Challenges to running normal mailing lists
------------------------------------------
+
1) spam
2) bounce processing of invalid/bad email addresses
3) processing subscribe/unsubscribe requests
Use existing infrastructure
---------------------------
+
* public-inbox can coexist with existing mailing lists, any subscriber
to the existing mailing list can begin delivering messages to
- public-inbox-mda(1)
+ public-inbox-mda(1) or public-inbox-watch(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
* 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
- is required.
+* Readers may continue using use their choice of NNTP and mail clients.
* Atom is a reasonable feed format for casual readers and is supported
by a variety of feed readers.
Why email?
----------
+
* Freedom from proprietary services, tools and APIs. Communicating with
developers and users of Free Software should not rely on proprietary
tools or services.
-* Existing infrastrucuture, tools, and user familarity.
+* Existing infrastructure, tools, and user familiarity.
There is already a large variety of tools, clients, and email providers
available. There are also many resources for users to run their own
SMTP server on a domain they control.
* git, one of the most widely-used version control systems, includes many
tools for for email, including: git-format-patch(1), git-send-email(1),
git-am(1), git-imap-send(1). Furthermore, the development of git itself
- is based on the git mailing list.
+ is based on the git mailing list: https://public-inbox.org/git/
+ (or
+ http://4uok3hntl7oi7b4uf4rtfwefqeexfzil2w6kgk2jn5z2f764irre7byd.onion/git/
+ for Tor users)
* Email is already the de-facto form of communication in many Free Software
communities..
Why git?
--------
+
* git is distributed and robust while being both fast and
space-efficient with text data. NNTP was considered, but does not
support delta-compression and places no guarantees on data/transport
- integrity. However, an NNTP gateway (read-only?) is possible.
+ integrity. However, read-only IMAP and NNTP gateways are implemented.
-* As of 2014, git is widely used and known to nearly all Free Software
+* As of 2016, 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. NNTP is not as widely-used nowadays.
+ and *BSD distributions. NNTP is not as widely-used nowadays, and
+ most IMAP clients do not have good support for read-only mailboxes.
Why perl 5?
-----------
+
* Perl 5 is widely available on modern *nix systems with good a history
of backwards and forward compatibility.
* git and SpamAssassin both use it, so it should be one less thing for
admins to install and waste disk space with.
+* Distributing compiled binaries has higher costs for storage/cache
+ space is required for each architecture. Having a runnable,
+ source-only distribution means any user already has access to all
+ of our source.
+
Laziness
--------
+
* Stick to dependencies available in Debian main, this should make it
easier for potential users to install, and easier for distro
maintainers to pick up.
* Avoids bikeshedding about web UI decisions, GUI-lovers can write their
own GUI-friendly interfaces (HTML or native) based on public archives.
- Maybe one day integrated MUAs will feature built-in git protocol support!
Web notes
---------
-* Getting users to install/run ssoma (or any new tool) is difficult.
+
+* Getting users to install/run 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
* Expose Message-ID in web views to encourage replies from drive-by
contributors.
-* Raw text endpoint allows users to write client-side JS endpoints
+* Raw text endpoint allows users to write client-side endpoints
without hosting the data themselves (or on a different server).
What sucks about public-inbox
-----------------------------
+
* Lack of push notification. On the other hand, feeds seem popular.
* some (mostly GUI) mail clients cannot set In-Reply-To headers
properly without the original message.
+* marketing - as it should: <https://public-inbox.org/marketing.txt>
+
Scalability notes
-----------------
-Even with shallow clone, storing the history of large/busy mailing lists
-may place much burden on subscribers and servers. However, having a
-single (or few) refs representing the entire history of a list is good
-for small lists since it's easier to lookup a message by Message-ID, so
-we want to avoid splitting refs with independent histories.
-ssoma will likely grow its own builtin ref rotation system based on
-message count (not rotating at fixed time intervals). This would
-split the histories and require O(n) lookup time based on Message-ID,
-where `n' is the number of history splits.
+See the public-inbox-v2-format(5) manpage for all the scalability
+problems solved.
Copyright
---------
-Copyright 2013, Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net> and all contributors.
-License: AGPLv3 or later <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>
+
+Copyright all contributors <meta@public-inbox.org>
+License: AGPL-3.0+ <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>