1 Design notes and philosophy
2 ---------------------------
4 Challenges to running normal mailing lists
5 ------------------------------------------
7 2) bounce processing of invalid/bad email addresses
8 3) processing subscribe/unsubscribe requests
10 Issues 2) and 3) are side-stepped entirely by moving reader
11 subscriptions to git repository synchronization and Atom feeds. There's
12 no chance of faked subscription requests and no need to deal with
13 confused users who cannot unsubscribe.
15 Use existing infrastructure
16 ---------------------------
18 * public-inbox can coexist with existing mailing lists, any subscriber
19 to the existing mailing list can begin delivering messages to
22 * public-inbox uses SMTP for posting. Posting a message to a public-inbox
23 instance is no different than sending a message to any open mailing
26 * readers may continue using use their choice of mail clients and
27 mailbox formats, only learning a few commands of the ssoma(1) tool
30 * Atom is a reasonable feed format for casual readers and is supported
31 by a variety of feed readers.
36 * Freedom from proprietary services, tools and APIs. Communicating with
37 developers and users of Free Software should not rely on proprietary
40 * Existing infrastrucuture, tools, and user familarity.
41 There is already a large variety of tools, clients, and email providers
42 available. There are also many resources for users to run their own
43 SMTP server on a domain they control.
45 * All public discussion mediums are affected by spam and advertising.
46 There exist several good Free Software anti-spam tools for email.
48 * Privacy is not an issue for public discussion. Public mailing list
49 archives are common and accepted by Free Software communities.
50 There is no need to ask the NSA for backups of your mail archives :)
52 * git, one of the most widely-used version control systems, includes many
53 tools for for email: git-format-patch(1), git-send-email(1), git-am(1).
54 Furthermore, the development of git itself is based on the git mailing
57 * Email is already the de-facto form of communication in many Free Software
60 * Fallback/transition to private email and other lists, in case the
61 public-inbox host becomes unavailable, users may still directly email
62 each other (or Cc: lists for related/dependent projects).
66 Copyright 2013, Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net> and all contributors.
67 License: AGPLv3 or later <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>