design_notes: various updates, including "why git?"

[public-inbox.git] / Documentation / design_notes.txt

diff --git a/Documentation/design_notes.txt b/Documentation/design_notes.txt
index 8ec1d369f1c58c6a485d0de2576775a3a60dc687..e7e6fff7121659f313fb3ada0de80ce6d2e65f3b 100644 (file)
--- a/Documentation/design_notes.txt
+++ b/Documentation/design_notes.txt
@@ -1,6 +1,18 @@
 Design notes and philosophy
 ---------------------------
 
+public-inbox spawned around some basic ideas
+--------------------------------------------
+
+* Public, non-real-time, archivable communication is essential to
+  Free and Open Source software development.
+
+* Contributing to Free and Open Source projects should not require the
+  use of non-Free/non-Open Source services or software.
+
+* Graphical user interfaces should not be required for text-based
+  communication.
+
 Challenges to running normal mailing lists
 ------------------------------------------
 1) spam
@@ -20,8 +32,9 @@ Use existing infrastructure
   public-inbox-mda(1)
 
 * public-inbox uses SMTP for posting.  Posting a message to a public-inbox
-  instance is no different than sending a message to any open mailing
-  list.
+  instance is no different than sending a message to any _open_ mailing
+  list.  Any existing spam filtering on an SMTP server is also effective
+  on public-inbox.
 
 * readers may continue using use their choice of mail clients and
   mailbox formats, only learning a few commands of the ssoma(1) tool
@@ -61,6 +74,33 @@ Why email?
   public-inbox host becomes unavailable, users may still directly email
   each other (or Cc: lists for related/dependent projects).
 
+Why git?
+--------
+
+* git is distributed and robust while being both fast and
+  space-efficient with text data.  NNTP was considered, but does not
+  support compression and places no guarantees on data/transport
+  integrity.  However, an NNTP gateway (read-only?) is possible.
+
+* As of 2014, git is widely used and known to nearly all Free Software
+  developers.  For non-developers it is packaged for all major GNU/Linux
+  and *BSD distributions.
+
+Web notes
+---------
+
+* Getting users to install/run ssoma (or any new tool) is difficult.
+  The web views must be easily read/cache/mirror-able.
+
+* There may also be a significant number of webmail users without
+  an MUA or feed reader; so a web view is necessary.
+
+* Expose Message-ID in web views to encourage replies from drive-by
+  contributors.
+
+* Raw text endpoint allows users to write client-side JS endpoints
+  without hosting the data themselves (or on a different server).
+
 Copyright
 ---------
 Copyright 2013, Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net> and all contributors.