
Show HN: I'm working on an open-source Gmail replacement - vorador
http://khamidou.github.io/kite
======
darklajid
I just put the finishing touches on my ansible playbook for my 'Goodbye
Google' server (Mail via dovecot/postfix w/ dkim, dspam, greylist, sieve,
Radicale for CardDAV, CalDAV, Prosody for xmpp). Works fine so far.

What I'm lacking right now is a decent webmail client. Roundcube isn't exactly
my type of thing, mailpile might be interesting. This seems ambitious and
interesting in general, but seems to come with too much strings attached
(puppet? No, ansible. Comes with postfix? I already have that). So .. it is
more than I'd need.

I do like the idea of ready-made, easy mail server setups though (obviously,
given the first paragraph). Perhaps a project like this could integrate well
into owncloud or arkos though?

~~~
hbbio
We have been working on such project in our own Opa technology for quite some
time.

Do you think we should work on an open source solution for
[https://peps.mlstate.com](https://peps.mlstate.com) ?

The project is a very clean webmail server, starting with our clean protocol
implementations (SMTP, POP, IMAP) and does not require external projects.

Try with hn/hn...

Update: Please don't change the password for this hn account. As an admin, I
can reset it, but have better things to do today ;)

~~~
jlgaddis
_> starting with our clean protocol implementations (SMTP, POP, IMAP) and does
not require external projects._

I'm curious of the reasoning behind your decision to reimplement SMTP instead
of just using Postfix, for example. I run mail servers for an ISP (and myself)
and take advantage of a lot of the "advanced" functionality that Postfix has
acquired in the last 15 years.

~~~
hbbio
The initial goal of the project was to have a total control on the TCB
(Trusted Computing Base) of a webmail for high security environments, in order
to be able to pass certifications such as Common Criteria (EAL).

Our protocol implementations use a specific DSL, that generates Opa code which
is strongly statically typed with high-level types such as variants/rows.
Although we currently lack many features or optimizations, the approach is
clean and much easier to certify.

------
tluyben2
I welcome this as I welcome Mailpile and other efforts like it; I look for
another mail solution every few years. Not with the idea of replacing gmail
(might/might not do), but to see if anyone did anything useful yet. So far,
no. All solutions, even considering the changes to gmail everyone seems to
hate (I don't), are nothing compared.

Every time some new frontend/backend comes up, I say the same (and have done
on HN before); i'm not a typical user; I had email since '95, I have been a
heavy user since then and I took my mail with me since. In 2005 I was looking,
like I had been then as well, for a better mail solution and stumbled upon
gmail. I wrote an export script for the mail system I was using at the time
and imported 10 years of mail into gmail.

I now have over a million mails in my mailbox (i'm not sure what is the
total); I have over 50 mail addresses coming to my inbox, I receive 1000s
(sometimes 10.000s) of spam messages _per day_ which Google filters well. I
guess this is due to the fact I have had/have businesses on those 50 mails
since 1995. All clients I tried so far just simply hang when I try them,
including outlook (exchange or imap), thunderbird and some free and commercial
web versions (yahoo and outlook web/live simply don't work; I cannot even read
my mail through the amount of spam and the clients are horrible for
productivity imho. Slow as well).

I also need a solid spam solution; spamassassin simply doesn't cut it; not
only does it run high processor on my server, it doesn't actually filter stuff
like google does. Google almost never goes wrong for me; actually; I have had
very few mistakes / missing mails. While with spamassassin, I'll be carefully
inspecting 5k mails / day while still getting spam in my inbox.

I think my mailbox is a bit weird now, but it'll be quite normal as it'll be
normal for people to have a mailbox since birth and taking it with them till
they die. If you run a few businesses along the way, getting to 1 million
messages is not hard; spam will find you as well. Media messages are getting
common; I make a point of using dropbox/sftp for attachments, but not everyone
does that, so I do get videos, _huge_ blah megapixel cameras of birthdays of
family etc. This is normal and will only grow; the current mail solutions
don't handle it well. If you want to deliver a competitor to gmail, you need
to make this work imho and it needs to be a test case.

~~~
justinmk
Yeah, the gmail UI (which is forgettable) is about 5% of the product; the
other 95% is:

* spam detection

* search

* mail header hacks

I don't think that can be approximated in "a few months".

> 50 mail addresses coming to my inbox

On the other hand, no product (open source or not) should optimize for the
outliers (not to be confused with edge cases).

~~~
hrjet
My hunch is that Google's spam detection is not necessarily better than open-
source solutions. It's just that they may have a larger corpus of data to
train the system on.

If I host my own email server, my spam filter will only have my inputs to
determine what is spam.

This leads me to an idea. There probably can be a service to build a dynamic
corpus of spam samples. If I mark a message as spam, my email server can send
a sample to the service, and periodically, my email server will download "top
100" samples to feed its filter.

