Mailpile release is postponed: what should we do?

[Frank Rousseau]

Hi community members,

  We want to integrate Mailpile as the default mail client in Cozy. It is a self-hostable webmail that got significant funding from a crowdfunding campaign.
http://www.mailpile.is/

Prior to ingrate it, we have to wait that it reaches at least beta level. We expected that they ship it on Januray 2014. But this tweet suggests that they won't do it until mid-2014: https://twitter.com/MailpileTeam/status/394162683781873664

Since the context changed we have to take a new decision about mail integration into Cozy. Here are two options:

1) Wait for the Mailpile release and keep Cozy without mail integration until mid-2014.
2) Try to debug our webmail client that can only fetch and read emails. It will provide only very basic features.

What do you think we should do? Do you want quickly a very basic mail reader in your Cozy? Do you prefer to wait for a full-featured webmail? Do you have another options to suggest?

Frank

[Matt J. Sorenson]

Definitely interested in the outcome of this, but at the moment I don't have strong feelings one way or another, as I'm not yet a Cozy user (intentions for the future and all...)

Plus, I hadn't heard about mailpile until today, when I spotted this thread. I guess, what alternatives (if any) are there? I'm a google apps user today (what I eventually want to migrate away from) tho in the past I have used roundcube. Having grown accustomed to the google mail interface, anything that is moving towards parity with the functionality there would be attractive to me personally... but that's subjective and each user will be different (for me, keyboard shortcuts for labeling and archiving is probably what I use the most).

Thanks for sparking the thread, I look forward to following this discussion!

--Matt

[Frank Rousseau]

Thank you Matt for your answer. Roundcube is written with PHP, we don't support that language yet. If noone suggest another solution we'll debug our mail app and keep it minimalistic. It should be back in our market place in a few weeks. Stay tuned!

Frank

[J. Chezeaux]

Hi!

 

The Mailpile integration was definitily one of the thing I was awaiting from cozycloud.

As you have to make a new decision, I think there are different points to consider:

• What is your short-term/mid-term/long-term goal about the mail application?
• Do you think it is worthy to develop a basic mail reader for now and, after some month, take the time to either develop more features, either integrate a software like mailpile ?
• How certain are you that Mailpile "will do it" (I mean provide the functionnalities at the due date) ? I don't know this guys but as they are involved in such a great project I'm sure they are quite motivated.
• What is the priority of the mail application among the others ?

My opinion is that you can take the time to ask people what are their expectations about the mail application, and then decide to either start from scratch or integrate mailpile or other piece of software (but is there an other ? I'm not sure).

My personnal choice would be to focus on functionalities of the existing applications (e.g, calDAV export/import directly in calendar apps), maybe theming (bookmarks and RSS apps have a look so different than the other apps !), and allowing people to develop apps in other languages (such as php - this could help to offer a roundcube interface, or a rutorrent interface, ...).

 

I think the success of cozycloud could stem not from an android-like apps market with lots of useless apps, but from a few (or maybe more thant just a few !) polished and full-featured apps (who said file explorer/sharing ?).

 

Keep up this great work!

 

Julien

[Alexis Vaillant]

Hi!
I really can't see the point to have an email app that can only reads emails. If it's for backup purpose, then it' not an email app, it's a backup email app and then there is no conflict between 1) waiting for Mailpile and 1) Debug the backupMailApp.

On the other hand a real email app, even a basic one, should be include in Cozy, I think that is a core app and that should not only be a third party integration. I don't say that you shouldn't integrate Mailpile when it will come out. It looks amazing and when it will be available I'll use it. But I think that an email app should be as important as an agenda or contact app.

That said, I'm using cozy online since a day, and I'm happy, there is a lot of cool stuff. I probably won't keep my subscription because of the lack of email app but I'll come back when something is ready. That's for sure !

Keep up the good work :)

[Matt J. Sorenson]

This thread, and thinking about FLOSS email/messaging clients makes me think of (and wonder what ever happened to) Mozilla Raindrop... and it turns out there's a mirror of the code on Mozilla's github. Looks like raindrop itself has been altogether inactive for a few years, but the raindrop repo page links visitors to a 'mozilla/deuxdrop' repo. The latest commit there also reads '2 years ago' :( and it's not clear (to me) from the readme whether deuxdrop even speaks IMAP; rather, it espouses a 'distributed messaging protocol similar to email' so I interpret that to mean, no IMAP.

Ever-grateful for Mozilla and their lab projects; alas, these probably aren't viable here... unless there are folks interested in reviving raindrop :) or desiring the deuxdrop protocol (in addition to email?) in cozy?

P.s. does cozy aim to have an email client (only)? Or both email client and server capabilities?

Happy Friday

--Matt

[Frank Rousseau]

Thank you all for your feedback. That's really valuable for the project.

Before going further, here is a little explaination of why we didn't put the mail client on top of our priority list. It's because users will expect a lot of reliability from it and mail fetching requires to manage a lot of different cases, mostly due to encoding and attachments. So it looks too risky to build it while we already have to build the Cozy platform. Despite of that, we started to prototype because everyone was asking for mails (at that time we didn't know on what to focus). But when we heard about the Mailpile project, it sounded logical to let them do and integrate their client once it will be ready. We contacted them and they were ok with it (we even proposed them some help!).

