6 ms·

Open-Sourcing PEPS: A modern webmail server

66 points by hbbio 13y ago

hbbio 13y ago
Yesterday's thread about PEPS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6682226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6682226
krakensden 13y ago
That screenshot looks an awful lot like Inky (http://inky.com/ http://inky.com/).
- jahewson 13y ago
  or Sparrow http://sparrowmailapp.com/ http://sparrowmailapp.com/ or Airmail http://airmailapp.com/ http://airmailapp.com/
  - krakensden 13y ago
    Or twitter for OS X, now that I think of it. A veritable design plague.
- techwizrd 13y ago
  The theme actually reminds me of the AdminFlare[1] theme on WrapBootstrap. 1: https://wrapbootstrap.com/theme/adminflare-WB0246423 https://wrapbootstrap.com/theme/adminflare-WB0246423
kbar13 13y ago
Is this on github?
- hbbio 13y ago
  Not yet. What we will do probably until the end of the year is choose a license, clean a bit the tree and commit. Edit: Technically speaking, it IS already on github, just not on a public repository :)
  - kbar13 13y ago
    cool, thanks! My entire workflow for keeping track of projects I want to follow centers around GitHub, so I can't wait :P
    - umami 13y ago
      I have a side project related to this, would you be interested in talking about your workflow? You can email me at hello on umamicollective.com
- martey 13y ago
  Being that they have not chose a license to release the code under, it should not be on Github. Github repositories without a license are generally covered by copyright. [1] [1]: https://help.github.com/articles/open-source-licensing#what-happens-if-i-dont-choose-a-license https://help.github.com/articles/open-source-licensing#what-...
  - pmahoney 13y ago
    To clarify, the default copyright rules apply (which means, more or less, no copying allowed). Copyright very much applies to MIT/BSD/GPL licensed code as well. In fact, the mechanism of the GPL requiring changed+released versions to include an offer for the (modified) source code depends on copyright.
jstalin 13y ago
Just played around with the demo. I love it.
- dochtman 13y ago
  Looks like it's currently slightly overwhelmed.
  - bovermyer 13y ago
    Indeed. I'd love to have a look, but the link got nuked.
nathanb 13y ago
Why is nobody working on a better rich client for email? I use Thunderbird, which is the most full-featured of the three or so desktop email clients for Linux. Thunderbird aggregates my many email addresses in one place and allows me to manage my email mostly in the way I would like. My biggest problem with Thunderbird is simply that it is not a joy to use. As a tool, it accomplishes the job. Maybe that's all I can expect. It seems like many people are releasing very cool webmail solutions. But webmail is kind of gross. I have yet to find one that does a great job aggregating several accounts in a seamless way. It requires my webserver to be able to see the folder where I store my mail, which is a big concern (or alternately it requires me to run an intranet-only webserver for the explicit purpose of providing webmail, at which point why not just run a desktop client?). And I am extremely skeptical of any end-to-end encryption strategy using webmail...I understand that an HTTPS connection to the server + secure encryption on the server before transmitting should be sufficient, but it doesn't feel right. I'll be over here in my tinfoil hat if you need me. Writing a desktop email client for Linux is not the way to get massive loads of HN karma. It's kind of unsexy, and since in the Year of our Lord 2013 it is still unnecessarily difficult to write something that looks nice and runs on multiple platforms, only a few die-hard throwbacks will be grateful (and half of them are running mutt or pine anyway and will sneer at your sissy X windowing system). OK, so I probably answered the question I opened this comment with, but it was rhetorical anyway.
- perssontm 13y ago
  Couldnt agree more, thunderbird is ok, but its fairly slow and hasnt gotten much improvements usability-wise since netscape mail, its basically the same. Speedwise its not up to par either I think, searching is quite bad, but this might be issues really with imap rather than anything else. My last efforts have been beefing up our mailserver and also adding full text indexing for searching which helped a bit but there is still a long way to go to get it really instant.
- csmuk 13y ago
  mutt user here, in an xterm actually but that's another story... I'd kill for a decent cross platform mail client. They're all shit. I've literally tried them all. Always end up back on mutt + procmail. Scarily enough, a version of outlook express that bothers to respect standards, has a decent on disk format (maildir please) and a decent editor would hit the mark.
wildfire 13y ago
You present a number of licence choices but I think what you really need to consider is who you believe your potential competitors are. Are they (small) consultants / consultanties who are likely to install your system for other to use and either provide feedback for environments you don't / won't have access to; or provide patches. Or are they companies like Google / IBM / Oracle. If the later you should always choose a copyleft licence like AGPL. Why? Well all those companies, when they have the chance to release Free Software pick BSD / MIT style licences; because all of them have the engineering resources to fork something and take it in-house and improve on it AND continue to pay the 'stupid tax'. But if look at something like the Linux kernel, which is GPL'd, all of them have had to contribute back. You should pick the licence that makes things easiest for you. Each comes with its own set of communities; I know people who will not contribute to GPL projects, whereas others never contribute to BSD / MIT projects. Plenty of organisations make money from GPL software (e.g. Redhat) and plenty do from MIT (but I can't think of any atm - late night, wine, etc.) Summary: Pick what is right for you, and ignore nay-sayers. You will have customers - if the product is good - no matter the licence.
iancarroll 13y ago
Seriously, start collecting emails for the release of this. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who really wants this.
hbbio 13y ago
Awaiting the project release: https://github.com/MLstate/PEPS https://github.com/MLstate/PEPS

