SquirrelMail is being removed from cPanel • Hacker News Board

There were times I thought that I'd have to give up, but it is much better than it used to be. I've been running my own email since 2002. There were some rough years, but I think we are past the days where you'd try to send to someone at {{big company} and get rejected. It's been quite a few years since I've thought too much about being rejected or fighting spam.

It is a pain to setup DKIM, SPF, etc., but it all works now. I had to say "etc.", mostly because I don't remember all the hoops I jumped through. THe good news is that it has been so long I don't remember.

Re: SquirrelMail is being removed from cPanel

#24

Post by upofadown » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:21 PM UTC

The headline is misleading by itself. SquirrelMail is still getting security fixes and is under active (but slow) development.

Re: SquirrelMail is being removed from cPanel

#25

Post by badsectoracula » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:35 PM UTC

upofadown wrote: post #24

The headline is misleading by itself. SquirrelMail is still getting security fixes and is under active (but slow) development.

Is it in a fork? The official site isn't updated since 2013 and Debian removed it in recent versions (jessie is the last to have it) because of that. Do you happen to know where the new versions and development are? Squirrelmail is by far my favorite webmail setup, i use it for almost 15 years now and exactly what i like about it is that it has remained pretty much the same all these years, so i'd like to make a manual installation over a recent version (Debian seems to have an svn version from 2012) once i upgrade.

Re: SquirrelMail is being removed from cPanel

#26

Post by etcet » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:41 PM UTC

Gygash wrote: post #21

sciurus wrote: post #14

Is cPanel itself still widely used?

Yes: https://www.shodan.io/search?query=cpanel

If you're logged in, https://www.shodan.io/search?query=title%3A%22whm+login%22+p... is a better query which shows 1.5M cPanel installs.

Re: SquirrelMail is being removed from cPanel

#27

Post by ravenstine » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

martin1975 wrote: post #2

Suppose one was to write a decent webmail front-end, how exactly does one make enough money to sustain its development, even if it's a one or two person effort? I love open source but there's also a need for developers to live off what they make. Who has successfully made a webmail front end that they could sell?

Making a living, or even half a living, off open source development would be a dream.

Re: SquirrelMail is being removed from cPanel

#28

Post by jlg23 » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

martin1975 wrote: post #2

Suppose one was to write a decent webmail front-end, how exactly does one make enough money to sustain its development, even if it's a one or two person effort? I love open source but there's also a need for developers to live off what they make. Who has successfully made a webmail front end that they could sell?

In the specific case of webmail[1], I would offer hosted instances.

OTOH, a need to commercialize a FOSS-project is always a latent conflict of interest and I personally only reluctantly make such software part of my stack: I might end up with core devs moving to a proprietary fork full time and not enough other devs to "just fork it".

[1] when did this even become a word?

Re: SquirrelMail is being removed from cPanel

#29

Post by m-p-3 » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:49 PM UTC

twothamendment wrote: post #23

rcdmd wrote: post #4

Spam domain filters virtually killed self-hosted e-mail and what I presume was their major use case.

There were times I thought that I'd have to give up, but it is much better than it used to be. I've been running my own email since 2002. There were some rough years, but I think we are past the days where you'd try to send to someone at {{big company} and get rejected. It's been quite a few years since I've thought too much about being rejected or fighting spam. It is a pain to setup DKIM, SPF, etc., but it all work…

I guess this period was a necessary evil to improve the email acosystem and make everyone a bit more concerned to setup their system correctly (even though it's non-trivial)..

Re: SquirrelMail is being removed from cPanel

#30

Post by bmelton » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

jlg23 wrote: post #28

martin1975 wrote: post #2

Suppose one was to write a decent webmail front-end, how exactly does one make enough money to sustain its development, even if it's a one or two person effort? I love open source but there's also a need for developers to live off what they make. Who has successfully made a webmail front end that they could sell?

In the specific case of webmail[1], I would offer hosted instances. OTOH, a need to commercialize a FOSS-project is always a latent conflict of interest and I personally only reluctantly make such software part of my stack: I might end up with core devs moving to a proprietary fork full time and not enough other devs to "just fork it". [1] when did this even become a word?

As to the usage of the word 'webmail', I'd say it's been in techno-parlance for a long time, masquerading as recommended DNS settings.

By 'long time', I mean at least since the mid-to-late 90s. I would often see the word -- not in regular writing, but in tutorials, all the time. Setting up a cPanel instance, for example, you would often be instructed to set up your MX records as 'mail.yourdomain.tld', and your CNAME as 'webmail.yourdomain.tld', just so you'd have something convenient to type in your browser.