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Why CardDAV took so long

blog.fastmail.com

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Re: Why CardDAV took so long

#21

Post by zachlatta »

bad_user wrote: post #18
zachlatta wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tried using FastMail for our (small) company, but switched after ~8 months because we started running into deliverability issues and countless issues with shared calendars being unshared (or sometimes losing events). We also couldn't use any of the nice sales tools that integrate with Google Apps (or any of the tools that make managing calendars easier, like https://claralabs.com/ or http://boomerangcalendar.com/…

I've seen a couple of nice tools integrated with Gmail and its web UI. The ones you mention are like that. However my problem with such tools are that they are not operating on standards. For one I wouldn't want to be locked into Gmail. But more importantly, tools depending on proprietary platforms usually have a short life. For example people loved Mailbox from Dropbox, while I was the one complaining that it only w…

100% agree with you, especially on the privacy concerns. But you have to pick your battles and, when we were looking into these tools, our battle was not the privacy of our company email or calendar.

Re: Why CardDAV took so long

#22

Post by teekert »

oever wrote: post #11
hedgehog wrote: post #3

Miserable, this kind of stuff is why I don't run my own mail server any more. Happy Fastmail customer since 2006.

It's really hard to run you own mail server. Much harder than a web server. This is bad for freedom on the internet. http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/15/email.html

It's not that bad: "apt-get install mail-stack-delivery" on Ubuntu and you have everything you need. Ok, to make it real nice will take some work, to get approved certificates, SPF and DKIM working can be a challenge. But in general you can quickly get going of you want.

Re: Why CardDAV took so long

#23

Post by shocks »

teekert wrote: post #22
oever wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really hard to run you own mail server. Much harder than a web server. This is bad for freedom on the internet. http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/15/email.html

It's not that bad: "apt-get install mail-stack-delivery" on Ubuntu and you have everything you need. Ok, to make it real nice will take some work, to get approved certificates, SPF and DKIM working can be a challenge. But in general you can quickly get going of you want.

Have you ever run your own mail server before?

edit: I've never spoken to someone who has and says it is 'easy'.

Re: Why CardDAV took so long

#24

Post by shocks »

broodbucket wrote: post #15
oever wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really hard to run you own mail server. Much harder than a web server. This is bad for freedom on the internet. http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/09/15/email.html

I configured a pretty simple system (dovecot + opensmtpd) following the guide on the Arch wiki in under an hour, it really wasn't that tricky. I have dodged some common problems, though: - my domain wasn't completely unknown so I had no issues with gmail flagging me as spam - I use my gmail for signing up to things I don't care about mail from, so I have yet to actually receive any spam (at which point I will figure…

Running a mail server is easy, providing a mail service is HARD. Deliverability is really difficult. Being online all the time to make sure you're always recieving email is hard.

I was constantly plagued by worry that the important email I sent never actually arrived, or the important email I was waiting for had been sent but I never actually got it.

Re: Why CardDAV took so long

#25

Post by robn_fastmail »

tombrossman wrote: post #20
brongondwana wrote: post #2

I didn't even get into the remaining compatible with the existing contacts system. CalDAV was green field, but CardDAV had to integrate with the web, with spam scanning (whitelist/score bonus for known users), with mailing list address book groups, ...

The only feature I miss with your CardDAV implementation is contact photos. Everything else works very well so I leave email and calendaring to FastMail but I'm back to self-hosted contacts for now. Really hope this can be added soon.

They do work, but only if you upload them via CardDAV - we don't have any UI for them in the web client yet.

Re: Why CardDAV took so long

#26

Post by hdabrows »

shocks wrote: post #24
broodbucket wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I configured a pretty simple system (dovecot + opensmtpd) following the guide on the Arch wiki in under an hour, it really wasn't that tricky. I have dodged some common problems, though: - my domain wasn't completely unknown so I had no issues with gmail flagging me as spam - I use my gmail for signing up to things I don't care about mail from, so I have yet to actually receive any spam (at which point I will figure…

Running a mail server is easy, providing a mail service is HARD. Deliverability is really difficult. Being online all the time to make sure you're always recieving email is hard. I was constantly plagued by worry that the important email I sent never actually arrived, or the important email I was waiting for had been sent but I never actually got it.

SMTP requires the sender to retry delivery if the destination is unreachable.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321#section-4.5.4.1

Re: Why CardDAV took so long

#27

Post by tombrossman »

robn_fastmail wrote: post #25
tombrossman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only feature I miss with your CardDAV implementation is contact photos. Everything else works very well so I leave email and calendaring to FastMail but I'm back to self-hosted contacts for now. Really hope this can be added soon.

They do work, but only if you upload them via CardDAV - we don't have any UI for them in the web client yet.

Interesting, I'll have to try again. When I first used the beta I imported a VCF exported from ownCloud (which I think stored the images as data URIs). I'll try to figure out how to upload them via CardDAV now, thanks.

Re: Why CardDAV took so long

#28

Post by teekert »

shocks wrote: post #23
teekert wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that bad: "apt-get install mail-stack-delivery" on Ubuntu and you have everything you need. Ok, to make it real nice will take some work, to get approved certificates, SPF and DKIM working can be a challenge. But in general you can quickly get going of you want.

Have you ever run your own mail server before? edit: I've never spoken to someone who has and says it is 'easy'.

My main email system for me and my wife is an Ubuntu 14.04 DO droplet where I used said command to get going. I use ownCloud for card/caldav and ownCloud mail (and sometimes roundcube), my wife uses OsX mail. We both use Android mail clients. There is pain sometimes, when Outlook.com makes my mails vanish and admittedly I have yet to receive spam and have no system in place. This guide helped me a lot [0] there is way to much detail and a lot I didn't use but you'll learn a lot.

For more than I year now all I ever did as maintenance was apt-get update/upgrade.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/how-to...

Ok, it did take me a while to find mail-stack-delivery but it really is a good basis.

Re: Why CardDAV took so long

#29

Post by danieltillett »

shocks wrote: post #23
teekert wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that bad: "apt-get install mail-stack-delivery" on Ubuntu and you have everything you need. Ok, to make it real nice will take some work, to get approved certificates, SPF and DKIM working can be a challenge. But in general you can quickly get going of you want.

Have you ever run your own mail server before? edit: I've never spoken to someone who has and says it is 'easy'.

It is easy if you don't care if only half the people you email get your email (i.e. you are a spammer).

Re: Why CardDAV took so long

#30

Post by Joeboy »

shocks wrote: post #23
teekert wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that bad: "apt-get install mail-stack-delivery" on Ubuntu and you have everything you need. Ok, to make it real nice will take some work, to get approved certificates, SPF and DKIM working can be a challenge. But in general you can quickly get going of you want.

Have you ever run your own mail server before? edit: I've never spoken to someone who has and says it is 'easy'.

I'll back up the downvoted parent comments claim that it's "not that bad". It's caused me a handful of stressful days over the last ten years. I don't have problems with deliverability since I implemented DKIM (as far as I know anyway).
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