66 points by hbbio 13y ago

hbbio 13y ago

Yesterday's thread about PEPS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6682226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6682226

krakensden 13y ago

That screenshot looks an awful lot like Inky (http://inky.com/ http://inky.com/).

jahewson 13y ago
or Sparrow http://sparrowmailapp.com/ http://sparrowmailapp.com/ or Airmail http://airmailapp.com/ http://airmailapp.com/
- krakensden 13y ago
  Or twitter for OS X, now that I think of it. A veritable design plague.
techwizrd 13y ago
The theme actually reminds me of the AdminFlare[1] theme on WrapBootstrap. 1: https://wrapbootstrap.com/theme/adminflare-WB0246423 https://wrapbootstrap.com/theme/adminflare-WB0246423

kbar13 13y ago

Is this on github?

hbbio 13y ago
Not yet. What we will do probably until the end of the year is choose a license, clean a bit the tree and commit. Edit: Technically speaking, it IS already on github, just not on a public repository :)
- kbar13 13y ago
  cool, thanks! My entire workflow for keeping track of projects I want to follow centers around GitHub, so I can't wait :P
  - umami 13y ago
    I have a side project related to this, would you be interested in talking about your workflow? You can email me at hello on umamicollective.com
martey 13y ago
Being that they have not chose a license to release the code under, it should not be on Github. Github repositories without a license are generally covered by copyright. [1] [1]: https://help.github.com/articles/open-source-licensing#what-happens-if-i-dont-choose-a-license https://help.github.com/articles/open-source-licensing#what-...
- pmahoney 13y ago
  To clarify, the default copyright rules apply (which means, more or less, no copying allowed). Copyright very much applies to MIT/BSD/GPL licensed code as well. In fact, the mechanism of the GPL requiring changed+released versions to include an offer for the (modified) source code depends on copyright.

jstalin 13y ago

Just played around with the demo. I love it.

dochtman 13y ago
Looks like it's currently slightly overwhelmed.
- bovermyer 13y ago
  Indeed. I'd love to have a look, but the link got nuked.

nathanb 13y ago

Why is nobody working on a better rich client for email? I use Thunderbird, which is the most full-featured of the three or so desktop email clients for Linux. Thunderbird aggregates my many email addresses in one place and allows me to manage my email mostly in the way I would like. My biggest problem with Thunderbird is simply that it is not a joy to use. As a tool, it accomplishes the job. Maybe that's all I can expect. It seems like many people are releasing very cool webmail solutions. But webmail is kind of gross. I have yet to find one that does a great job aggregating several accounts in a seamless way. It requires my webserver to be able to see the folder where I store my mail, which is a big concern (or alternately it requires me to run an intranet-only webserver for the explicit purpose of providing webmail, at which point why not just run a desktop client?). And I am extremely skeptical of any end-to-end encryption strategy using webmail...I understand that an HTTPS connection to the server + secure encryption on the server before transmitting should be sufficient, but it doesn't feel right. I'll be over here in my tinfoil hat if you need me. Writing a desktop email client for Linux is not the way to get massive loads of HN karma. It's kind of unsexy, and since in the Year of our Lord 2013 it is still unnecessarily difficult to write something that looks nice and runs on multiple platforms, only a few die-hard throwbacks will be grateful (and half of them are running mutt or pine anyway and will sneer at your sissy X windowing system). OK, so I probably answered the question I opened this comment with, but it was rhetorical anyway.

perssontm 13y ago
Couldnt agree more, thunderbird is ok, but its fairly slow and hasnt gotten much improvements usability-wise since netscape mail, its basically the same. Speedwise its not up to par either I think, searching is quite bad, but this might be issues really with imap rather than anything else. My last efforts have been beefing up our mailserver and also adding full text indexing for searching which helped a bit but there is still a long way to go to get it really instant.
csmuk 13y ago
mutt user here, in an xterm actually but that's another story... I'd kill for a decent cross platform mail client. They're all shit. I've literally tried them all. Always end up back on mutt + procmail. Scarily enough, a version of outlook express that bothers to respect standards, has a decent on disk format (maildir please) and a decent editor would hit the mark.

wildfire 13y ago

You present a number of licence choices but I think what you really need to consider is who you believe your potential competitors are. Are they (small) consultants / consultanties who are likely to install your system for other to use and either provide feedback for environments you don't / won't have access to; or provide patches. Or are they companies like Google / IBM / Oracle. If the later you should always choose a copyleft licence like AGPL. Why? Well all those companies, when they have the chance to release Free Software pick BSD / MIT style licences; because all of them have the engineering resources to fork something and take it in-house and improve on it AND continue to pay the 'stupid tax'. But if look at something like the Linux kernel, which is GPL'd, all of them have had to contribute back. You should pick the licence that makes things easiest for you. Each comes with its own set of communities; I know people who will not contribute to GPL projects, whereas others never contribute to BSD / MIT projects. Plenty of organisations make money from GPL software (e.g. Redhat) and plenty do from MIT (but I can't think of any atm - late night, wine, etc.) Summary: Pick what is right for you, and ignore nay-sayers. You will have customers - if the product is good - no matter the licence.

iancarroll 13y ago

Seriously, start collecting emails for the release of this. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who really wants this.

hbbio 13y ago

Awaiting the project release: https://github.com/MLstate/PEPS https://github.com/MLstate/PEPS