X-Git-Url: http://www.git.stargrave.org/?a=blobdiff_plain;f=Documentation%2Fdesign_notes.txt;fp=Documentation%2Fdesign_notes.txt;h=ec1dc80084f65e1ea220e68bfaa0cf603d63fb8f;hb=4c808e262750b717e27e050cecaed0a44e780aa6;hp=d96c8d8247cbdf4654ebb8157d89492522ffbe65;hpb=62572831b8f55d67f7db7d4de7a9654166765f7f;p=public-inbox.git diff --git a/Documentation/design_notes.txt b/Documentation/design_notes.txt index d96c8d82..ec1dc800 100644 --- a/Documentation/design_notes.txt +++ b/Documentation/design_notes.txt @@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ public-inbox design notes Challenges to running normal mailing lists ------------------------------------------ + 1) spam 2) bounce processing of invalid/bad email addresses 3) processing subscribe/unsubscribe requests @@ -14,6 +15,7 @@ confused users who cannot unsubscribe. Use existing infrastructure --------------------------- + * public-inbox can coexist with existing mailing lists, any subscriber to the existing mailing list can begin delivering messages to public-inbox-mda(1) @@ -34,6 +36,7 @@ Use existing infrastructure Why email? ---------- + * Freedom from proprietary services, tools and APIs. Communicating with developers and users of Free Software should not rely on proprietary tools or services. @@ -64,17 +67,19 @@ Why email? Why git? -------- + * git is distributed and robust while being both fast and space-efficient with text data. NNTP was considered, but does not support delta-compression and places no guarantees on data/transport - integrity. However, an NNTP gateway (read-only?) is possible. + integrity. However, a read-only NNTP gateway is implemented. -* As of 2014, git is widely used and known to nearly all Free Software +* As of 2016, git is widely used and known to nearly all Free Software developers. For non-developers it is packaged for all major GNU/Linux and *BSD distributions. NNTP is not as widely-used nowadays. Why perl 5? ----------- + * Perl 5 is widely available on modern *nix systems with good a history of backwards and forward compatibility. @@ -83,6 +88,7 @@ Why perl 5? Laziness -------- + * Stick to dependencies available in Debian main, this should make it easier for potential users to install, and easier for distro maintainers to pick up. @@ -110,6 +116,7 @@ Laziness Web notes --------- + * Getting users to install/run ssoma (or any new tool) is difficult. The web views must be easily read/cache/mirror-able. @@ -124,6 +131,7 @@ Web notes What sucks about public-inbox ----------------------------- + * Lack of push notification. On the other hand, feeds seem popular. * some (mostly GUI) mail clients cannot set In-Reply-To headers @@ -131,6 +139,7 @@ What sucks about public-inbox Scalability notes ----------------- + Even with shallow clone, storing the history of large/busy mailing lists may place much burden on subscribers and servers. However, having a single (or few) refs representing the entire history of a list is good @@ -144,5 +153,6 @@ where `n' is the number of history splits. Copyright --------- + Copyright 2013-2015 all contributors License: AGPLv3 or later