Ask HN: Open-source alternatives of Gmail? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Open-source alternatives of Gmail?

#51

Post by jholman » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 2:28 AM UTC

I actually see two problems with switching off gmail (which I'm starting to think about doing, as google keeps getting evil-er).

One is how nice it is to have ubiquitous web-mail, integration with my Android, etc. Some of these problems I think I can solve with my own brain-sweat, and obviously this thread might help.

But the other is spam. Before gmail, I hated spam. After switching to gmail (I guess about 5 years ago), I gradually lost my memory of spam ; I get less than one piece of spam per month. Is spam gone these days? Are there good open-source low-maintenance solutions?

Re: Ask HN: Open-source alternatives of Gmail?

#52

Post by wazoox » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 11:22 AM UTC

jholman wrote: post #51

I actually see two problems with switching off gmail (which I'm starting to think about doing, as google keeps getting evil-er). One is how nice it is to have ubiquitous web-mail, integration with my Android, etc. Some of these problems I think I can solve with my own brain-sweat, and obviously this thread might help. But the other is spam. Before gmail, I hated spam. After switching to gmail (I guess about 5 years a…

My spamassassin lets very little spam through. Zero maintenance, but I took some time to tweak it.

Re: Ask HN: Open-source alternatives of Gmail?

#53

Post by nuclear_eclipse » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 12:22 PM UTC

pja wrote: post #49

nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize Thunderbird supported Dovecot's tagging abilities. Is that something I need to enable? How do I use it? I've been using TB for years because it's the only IMAP client that does things the way I want (other than Mutt), but I didn't realize I could have arbitrary tagging with it.

Just right-click on an email and go to "Tag...". You might want to delete the default tags (which originate with TB 1.0) and create your own new ones from scratch.

Oh, I've been using those default labels/tags for a long time already to mark emails for follow up and so forth. If I'm looking to use those tags to organize my email instead of folders, is there a way for Thunderbird to display a tag hierarchy instead of or along side all my existing folders?

Re: Ask HN: Open-source alternatives of Gmail?

#54

Post by LanceHaig » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 1:16 PM UTC

aphexairlines wrote: post #21

Hula had shown a lot of promise, but it withered away: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hula_(software) It was forked though as Bongo: http://bongo-project.org/Main_Page

Hula was killed off by Novell when it sold Netmail to Messaging Architects.

We did fork the code and have moved on quite a bit we are in dire need of front end developers to help make a great frontend for a fantastic backend system. if anyone is interested in helping out please come by the IRC channel or the mail list

EDIT:

For those that are interested the IRC channel is #bongo on irc.oftc.net

We have some bindings to allow for webui development we have a complete PHP one which we used to plug roundcube's interface onto our backend. The others are in different stages of completion, there is the start of a mono binding and a ruby one so any help with these parts would be greatly appreciated.

Re: Ask HN: Open-source alternatives of Gmail?

#55

Post by pja » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 1:44 PM UTC

nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #53

pja wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just right-click on an email and go to "Tag...". You might want to delete the default tags (which originate with TB 1.0) and create your own new ones from scratch.

Oh, I've been using those default labels/tags for a long time already to mark emails for follow up and so forth. If I'm looking to use those tags to organize my email instead of folders, is there a way for Thunderbird to display a tag hierarchy instead of or along side all my existing folders?

The only real interface is to create search folders that search by Tag on the server. Dovecot indexes everything behind the scenes, so it's reasonably fast.

Sadly, a full on "here's a hierarchy of tags, just display mail by tag" mail reader doesn't exist to my knowledge outside of GMail itself :(