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.
10 * Contributing to Free and Open Source projects should not require the
11 use of non-Free/non-Open Source services or software.
12 * Graphical user interfaces should not be required for text-based
15 public-inbox aims to be easy-to-deploy and manage; encouraging projects
16 to run their own instances with minimal overhead.
20 * anybody may participate via plain-text email
21 * stores email in git, readers have a complete archive of the inbox
22 * Atom feed allows casual readers to follow via feed reader
23 * Mail user-agent (MUA) users may use Maildir, mbox(5) and/or IMAP locally
24 * uses only well-documented and easy-to-implement data formats
28 public-inbox uses ssoma[1], Some Sort Of Mail Archiver which implements
29 no policy of its own. By exposing an inbox via git, readers may follow
30 the inbox without subscribing via SMTP and have easy access to old
33 Traditional mailing lists use the "push" model. For readers, this
34 requires commitment to subscribe and effort to unsubscribe. New readers
35 may also have difficulty following existing discussions if archives do
36 not expose Message-ID headers for responses. List server admins may be
37 burdened with delivery failures.
39 public-inbox uses the "pull" model. Readers import mail into an mbox,
40 Maildir, or IMAP folder from git repositories periodically. If a reader
41 loses interest, they simply stop syncing. Since we use git, mirrors are
42 easy-to-setup, and lists are easy-to-relocate to different mail
43 addresses without losing/splitting archives. Dedicated readers only
44 need to install ssoma, a command-line tool[1] currently implemented in
47 Casual readers may also follow the list via Atom feed or web archives.
49 _Anybody_ may also setup a delivery-only mailing list server to replay
50 a public-inbox git archive to subscribers via SMTP.
52 [1] http://ssoma.public-inbox.org/
54 Requirements (Atom, read-only client)
55 -------------------------------------
56 * any feed reader capable of following Atom feeds
58 Any basic web browser will do for the HTML archives.
60 Requirements (participant)
61 --------------------------
62 * ssoma - http://ssoma.public-inbox.org/
63 * any MUA which may send text-only emails ("git send-email" works!)
64 * participants do not need to install public-inbox, only server admins
68 See http://public-inbox.org/INSTALL.html
72 Source code is available via git:
74 git clone git://bogomips.org/public-inbox
76 See below for contact info.
80 We are happy to see feedback of all types via plain-text email.
81 public-inbox discussion is self-hosting on public-inbox.org
82 Please send comments, user/developer discussion, patches, bug reports,
83 and pull requests to our public-inbox address at:
87 Please Cc: all recipients when replying as we do not require
88 subscription. This also makes it easier to rope in folks of
89 tangentially related projects we depend on (e.g. git developers
90 on git@vger.kernel.org).
92 You may subscribe via ssoma(1), LISTNAME is a name of your choosing:
94 URL=git://public-inbox.org/meta
97 # to initialize a maildir (this may be a new or existing maildir,
98 # ssoma will not touch existing messages)
99 # If you prefer mbox, use "ssoma add mbox ..." instead
100 ssoma add $LISTNAME $URL maildir:/path/to/maildir/
102 # read with your favorite MUA (only using mutt as an example)
103 mutt -f /path/to/maildir # (or /path/to/mbox)
105 # to keep your mbox or maildir up-to-date, periodically run the following:
108 # your MUA may modify and delete messages from the maildir or mbox,
109 # this does not affect ssoma functionality at all
111 # to sync all your ssoma subscriptions via cronjob
116 The maintainer of public-inbox has found SpamAssassin a good tool for
117 filtering his personal mail, and it will be the default spam filtering
118 tool in public-inbox.
120 Readers may also use a custom mail-delivery-agent for delivery to enable
121 spam filtering by having ssoma deliver to a command via pipe.
123 There is unlikely to be any tool which is 100% accurate at classifying
124 spam, so it is possible to remove messages using the ssoma-rm(1) tool
129 To discourage phishing, web bugs (tracking), viruses and other nuisances,
130 only plain-text content is allowed and non-text content is stripped.
131 This saves I/O bandwidth and storage, which is important as
132 entire mail archives are shared between clients.
134 As of the 2010s, successful online social networks and forums are the
135 ones which heavily restrict users formatting options; so public-inbox
136 aims to preserve the focus on content, and not presentation.
140 Copyright 2013, Eric Wong <normalperson@yhbt.net> and all contributors.
141 License: AGPLv3 or later <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.txt>
143 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
144 it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
145 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
146 (at your option) any later version.
148 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
149 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
150 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
151 GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
153 You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
154 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.