i am moving to open source only tools in my life. this means i need to #delete and figure out a good way to have an (email?) mailing list. i want to do this today so something simple to start with.
the trick is, i want to communicate similar to mastodon communication...OPENLY. perhaps that will change, but probably not. i have entered #opensourceme status and so this is one of the first puzzles before us as we build in open.
as for email that isn't google... well, i hear good things about protonmail:
...they're... _kinda_ open source.
if you can spend 15-20 bucks a month, companies like dreamhost do mailing lists and e-mail fairly easy and it's pretty much all built on open source stuff. or you could pay a bit and host a discussion forum with something like https://www.discourse.org/
@jacobcammack @acg
i'm trying to think who's a good kinda free and open-source driven go-to for hosting mail / mailing lists / websites for the kind of small community organization you're trying to do. i bet there are some good answers to this question, but i'm not sure i know what they are.
@brennen @acg so is there no straight up open source email provider that is good for mailing lists, etc? you are suggesting protonmail but saying it's "kinda" open source". i know you both mentioned thunderbird. you also both mentioned mutt and that it's very dynamic. can i do mailing lists on it? just how tough is the learning curve? i'm down to learn, but currently focused on other things and want to prioritize my energy.
@jacobcammack thunderbird's fine for use as a client, on your end of things... you still need somebody to run the server side of things, especially if you want to make a mailing list that people can subscribe to and automatically get new posts...
you could give https://riseup.net/ a look - they offer free webmail accounts and host a ton of mailing lists, including a bunch for alternative agriculture stuff.
@jacobcammack ...and they do everything on open source software.
short term (like if you're having a meeting today for the group you're starting) i'd just recommend getting people's emails down on paper and you can figure out software later on.
@brennen agreed. i'm working on figuring out the in person first. too much to do. how we organize online i'm interested in figuring out too but i'm just stabbing in the dark at this point.
riseup.net looks cool. Thanks for the heads up on that. I'm going to attempt to set up Thunderbird on there right now. @acg told me to make sure i configure Thunderbird to use Maildir so migrating to Mutt (or wherever) will be easy later on.
Have you gents heard of sdf.org ? someone on social.coop suggest it.
@brennen @acg agreed on taking it as we can do it. we want to document what we are building (so as to be able to share our process for copying and using) and also involved others in the building process.
that said, the local build here in lincoln will largely be in person i imagine. perhaps just a mailing list to start with and a blog.
alan told me a while back about an os blogging tool one can build on top of github. what was that alan?
@jacobcammack i'm slowly putting together some blog notes on my own progress to using fewer proprietary services and controlling more of my systems:
https://p1k3.com/topics/self-hosting/
...i'm not sure the notes are that useful except as a way for me to remember what i'm doing.
in general, it's pretty hard - actually kind of impossible - to exclusively use open systems. i'd suggest taking it bit by bit and not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. we'll get there eventually.
@acg