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 subscribe to a mailing list using ssoma[1] (a git-wrapper) to
6 import email from a git repository into an IMAP folder, Maildir,
7 or mbox. Readers may also read via NNTP, Atom feeds and HTML
10 public-inbox spawned around three main ideas:
12 * Publically accessible and archived communication is essential to
13 Free and Open Source development.
14 * Contributing to Free and Open Source projects should not require the
15 use of non-Free/non-Open Source services or software.
16 * Graphical user interfaces should not be required for text-based
19 public-inbox aims to be easy-to-deploy and manage; encouraging projects
20 to run their own instances with minimal overhead.
24 public-inbox uses ssoma[1], Some Sort Of Mail Archiver which implements
25 no policy of its own. By exposing an inbox via git, readers may follow
26 the inbox without subscribing via SMTP and have easy access to old
29 Traditional mailing lists use the "push" model. For readers, this
30 requires commitment to subscribe and effort to unsubscribe. New readers
31 may also have difficulty following existing discussions if archives do
32 not expose Message-ID headers for responses. List server admins may be
33 burdened with delivery failures.
35 public-inbox uses the "pull" model. Readers import mail into an mbox,
36 Maildir, or IMAP folder from git repositories periodically. If a reader
37 loses interest, they simply stop syncing. Since we use git, mirrors are
38 easy-to-setup, and lists are easy-to-relocate to different mail
39 addresses without losing/splitting archives. Dedicated readers only
40 need to install ssoma, a command-line tool[1] currently implemented in
43 Casual readers may also follow the list via NNTP, Atom feed or
46 _Anybody_ may also setup a delivery-only mailing list server to replay
47 a public-inbox git archive to subscribers via SMTP.
49 [1] http://ssoma.public-inbox.org/
53 * anybody may participate via plain-text email
54 * stores email in git, readers have a complete archive of the inbox
55 * Atom feed allows casual readers to follow via feed reader
56 * Mail user-agent (MUA) users may use Maildir, mbox(5) and/or IMAP locally
57 * uses only well-documented and easy-to-implement data formats
59 Try it out now, see http://try.public-inbox.org/
61 Requirements (Atom, read-only client)
62 -------------------------------------
63 * any feed reader capable of following Atom feeds
65 Any basic web browser will do for the HTML archives.
67 Requirements (participant)
68 --------------------------
69 * ssoma - http://ssoma.public-inbox.org/
70 * any MUA which may send text-only emails ("git send-email" works!)
71 * participants do not need to install public-inbox, only server admins
75 See http://public-inbox.org/INSTALL
79 Source code is available via git:
81 git clone git://80x24.org/public-inbox
83 See below for contact info.
87 We are happy to see feedback of all types via plain-text email.
88 public-inbox discussion is self-hosting on public-inbox.org
89 Please send comments, user/developer discussion, patches, bug reports,
90 and pull requests to our public-inbox address at:
94 Please Cc: all recipients when replying as we do not require
95 subscription. This also makes it easier to rope in folks of
96 tangentially related projects we depend on (e.g. git developers
97 on git@vger.kernel.org).
99 You may subscribe via ssoma(1), LISTNAME is a name of your choosing:
101 URL=git://public-inbox.org/meta
102 LISTNAME=public-inbox
104 # to initialize a maildir (this may be a new or existing maildir,
105 # ssoma will not touch existing messages)
106 # If you prefer mbox, use "ssoma add mbox ..." instead
107 ssoma add $LISTNAME $URL maildir:/path/to/maildir/
109 # read with your favorite MUA (only using mutt as an example)
110 mutt -f /path/to/maildir # (or /path/to/mbox)
112 # to keep your mbox or maildir up-to-date, periodically run the following:
115 # your MUA may modify and delete messages from the maildir or mbox,
116 # this does not affect ssoma functionality at all
118 # to sync all your ssoma subscriptions via cronjob
121 HTML inbox archives are available: http://public-inbox.org/meta/
122 The archives are also readable via NNTP:
123 nntp://news.public-inbox.org/inbox.comp.mail.public-inbox.meta
127 The maintainer of public-inbox has found SpamAssassin a good tool for
128 filtering his personal mail, and it will be the default spam filtering
129 tool in public-inbox.
131 Readers may also use a custom mail-delivery-agent for delivery to enable
132 spam filtering by having ssoma deliver to a command via pipe.
134 There is unlikely to be any tool which is 100% accurate at classifying
135 spam, so it is possible to remove messages using the ssoma-rm(1) tool
140 To discourage phishing, web bugs (tracking), viruses and other nuisances,
141 only plain-text content is allowed and non-text content is stripped.
142 This saves I/O bandwidth and storage, which is important as
143 entire mail archives are shared between clients.
145 As of the 2010s, successful online social networks and forums are the
146 ones which heavily restrict users formatting options; so public-inbox
147 aims to preserve the focus on content, and not presentation.
151 Copyright 2013-2015 all contributors <meta@public-inbox.org>
152 License: AGPLv3 or later <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>
154 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
155 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
156 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
157 (at your option) any later version.
159 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
160 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
161 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
162 GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
164 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
165 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
167 Additional permission under GNU GPL version 3 section 7:
169 If you modify this program, or any covered work, by linking or
170 combining it with the OpenSSL project's OpenSSL library (or a
171 modified version of that library), containing parts covered by the
172 terms of the OpenSSL or SSLeay licenses, the copyright holder(s)
173 grants you additional permission to convey the resulting work.
174 Corresponding Source for a non-source form of such a combination
175 shall include the source code for the parts of OpenSSL used as well
176 as that of the covered work.