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.
6 public-inbox spawned around three main ideas:
8 * Publically accessible and archived communication is essential to
9 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.
14 * Graphical user interfaces should not be required for text-based
17 public-inbox aims to be easy-to-deploy and manage; encouraging projects
18 to run their own instances with minimal overhead.
22 * anybody may participate via plain-text email
23 * stores email in git, readers have a complete archive of the inbox
24 * Atom feed allows casual readers to follow via feed reader
25 * Mail user-agent (MUA) users may use Maildir, mbox(5) and/or IMAP locally
26 * uses only well-documented and easy-to-implement data formats
30 public-inbox uses ssoma[1], Some Sort Of Mail Archiver which implements
31 no policy of its own. By exposing an inbox via git, readers may follow
32 the inbox without subscribing via SMTP and have easy access to old
35 Traditional mailing lists use the "push" model. For readers, this
36 requires commitment to subscribe and effort to unsubscribe. New readers
37 may also have difficulty following existing discussions if archives do
38 not expose Message-ID headers for responses. List server admins may be
39 burdened with delivery failures.
41 public-inbox uses the "pull" model. Readers import mail into an mbox,
42 Maildir, or IMAP folder from git repositories periodically. If a reader
43 loses interest, they simply stop syncing. Since we use git, mirrors are
44 easy-to-setup, and lists are easy-to-relocate to different mail
45 addresses without losing/splitting archives. Dedicated readers only
46 need to install ssoma, a command-line tool[1] currently implemented in
49 Casual readers may also follow the list via Atom feed or web archives.
51 _Anybody_ may also setup a delivery-only mailing list server to replay
52 a public-inbox git archive to subscribers via SMTP.
54 [1] http://ssoma.public-inbox.org/README
56 Requirements (Atom, read-only client)
57 -------------------------------------
58 * any feed reader capable of following Atom feeds
60 Any basic web browser will do for the HTML archives.
62 Requirements (participant)
63 --------------------------
64 * ssoma - http://ssoma.public-inbox.org/INSTALL
65 * any MUA which may send text-only emails ("git send-email" works!)
66 * participants do not need to install public-inbox, only server admins
74 Source code is available via git:
76 git clone git://bogomips.org/public-inbox
78 See below for contact info.
82 We are happy to see feedback of all types via plain-text email.
83 public-inbox discussion is self-hosting on public-inbox.org
84 Please send comments, user/developer discussion, patches, bug reports,
85 and pull requests to our public-inbox address at:
89 Please Cc: all recipients when replying as we do not require
90 subscription. This also makes it easier to rope in folks of
91 tangentially related projects we depend on (e.g. git developers
92 on git@vger.kernel.org).
94 You may subscribe via ssoma(1), LISTNAME is a name of your choosing:
96 URL=git://git.public-inbox.org/public-inbox
99 # to initialize a maildir (this may be a new or existing maildir,
100 # ssoma will not touch existing messages)
101 # If you prefer mbox, use "ssoma add mbox ..." instead
102 ssoma add $LISTNAME $URL maildir:/path/to/maildir/
104 # read with your favorite MUA (only using mutt as an example)
105 mutt -f /path/to/maildir # (or /path/to/mbox)
107 # to keep your mbox or maildir up-to-date, periodically run the following:
110 # your MUA may modify and delete messages from the maildir or mbox,
111 # this does not affect ssoma functionality at all
113 # to sync all your ssoma subscriptions
118 The maintainer of public-inbox has found SpamAssassin a good tool for
119 filtering his personal mail, and it will be the default spam filtering
120 tool in public-inbox.
122 Readers may also use a custom mail-delivery-agent for delivery to enable
123 spam filtering by having ssoma deliver to a command via pipe.
125 There is unlikely to be any tool which is 100% accurate at classifying
126 spam, so it is possible to remove messages using the ssoma-rm(1) tool
131 To discourage phishing, web bugs (tracking), viruses and other nuisances,
132 only plain-text content is allowed and non-text content is stripped.
133 This saves I/O bandwidth and storage, which is important as
134 entire mail archives are shared between clients.
136 As of the 2010s, successful online social networks and forums are the
137 ones which heavily restrict users formatting options; so public-inbox
138 aims to preserve the focus on content, and not presentation.
142 Copyright 2013, Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net> and all contributors.
143 License: AGPLv3 or later <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>
145 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
146 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
147 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
148 (at your option) any later version.
150 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
151 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
152 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
153 GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
155 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
156 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.