-public-inbox - shared mailboxes via git for public discussion
--------------------------------------------------------------
+public-inbox - an "archives first" approach to mailing lists
+------------------------------------------------------------
+public-inbox implements the sharing of an email inbox via git to
+complement or replace traditional mailing lists. Readers may
+read via NNTP, Atom feeds or HTML archives.
-public-inbox is an "archives first" approach to mailing lists.
-It implements the sharing of an email inbox to complement or replace
-traditional mailing lists. public-inbox is primarily intended as a
-Free, distributed public communications tool for users and developers of
-Free and Open Source Software. public-inbox should be easy-to-deploy
-and manage; encouraging software projects to run their own instances
-with minimal overhead.
+public-inbox spawned around three main ideas:
+
+* Publically accessible and archived communication is essential to
+ Free and Open Source 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.
+
+public-inbox aims to be easy-to-deploy and manage; encouraging projects
+to run their own instances with minimal overhead.
Implementation
--------------
public-inbox uses ssoma[1], Some Sort Of Mail Archiver which implements
-no policy of its own. By exposing an inbox via git, readers may follow
-the mailing list without subscribing via SMTP and have easy access to
-old messages.
+no policy of its own. By storing (and optionally) exposing an inbox
+via git, it is fast and efficient to host and mirror public-inboxes.
+
+Traditional mailing lists use the "push" model. For readers, this
+requires commitment to subscribe and effort to unsubscribe. New readers
+may also have difficulty following existing discussions if archives do
+not expose Message-ID headers for responses. List server admins may be
+burdened with delivery failures.
+
+public-inbox uses the "pull" model. Casual readers may also follow
+the list via NNTP, Atom feed or HTML archives.
-Traditional mailing lists use the "push" model. List servers deliver
-content via SMTP to other mail servers used by readers of the mailing
-list. For readers, this requires commitment to subscribe to the list
-and extra effort to unsubscribe. New readers may also have difficulty
-following existing discussions if archives do not expose Message-ID
-headers for responses. List server admins are also burdened with
-occasional bounce messages.
+Users of the ssoma[1] command-line tool may import mail into an mbox,
+Maildir, or IMAP folder from git repositories periodically.
-public-inbox uses the "pull" model. Readers import mail into an mbox,
-Maildir, or IMAP folder from git repositories periodically. If a reader
-loses interest, they simply stop syncing. Since ssoma uses git,
-mirrors are easy-to-setup, and lists are easy-to-relocate to different
-mail addresses without losing/splitting archives. Dedicated readers
-only need to install ssoma, a command-line tool[1] currently implemented
-in Perl.
+If a reader loses interest, they simply stop syncing.
-Casual readers may also follow the list via Atom feed or web archives.
+Since we use git, mirrors are easy-to-setup, and lists are
+easy-to-relocate to different mail addresses without losing/splitting
+archives.
-_Anybody_ may also setup a delivery-only mailing list server to replay
-a public-inbox git archive to subscribers via SMTP.
+_Anybody_ may also setup a delivery-only mailing list server to
+replay a public-inbox git archive to subscribers via SMTP.
-[1] http://ssoma.public-inbox.org/README
+[1] http://ssoma.public-inbox.org/
Features
--------
-* anybody may participate via plain-text email to the public address
-* stores email in git, readers have a full archive of the mailing list
-* Atom feed allows casual readers to follow via feed reader
-* Mail user-agent (MUA) users may use Maildir, mbox(5) and/or IMAP locally
+* anybody may participate via plain-text email
+* stores email in git, readers may have a complete archive of the inbox
+* Atom feed and NNTP allows casual readers to follow via feed reader
* uses only well-documented and easy-to-implement data formats
-Requirements (Atom, read-only client)
--------------------------------------
-* any feed reader capable of following Atom feeds
+Try it out now, see http://try.public-inbox.org/
+
+Requirements for reading:
+
+* any software capable of NNTP or following Atom feeds
+
+Any basic web browser will do for the HTML archives.
+We primarily develop on w3m to maximize accessibility.
Requirements (participant)
--------------------------
-* ssoma - http://ssoma.public-inbox.org/INSTALL
+
* any MUA which may send text-only emails ("git send-email" works!)
+ Users are strongly encouraged to use the "reply-all" feature of
+ their mailers to reduce the impact of a public-inbox as a
+ single point of failure.
+
* participants do not need to install public-inbox, only server admins
Requirements (server)
---------------------
-See INSTALL
+See http://public-inbox.org/INSTALL
Hacking
-------
Source code is available via git:
- git clone git://bogomips.org/public-inbox
+ git clone git://80x24.org/public-inbox
See below for contact info.
tangentially related projects we depend on (e.g. git developers
on git@vger.kernel.org).
-You can subscribe via ssoma(1), LISTNAME is a name of your choosing:
-
- URL=git://git.public-inbox.org/public-inbox
- LISTNAME=public-inbox
+The archives are readable via NNTP or HTTP:
- # to initialize a maildir (this may be a new or existing maildir,
- # ssoma will not touch existing messages)
- # If you prefer mbox, use "ssoma add mbox ..." instead
- ssoma add $LISTNAME $URL maildir:/path/to/maildir/
+ nntp://news.public-inbox.org/inbox.comp.mail.public-inbox.meta
+ http://public-inbox.org/meta/
- # read with your favorite MUA (only using mutt as an example)
- mutt -f /path/to/maildir # (or /path/to/mbox)
+You may also clone all messages via git:
- # to keep your mbox or maildir up-to-date, periodically run the following:
- ssoma sync $LISTNAME
+ git clone --mirror git://public-inbox.org/meta.git
- # your MUA may modify and delete messages from the maildir or mbox,
- # this does not affect ssoma functionality at all
+Or pass the same git repository URL for ssoma using the instructions at:
- # to sync all your ssoma subscriptions
- ssoma sync
+ http://ssoma.public-inbox.org/README.html
Anti-Spam
---------
filtering his personal mail, and it will be the default spam filtering
tool in public-inbox.
-Readers may also use a custom mail-delivery-agent for delivery to enable
-spam filtering by having ssoma deliver to a command via pipe.
-
-There is unlikely to be any tool which is 100% accurate at classifying
-spam, so it is possible to remove messages using the ssoma-rm(1) tool
-in ssoma.
+See http://public-inbox/dc-dlvr-spam-flow.html for more info.
Content Filtering
-----------------
Copyright
---------
-Copyright 2013, Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net> and all contributors.
+Copyright 2013-2015 all contributors <meta@public-inbox.org>
License: AGPLv3 or later <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
+
+Additional permission under GNU GPL version 3 section 7:
+
+ If you modify this program, or any covered work, by linking or
+ combining it with the OpenSSL project's OpenSSL library (or a
+ modified version of that library), containing parts covered by the
+ terms of the OpenSSL or SSLeay licenses, the copyright holder(s)
+ grants you additional permission to convey the resulting work.
+ Corresponding Source for a non-source form of such a combination
+ shall include the source code for the parts of OpenSSL used as well
+ as that of the covered work.