4 ms·

>I really want there to be, but there just isn't a viable alternative. There isn't? My Eastern European highschool had self hosted email since as far as I can

>I really want there to be, but there just isn't a viable alternative. There isn't? My Eastern European highschool had self hosted email since as far as I can remember hosted on some pentium PCs. The issue isn't that there's no alternative, the issue is that, schools are unable or unwilling to bother doing things themselves and instead just go with Apple, Google, Microsoft, because it's easy and almost free.

yazzku 4y ago
Almost free? Microsoft charges hefty licenses and basically re-sales the same product multiple times. I believe Google also charges schools and universities a hefty monthly fee for the services.
googlryas 4y ago
If student privacy is the concern, do you think going with something self hosted is a better idea than sticking with Google? In reality, the concern seems to be the law will not legally allow them to continue operating unless Google clarifies where the data is processed.
- Rygian 4y ago
  Sticking with Google means students have no privacy, due to the US government being able to summarily monitor their Google data. Even if Google promises the processing happens in Europe. It's not "clarify where the data is processed" but rather "make sure it's not processed by an US-owned corp" (not to say that any other country is fine, their laws must be compatible with GDPR).
almog 4y ago
I guess that would work great even today for _internal_ emails, but as soon as they'll need to deliver emails to any address that's hosted behind gmail, outlook and probably other dominant players, there's a long list of configurations to make and maintain so that outgoing emails don't get bounced.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  If I can do it, surely someone whose entire job is doing it should be able to?
  - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
    If only the world were like that.
  - fcatalan 4y ago
    My entire job was doing that for a university for a few years. You won't catch me doing it again even for 2x my current salary.
  - freeflight 4y ago
    That assumes schools have dedicated IT positions, when its very common for the school IT to be managed part-time by teachers themselves, as often there ain't enough money for a dedicated IT position.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      I’ve never seen that tbh. Any school I’ve been at has had dedicated IT personnel. Fairly well paid too.
  - 2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
    I, and many others do. We barely manage. Email deliverability is _hard_.
    - dijit 4y ago
      Ah c'mon, it's not THAT hard. The major issue is that it's so centralised already that everything outside of the oligopoly is considered untrusted, but it doesnt take long to get trusted- even if you run marketing campaigns over email like I did for years in the mid 2010's. I'm not sure if we're all collectively incompetent or if we're completely overblowing how difficult it is. granted; while I managed email systems of various sizes... yeah I outsource it now myself; but that's MAINLY because I'm lazy, I don't want to deal with it and I don't have an obligation on those emails to preserve privacy or anything like that. if it was my job to do that because there is a risk to the company; sure, not a big deal, sanitise some IPs slowly over time, configure your PTR records, DMARC/DKIM and SPF everything, ensure you're not an open relay and you probably have to look at it once a month for an hour or two to make sure you're not on a blacklist. -- people do this all the time (or used to) with active directory. Yeah, its stateful and your deliverability is affected by idiots sending spam-like things, but it's not "hard". Collective (learned) helplessness here is really going to fuck us over, we already forgot how to run servers it seems, now we're not even able to host services.. soon we won't know how to write code, I'm sure.
gidorah 4y ago
Unfortunately, schools do have budget constraints, so "almost free" is very, very attractive.

yazzku 4y ago

Almost free? Microsoft charges hefty licenses and basically re-sales the same product multiple times. I believe Google also charges schools and universities a hefty monthly fee for the services.

googlryas 4y ago

If student privacy is the concern, do you think going with something self hosted is a better idea than sticking with Google? In reality, the concern seems to be the law will not legally allow them to continue operating unless Google clarifies where the data is processed.

Rygian 4y ago
Sticking with Google means students have no privacy, due to the US government being able to summarily monitor their Google data. Even if Google promises the processing happens in Europe. It's not "clarify where the data is processed" but rather "make sure it's not processed by an US-owned corp" (not to say that any other country is fine, their laws must be compatible with GDPR).

almog 4y ago

I guess that would work great even today for _internal_ emails, but as soon as they'll need to deliver emails to any address that's hosted behind gmail, outlook and probably other dominant players, there's a long list of configurations to make and maintain so that outgoing emails don't get bounced.

Aeolun 4y ago
If I can do it, surely someone whose entire job is doing it should be able to?
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  If only the world were like that.
- fcatalan 4y ago
  My entire job was doing that for a university for a few years. You won't catch me doing it again even for 2x my current salary.
- freeflight 4y ago
  That assumes schools have dedicated IT positions, when its very common for the school IT to be managed part-time by teachers themselves, as often there ain't enough money for a dedicated IT position.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    I’ve never seen that tbh. Any school I’ve been at has had dedicated IT personnel. Fairly well paid too.
- 2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
  I, and many others do. We barely manage. Email deliverability is _hard_.
  - dijit 4y ago
    Ah c'mon, it's not THAT hard. The major issue is that it's so centralised already that everything outside of the oligopoly is considered untrusted, but it doesnt take long to get trusted- even if you run marketing campaigns over email like I did for years in the mid 2010's. I'm not sure if we're all collectively incompetent or if we're completely overblowing how difficult it is. granted; while I managed email systems of various sizes... yeah I outsource it now myself; but that's MAINLY because I'm lazy, I don't want to deal with it and I don't have an obligation on those emails to preserve privacy or anything like that. if it was my job to do that because there is a risk to the company; sure, not a big deal, sanitise some IPs slowly over time, configure your PTR records, DMARC/DKIM and SPF everything, ensure you're not an open relay and you probably have to look at it once a month for an hour or two to make sure you're not on a blacklist. -- people do this all the time (or used to) with active directory. Yeah, its stateful and your deliverability is affected by idiots sending spam-like things, but it's not "hard". Collective (learned) helplessness here is really going to fuck us over, we already forgot how to run servers it seems, now we're not even able to host services.. soon we won't know how to write code, I'm sure.

gidorah 4y ago

Unfortunately, schools do have budget constraints, so "almost free" is very, very attractive.