What is your short-term/mid-term/long-term goal about the mail application?

Does cozy aim to have an email client (only)? Or both email client and server capabilities?
short-term: have mails in the Cozy for storage purpose: backup + analytics and small interapp features like create a task in todo-list from a mail subject.
mid-term: have an alternative to gmail webmail
long-term: have a full email solution client + server

Do you think it is worthy to develop a basic mail reader for now and, after some month, take the time to either develop more features, either integrate a software like mailpile ?

We already have something. So the question is: should we finshed it or not ? https://github.com/mycozycloud/cozy-mails

How certain are you that Mailpile "will do it" (I mean provide the functionnalities at the due date) ?

They look good and motivated. It's a little bit like gambling but we hope they will succeed in building it on time.

What is the priority of the mail application among the others ?

Not high right now, we prefer to focus on our current apps. But we are building partnerships with hosting companies which would like to see a mail client in Cozy. So we share the problem with the community before deciding anything.

@Matt: About the idea to work on something better than mails to communicate (or at least complementary), it's a tough question. I would really enjoy discussing with you about the subject (I thought a lot about it with my side project Newebe). If you want go further in the discussion, I propose you to open a new thread.

Frank

[James Mills]

Hi All,

Just wanted to put in my 2c worth. I understand Mailpile

is being looked at as a "Mail Client" but that this is on hold

until Mailpile is more ready. This is fine.

This only solves the "client" part of the problem though.

I propose the following in addition. Integration with Kolab

(kolab.org). Kolab provides a full MDA/MTA solution with

LDAP (389) and other features that overlap with Cozy.

In my experience with setting up Kolab so far, it's fairly modular

and there are many integration points and libraries that

Cozy could "hook in to".

In my mind I see the Cozy + Kolab integration working

something like this:

* Cozy sprouts tools to help the isntallation and setup of parts of Kolab (not all of it)

* Cozy integrates with Kolab's installation of LDAP, Mail/Calendar/Contacts storage (It uses a special IMAP structure)

* Cozy builds it's own LDAP Web Admin app to manage the Kolab provided LDAP tree (or similar)

The rest then relies on Mailpile's fetching and sending

(and other features) to integrate with the services

provided by the Kolab core setvices (SMTP, IMAP, etc)

Kolab IHMO is the only full fledged, easy to install and maintain,

modular and modern email/groupware suite I've found.

(There are others, but Kolab is pretty high on the "good" list).

cheers

James

[Frank Rousseau]

Hi James,

Thank you for your email. We are thinking about doing some R&D to see how difficult it would be to add an IMAP server to Cozy. We'll study your idea at that time.

Regards,

Frank

[Matt J. Sorenson]

Hi all,

I just spotted a submission to the Knight Foundation's news challenge for Mail-in-a-Box... this is a mail server, not a mail client, just so I'm clear about that up front. Here are a couple relevant links:

> https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/2014/submissions/mail-in-a-box
> https://github.com/joshdata/mailinabox

It prompted me to track down this thread, as I recalled there being some chatter about a potential full-fledged mail client/server implementation for cozy. I also *mentioned* cozy in a comment in the above-mentioned newschallenge entry by Joshua. Incidentally, Joshua has a strong record of this kind of work. I don't know whether he's familiar with cozy, but I know I'd raise my hand as someone who'd be interested to see these projects and people come together :)

And finally, there are 2 or 3 days (at the time I'm writing this and depending on where you are) remaining for submissions on this challenge, and I totally think the cozy project would make a strong showing in the challenge. So here's me coaxing one of you who are intimate with the project to submit!

Cheers all
--Matt

[Benjamin Andre]

Hello Matt,

The mail box project you pointed us is very interesting, we definitely will contact Joshua.
And you are right, we should submit Cozy to this challenge. I will try to do it in the coming days, despite an very loaded agenda...

Thanks for these hints !

Ben

[Matt J. Sorenson]

Benjamin, good job getting the newschallenge submission posted...

For everyone else, here's the link... go add some *applause*

https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/2014/feedback-review/a-personal-server-for-a-personal-cloud

--Matt

[Benjamin ANDRE]

Thanks Matt !

I filled the form during the last 28 minutes before the closing...
This is the busiest period of my life and I regret I could not put more details to explain the vision and architecture...

Benjamin ANDRE - +33 (0)6 86 25 36 66 - Cozy.io

[Jon Richter]

It's not Raindrop, but maybe http://rainloop.net/ would be enough firstly?

[Joseph Silvestre]

Hi, thank you for the notice!

Unfortunately, Rainloop is written in PHP and we don't support PHP yet. That being said, the demo looks good :)

Joseph.

[Dave Cook]

Hi Folks:

Maybe Modoboa? http://modoboa.org/en/screenshots/ It's a pretty minimal email client but it's Python.

Cheers,

Dave 

[Joseph Silvestre]

Hi,

BigBlueHat just informed me of his work: https://github.com/bigbluehat/couchmail.py