public-inbox
143 aims to preserve the focus on content, and not presentation.
148 Copyright 2013-2015 all contributors <meta@public-inbox.org>
149 License: AGPLv3 or later <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>
151 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
152 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
153 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
154 (at your option) any later version.
156 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
157 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
158 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
159 GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
161 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
162 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
164 Additional permission under GNU GPL version 3 section 7:
166 If you modify this program, or any covered work, by linking or
167 combining it with the OpenSSL project's OpenSSL library (or a
168 modified version of that library), containing parts covered by the
169 terms of the OpenSSL or SSLeay licenses, the copyright holder(s)
170 grants you additional permission to convey the resulting work.
171 Corresponding Source for a non-source form of such a combination
172 shall include the source code for the parts of OpenSSL used as well
173 as that of the covered work.