Mailing List

[cryptoquick]

I'd like to investigate embedding a mail server like Stalwart into Rostra as an optional feature so people can receive emails. SMTP in this case isn't so crucial, I don't see Rostra nodes sending emails, but instead ingesting messages intended for mailing lists. A list could just be a topic name that gets signed by users. Mailing list topics could be kept in this repository in a configuration file. Then their message is hashed, some PoW is computed, and then the message is signed and submitted and propagated to other Rostra peers.

The advantage of doing this with Rostra is that mailing list history could be easily made available to peers.

Also, the OpenTimestamps API could be used to order messages. OTS merkle proofs could also be stored.

What do people think? Is this a good way to obsolete Gmail? How mailing lists should be done in the 21st century?

[dpc]

I'd like to investigate embedding a mail server like Stalwart into Rostra as an optional feature so people can receive emails.

It doesn't need to be "embedded in Rostra".

It's not entirely implemented, but the architecture is already ready for light clients that just prepare an "event" and broadcast it to other nodes (and even shut down afterwards).

So any application can create one or more identities and start publishing stuff.

So all it might take is configuring existing mainlinglist software to call certain binary that uses rostra under the hood to publish things to Rostra.

I was thinking about implementing a news source scrappers that publish to Rostra itd. as a way to add some initial content to it, but mainling lists, etc. would work just fine.

[dpc]

Also, the OpenTimestamps API could be used to order messages. OTS merkle proofs could also be stored.

It can be done, but seems like an overkill just to get started.

What do people think? Is this a good way to obsolete Gmail? How mailing lists should be done in the 21st century?

The spam is still a problem, and in the solution I described an identity publishing things is a central point of entry, and need to take of it.

Alternatively a new events / features could be considered for organizing mailinglist-like communication, including moderation. But then it's a whole another thing, and quite a bit of work would need to be done in Rostra to enable it.