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Mailpile: Let’s take email back

mailpile.is

221–230 of 241 posts

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#221
post #69

It is very good you are attacking this problem, but is this the right way to attack the email problem? According to Paul Graham frightening startup ideas http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html , email is a bad ToDo list, How are you going to implement a better Todo list? I have created a alpha prototype which attacks these problems conceptually, namely, Message Classification, Message Sharing, Bidirectional Messagi…

I think mailbox solves the to-do list problem well enough that it's hard to catch them on that dimension. On the other hnad, there are plenty of new thorny security issues that can generate popular interest. Running a crowd-funder is a good way of proving a market.

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could be right, but I also wonder if option A, B, or C are great filters for weeding out those that are not ready/determined?

I don't know about that. I think we're having a discussion about how things are vs. how they could be. I mean, why is it the mindset that we must endure some arbitrary and unrelated pain in order to pursue our passions? Isn't this part of the problem? Is the need to make a living in a society that values only what is profitable really a meaningful test of one's mettle or determination? Am I more ready to pursue my bu…

Because if it wasn't hard, then everyone would be doing it, competition would be greater, and separating yourself would be more difficult.

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#223
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how you plan on doing it, but I think you should tie everyone's public keys to their names/id's. So let's say you know someone who uses Mailpile. You shouldn't have to ask him what's his key. You should just "enable PGP" (if it's not default, though maybe it should be), and he should just get the e-mail. So try to do the key management as automatic and "out of the way" for users as possible. That's the b…

But that just defeats the whole purpose of PGP. If you don't even know where the key is coming from, how do you know it's secure?

Easy: http://www.xkcd.com/1181/ :)

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#224
post #189
post #127

How is this any different from every other desktop mail client (eg. Thunderbird, Inky, Evolution, Notmuch, Sup, Mutt, ...)? What makes this better?

notmuch isn't really a client so much as a backend. A better question might be why this isn't using/building upon it.

To clarify, Notmuch is a mail indexing and search system with a command-line/library API. It's very easy to integrate with mail frontends because of good design decisions (eg. it does very little, everything can spit out JSON for easy parsing, ...). As a result, many excellent frontend clients were written on top of it (an emacs mode that I use, a Mutt/Sup-like curses client, a GTK one, ...)

Notmuch does two things:

- Indexes a Maildir and places messages into a Xapian fulltext database. - Provides an API for tagging, threading, retrieving, searching, creating template replies, etc. for the messages in its index.

Getting mail into the folder is the burden of another program (say offlineimap or getmail), and sending mail is also handled by other tools (say MSMTP or sendmail).

I think Notmuch would have made an absolutely killer framework to base Mailpile off of.

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a bizarre and nihilistic reaction. People will look at the app for themselves, decide whether it's a good value proposition for them or not. Nobody needs your bitching and moaning; if you don't like it, don't pay anything. You're just demoralizing people for the sake of it. I'm disgusted that yours is the top ranked comment.

On one hand I agree with you, but playing devil's advocate - isn't this a discussion board, precisely the place where people would pay attention to such things? Applying your same logic, one could say "He's just expressing his opinion. If you don't like his comment, don't pay attention to it"

But on that logic, my opinion here would be fine too, right? So your answer "if you don't like my comment, don't pay attention" would apply to mine too.

But on a deeper level, your response equivocates between two entirely different things, i.e. giving an opinion on a board vs. paying for something.

My problem with the OP's opinion wasn't that he was giving his opinion, it was that his opinion was completely arbitrary. Why is it wrong to ask for donations of 1/2 salary for a year? Maybe the OP is jealous, but certainly he has no good reason.

On the other hand, this mail application seems to have good grounds for existing, and their method of funding is just a simple use of the market -- people choosing to buy something if they want it. There's nothing arbitrary about it at all.

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#226

Noble goals. With all the NSA action, this is something whose time has come. Where do I donate?

I get what you're saying, but what's to stop them from monitoring the transmission and how can you be sure the receiver of your sent email is running a secure email as well? I don't think this does much to stop snooping.

It doesn't guarantee that any specific e-mail is snooping-proof, but it makes it hard for someone to trivially look through all your e-mails from the last five years.

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that. I think we're having a discussion about how things are vs. how they could be. I mean, why is it the mindset that we must endure some arbitrary and unrelated pain in order to pursue our passions? Isn't this part of the problem? Is the need to make a living in a society that values only what is profitable really a meaningful test of one's mettle or determination? Am I more ready to pursue my bu…

Because if it wasn't hard, then everyone would be doing it, competition would be greater, and separating yourself would be more difficult.

Wow. I hear what you're saying, but I don't know why it's desirable to weed people out in such an unrelated, arbitrary fashion. I mean, that's not much different than saying we should line up would-be competitors and beat them with sticks. The last ten standing obviously want it bad enough, and so, get a chance to compete.

To your point, competition might indeed be greater, but that would be a good thing. Why would we want to stifle access and opportunity? Everyone would still have to bring their A-games and compete against others who are presumably now also able to focus on their passions. So, with focus and dedication, everyone's A-games just get better. Everyone benefits, including consumers, stakeholders, other beneficiaries, and society.

But, what you seem to be suggesting is that we continue to insist that only those who run the gauntlet and/or get by the gatekeepers get a shot. There could be some extraordinarily well-qualified individuals who could launch revolutionary businesses if only given access. To my mind, that's part of the promise of crowd-funding.

So, I have to say, it's kind of odd to me that someone in crowd-funding holds the position you're describing. Crowd-funding is supposed to democratize both investing and access to capital. So, "the people" decide what's of value to society vs. the same investor class. But, what you seem to be advocating sounds more like the gate-keeping and denial of access to opportunities that are the current norms. In my mind, it's hard to reconcile the spirit of crowd-funding with that position.

Re: Mailpile: Let’s take email back

#230
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an ideal world BSD/MIT would be the best choice. But in the current startup world several aynrandian douchebags would take it and make web services or paid apps. Put a lot of money on viral marketing. Pester them with feature requests. And never, ever contribute back to the community or acknowledge it helped their business. I know a famous BSD developer who switched to *GPL because of this. Also, search for tptace…

It's counter-intuitive but this is the best license at the moment, mostly for reasons Stallman didn't forsee. Aren't the reasons you outline in your comment exactly (a subset of) the reasons that Stallman foresaw?

>> Also, search for tptacek's explanation. It's counter-intuitive but this is the best license at the moment, mostly for reasons Stallman didn't forsee.

I was referring to tptaceck's reasons in the previous sentence you missed to quote.

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