It will become possible to submit kernel patches without touching an email client
It will become possible to submit kernel patches without touching an email client
Posted Jan 7, 2021 11:45 UTC (Thu) by jnareb (subscriber, #46500)Parent article: Some unlikely 2021 predictions
I hope that we will get a game-changer such as Git and Mercurial, though perhaps more slowly: the problem is less understood, and hopefully there would be no "we must do it" event like with the BitKeeper license change (end of free-for-OSS license).
People are working on it, see for example "Patches carved into developer sigchains"... though if it would be in non-experimental use before the end of 2021 is a question.
Posted Jan 7, 2021 20:10 UTC (Thu)
by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
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I find it difficult to imagine what such an event would look like. It's not as if SMTP is owned by anyone.
One could imagine the companies whose developers are actually contributing most of the patches issuing an ultimatum, but I tend to think this would be an incredibly foolish and short-sighted move on their part (and I think most of them are aware of that fact, so it probably won't happen).
Posted Jan 8, 2021 4:27 UTC (Fri)
by ecree (guest, #95790)
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But if the big mail-providers EE&E in a way that screws us over, how many of us know how to set up our own mail servers? And how likely are we to learn in the meantime, given that interoperating with the big networks is already a massive PITA? (Alexei was already worrying about this back at netconf ’19, see http://vger.kernel.org/netconf2019_files/netconf2019_slid... — "Email is dying".)
So yes, if Gmail etc. become unusable for kernel development, it would be *possible* for us to set up an entirely parallel network of "engineers' email", that doesn't follow Gmail et al's lead on whichever of DKIM, SPF and DMARC it is that makes things hard. But it wouldn't be *easy* and it wouldn't happen overnight. Company IT departments won't support it on their email servers, because their first priority is keeping the executives' email working. (Maybe some of them will run a second server for the engineers. But I think we've all encountered enough corporate IT to be pessimistic about that.) And we can't start switching now, because we need to keep supporting developers who are on the existing systems (which are very picky about whom they accept mail from).
I like the email workflow and want it to continue. But unless we can square this circle, sooner or later it is going to blow up in our faces.
Posted Jan 8, 2021 22:27 UTC (Fri)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
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As of January 2021, it's not that hard to set up your own mail server, and configure SPF/DKIM/DMARC in a way that gives you good deliverability into Gmail/Hotmail/etc. I've had my own mail server for years.
I can't see the Big Providers changing this any time soon. There are still tons of businesses running their own mail server or using something other than the Big Ones; businesses that do use Google, etc. will not be amused if they can't communicate with clients or vendors.
This may change in the future, but not for a while, I think. There... that's my reckless prediction for 2021.
Posted Jan 9, 2021 1:31 UTC (Sat)
by zlynx (guest, #2285)
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But, I do remember some useful Linux Journal articles. There may have been a LWN article or two as well.
I do mine on Fedora Linux with Exim, Cyrus IMAP, and SpamAssassin. Exim needs to be configured to deliver to Cyrus properly. At one point I had to adjust the SELinux rules for that but I think that's part of the Fedora packages now. There's also SSL certificate configuration that has to be turned on and adjusted to work with LetsEncrypt.
And then there is DNS with MX, SPF and DKIM and DMARC stuff. And I enabled DNSSEC on my domain which I've heard gives you another few bonus reliability points.
And if you cannot get a static IP then you have to do all of this in the cloud, and optionally configure a VPN and forward your email servers to your home network.
Posted Jan 9, 2021 7:00 UTC (Sat)
by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604)
[Link]
I run my own e-Mail server, it's usually on auto-pilot with me just doing upgrades. But every once in a while an issue crops up, for example I only noticed that there was an issue with IPv6 after a friend told me and provided the logs from his server, I won't get that kind of service from gmail etc..
One of the first things I did as a young apprentice was to set up a new e-Mail / spam filter cluster for a small ISP so I have almost 20 years of this under my belt. The software stack didn't change much, still using Exim, still using Dovecot, replaced spamassassin with rspamd some time ago. Dovecot especially has been a joy with barely any need to do major changes.
> There are still tons of businesses running their own mail server or using something other than the Big Ones; businesses that do use Google, etc. will not be amused if they can't communicate with clients or vendors.
As long as Microsoft still offers Exchange on Premise that should remain the case. They could of course at any time decide that they really want customers to use their cloud instead. That worries me. At the same time Microsoft Outlook ruined e-Mail for a lot of people, I can always tell when I'm communicating with an Outlook User - full quote of all prior e-Mails, HTML signatures, the German version for some reason not using Re: but AW: for replies...
Posted Jan 9, 2021 2:26 UTC (Sat)
by liam (guest, #84133)
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Posted Jan 9, 2021 2:35 UTC (Sat)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
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Posted Jan 14, 2021 3:50 UTC (Thu)
by liam (guest, #84133)
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Posted Jan 17, 2021 13:34 UTC (Sun)
by Hi-Angel (guest, #110915)
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Wow! This is an amazing article! FTR, the article is here https://people.kernel.org/monsieuricon/patches-carved-int... I really hope such instrument would put an end to disagreement between people who likes gitlab/github-based workflows and ones who prefer mailing lists.
> though if it would be in non-experimental use before the end of 2021 is a question.
The article was in 2019, and since then the author haven't posted on the same matter anything. If you know if and where further discussions on that matter are happening, I'd love to know it.
Posted Jan 25, 2021 11:37 UTC (Mon)
by Hi-Angel (guest, #110915)
[Link]
So, I contacted the author and they pointed out to this project as the one working on that https://radicle.xyz/
I have also asked on their matrix channel and they confirmed. Quoting them:
> hi-angel:
It will become possible to submit kernel patches without touching an email client
It will become possible to submit kernel patches without touching an email client
It will become possible to submit kernel patches without touching an email client
Email Servers
It will become possible to submit kernel patches without touching an email client
It will become possible to submit kernel patches without touching an email client
But if the big mail-providers EE&E in a way that screws us over, how many of us know how to set up our own mail servers?
Every problem can be rewritten as a marketing opportunity.
It will become possible to submit kernel patches without touching an email client
It will become possible to submit kernel patches without touching an email client
It will become possible to submit kernel patches without touching an email client
It will become possible to submit kernel patches without touching an email client
> Hi, just wondering, are you folks the ones working to make this workflow real? https://people.kernel.org/monsieuricon/patches-carved-int...
>
> lftherios:
> Hey hi-angel Yes we are the ones trying to bring this vision to reality. Konstantin (the author of the post) has been very helpful to us during this process and heavily influenced our design with his thoughts and comments.
>
> One note: in comparison to the original post we don't use the SSB protocol but instead we designed a peer-to-protocol we call radicle-link that borrows a number of ideas from SSB.