1 public-inbox - an "archives first" approach to mailing lists
2 ------------------------------------------------------------
3 public-inbox implements the sharing of an email inbox via git to
4 complement or replace traditional mailing lists. Readers may
5 read via NNTP, Atom feeds or HTML archives.
7 public-inbox spawned around three main ideas:
9 * Publically accessible and archived communication is essential to
10 Free and Open Source development.
11 * Contributing to Free and Open Source projects should not require the
12 use of non-Free/non-Open Source services or software.
13 * Graphical user interfaces should not be required for text-based
16 public-inbox aims to be easy-to-deploy and manage; encouraging projects
17 to run their own instances with minimal overhead.
21 public-inbox uses ssoma[1], Some Sort Of Mail Archiver which implements
22 no policy of its own. By storing (and optionally) exposing an inbox
23 via git, it is fast and efficient to host and mirror public-inboxes.
25 Traditional mailing lists use the "push" model. For readers, this
26 requires commitment to subscribe and effort to unsubscribe. New readers
27 may also have difficulty following existing discussions if archives do
28 not expose Message-ID headers for responses. List server admins may be
29 burdened with delivery failures.
31 public-inbox uses the "pull" model. Casual readers may also follow
32 the list via NNTP, Atom feed or HTML archives.
34 Users of the ssoma[1] command-line tool may import mail into an mbox,
35 Maildir, or IMAP folder from git repositories periodically.
37 If a reader loses interest, they simply stop syncing.
39 Since we use git, mirrors are easy-to-setup, and lists are
40 easy-to-relocate to different mail addresses without losing/splitting
43 _Anybody_ may also setup a delivery-only mailing list server to
44 replay a public-inbox git archive to subscribers via SMTP.
46 [1] http://ssoma.public-inbox.org/
50 * anybody may participate via plain-text email
51 * stores email in git, readers may have a complete archive of the inbox
52 * Atom feed and NNTP allows casual readers to follow via feed reader
53 * uses only well-documented and easy-to-implement data formats
55 Try it out now, see http://try.public-inbox.org/
57 Requirements for reading:
59 * any software capable of NNTP or following Atom feeds
61 Any basic web browser will do for the HTML archives.
62 We primarily develop on w3m to maximize accessibility.
64 Requirements (participant)
65 --------------------------
67 * any MUA which may send text-only emails ("git send-email" works!)
68 Users are strongly encouraged to use the "reply-all" feature of
69 their mailers to reduce the impact of a public-inbox as a
70 single point of failure.
72 * participants do not need to install public-inbox, only server admins
76 See http://public-inbox.org/INSTALL
80 Source code is available via git:
82 git clone git://80x24.org/public-inbox
84 See below for contact info.
88 We are happy to see feedback of all types via plain-text email.
89 public-inbox discussion is self-hosting on public-inbox.org
90 Please send comments, user/developer discussion, patches, bug reports,
91 and pull requests to our public-inbox address at:
95 Please Cc: all recipients when replying as we do not require
96 subscription. This also makes it easier to rope in folks of
97 tangentially related projects we depend on (e.g. git developers
98 on git@vger.kernel.org).
100 The archives are readable via NNTP or HTTP:
102 nntp://news.public-inbox.org/inbox.comp.mail.public-inbox.meta
103 http://public-inbox.org/meta/
105 You may also clone all messages via git:
107 git clone --mirror git://public-inbox.org/meta.git
109 Or pass the same git repository URL for ssoma using the instructions at:
111 http://ssoma.public-inbox.org/README.html
115 The maintainer of public-inbox has found SpamAssassin a good tool for
116 filtering his personal mail, and it will be the default spam filtering
117 tool in public-inbox.
119 See http://public-inbox/dc-dlvr-spam-flow.html for more info.
123 To discourage phishing, web bugs (tracking), viruses and other nuisances,
124 only plain-text content is allowed and non-text content is stripped.
125 This saves I/O bandwidth and storage, which is important as
126 entire mail archives are shared between clients.
128 As of the 2010s, successful online social networks and forums are the
129 ones which heavily restrict users formatting options; so public-inbox
130 aims to preserve the focus on content, and not presentation.
134 Copyright 2013-2015 all contributors <meta@public-inbox.org>
135 License: AGPLv3 or later <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>
137 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
138 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
139 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
140 (at your option) any later version.
142 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
143 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
144 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
145 GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
147 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
148 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
150 Additional permission under GNU GPL version 3 section 7:
152 If you modify this program, or any covered work, by linking or
153 combining it with the OpenSSL project's OpenSSL library (or a
154 modified version of that library), containing parts covered by the
155 terms of the OpenSSL or SSLeay licenses, the copyright holder(s)
156 grants you additional permission to convey the resulting work.
157 Corresponding Source for a non-source form of such a combination
158 shall include the source code for the parts of OpenSSL used as well
159 as that of the covered work.