Re: Public free (libre) mailbox hosting service for everybody!

I've written a response to someone else, explaining some issues you
mention here.

A little note on UI: we don't need web UI. It's a good addition but
unnecessary for the beginning. There are many free-software desktop mail
clients. Some are big and complicated, but some are very simple and very
easy to use, just like Gmail is. So UI is not a critical issue right
now, we just need to be able to easily configure a mail client, e.g.
Evolution, to work with the server.

And it's great to hear people like the idea and want to help! With hard
work and cooperation, everything is possible!

- Anatoly Krasner

On ד', 2013-02-27 at 18:39 -0500, Bennett Todd wrote:
> The operational cost is non-zero. Besides hardware, which must include
> backups, and enough physical diversity to offer availability, an email
> server is an attractive nuisance; spammers and other criminals
> constantly attempt sabotage and burglary, and it takes ongoing
> manpower to attempt to hold them temporarily at bay.
> 
> And unless you put hard caps on message sizes, people will use their
> mailboxes as backup drives, or just email their vacation movies to
> family, and you'll be buying drives, and hence replacing them, often.
> 
> I love the idea, I'm fond of running mailservers myself. But I've gone
> Google.
> 
> As for software, I won't pitch my favorite components to this wide
> list, but I know how to find all the pieces I'd need except the
> webmail front-end for the utterly non-technical.
> 
> If you limited the scope to IMAP and SMTP, both SSL authenticated, it
> wouldn't be too hard to spec out.
> 
> Host on AWS EC3 or the like, then find an affordable solution to spam,
> and you can sell to anyone who doesn't expect their email to be
> private from governments.
> 
> Anybody know of a well-engineered and maintained SSL library?
>