~~~
kilburn
This isn't necessarily a good idea. The type of SPAM you receive is different
than the type of SPAM I receive. Moreover, it is very possible that I do (not)
consider some messages as SPAM whereas you do (not). It is true that it takes
some time to train the filter, but after that initial period you will get
better results if you only train it with your own SPAM.

I've been hosting my own email on a small personal server for some ~7 years
now. All my email addresses redirect here (I have 9 frequently used addresses,
and a bunch of website-specific ones). I'm using spamassassin (plus amavisd-
new) as a proxy content filter. These are my filter's numbers for the last
three days:

    
    
          2 BAD-HEADER-2
          1 BAD-HEADER-8
         47 BANNED
        297 CLEAN
          6 INFECTED
        426 SPAM
         14 SPAMMY
    

Spammy mails are delivered to a special "Spam" folder (just like in GMail).
All those were indeed SPAM messages. I've received no spam messages outside of
those. The high number of CLEAN mails is because I'm subscribed to a few
mailing lists and I receive notifications/tracking info/alerts from a number
of services.

TL;DR: SpamAssassin is hard to setup and train correctly (just like the rest
of a server's mail-stack). However, once you get over this part, the results
can be as good as gmail's.

~~~
justinmk
> I've received no spam messages outside of those.

How protective are you of your email address? My email is posted all over the
internet, but I haven't seen spam in gmail for at least 6 months--probably
longer.

~~~
enjo
I have a huge spam problem with gmail. Someone sold my email + first name.
Googles spam filters are simply powerless if you include a first name in the
email. I've reported these as spam (several a day) for months at this point.

Hell, it gets marked as important.

~~~
magicalist
> Googles spam filters are simply powerless if you include a first name in the
> email

I think you're going to have to look elsewhere for a cause. Someone (probably
several someones) sold out my email and first and full name. Gmail has no
problem correctly categorizing all sorts of spam addressed to me by name.

~~~
baudehlo
Whatever the cause is, it's still Google's fault/problem.

I too have a big gmail spam problem (related to my email address being very
short and guessable), and mark as spam on average about 10-20 emails a day.

~~~
ChristianBundy
> Whatever the cause is, it's still Google's fault/problem.

Why is it that no matter what the cause is, you feel that Google is to blame?

~~~
dbpatterson
Err... because Google's spam filter is letting the message in? Seriously, it
is a spam message, delivered to Google, and Google put it in the inbox instead
of the spam filter. I don't know how much more clear cut it could be.

------
marijn
Collaboration or integration with Mailpile [1] might be a useful direction to
consider. They are doing interesting work on the backend, but as far as I am
aware, there isn't much frontend present yet.

[1]:
[https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile](https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile)

------
jagermo
I really like it - good work, keep it up. It's a good thing that you guys
(you, Mailpile, Roundcube) develop alternatives to gmail.

However, for me to switch (like most here, I am a heavy email user), I need a
few things:

\- PGP encryption

\- Contacts

\- Calendar

Have you thought about expanding the developer base? Maybe via
Kickstarter/Indiegogo? The alpha already looks good, I'm sure a lot of us
would like to contribute to the development.

------
plumeria
It would be nice it supported PGP out of the box, I think it would be a strong
selling point. Kudos for the initiative.

~~~
vorador
It's on my todo list.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
See if you can do it in the browser.

~~~
tluyben2
[http://openpgpjs.org/](http://openpgpjs.org/) could work? Never tried it.

------
ozh
How effective would it be to self host your mail regarding spam?

In gmail I guess that once a few peeps click "Report Spam" on a mail that
passed filters, similar mails are also flagged as spam in other accounts. I've
always found gmail extremely effective at this, and I practically never flag
mail as spam myself.

Sure, there are automated spam filters to configure, but overall wouldn't
going alone make things much less efficient on that topic?

~~~
alexchamberlain
There must be a spam filtering as a service? Send anything that wasn't signed
and/or you're not 90%(?) sure isn't spam?

~~~
btgeekboy
There was Postini, which Google bought. You'd set your MX record to them, and
they'd forward your non-spam email on to your SMTP server.

~~~
brdrak
We use Postini at work and it is terrible. Normal Gmail filters are much
better. I hear Google is replacing Postini with something they developed
themselves.

------
keyle
I do love the attention to detail, with the Nigerian's prince email.

Doing good software is one thing, doing it with a good touch of humor is what
makes it stick. +1.

------
jroseattle
I'm looking forward to a day when a prominent model will be cloud-based
applications storing data in private repositories.

------
nakedrobot2
Thanks for working on this.

I look forward to the day when it will be easy to set up and configure a mail
server at home. By all accounts, it is currently a _very_ painful process that
is prone to error and interrupted service.

~~~
Joeboy
Doing it at home probably isn't a practical option unless you somehow get an
IP that isn't blacklisted, but doing it on a VDS isn't _that_ bad.

I host my email on a VDS. I would kind of like to be able to host other
people's too, but I've always been freaked out by having the ability to read
my friends' emails.

~~~
lazylizard
er. this is probably a dumb idea. works for 1 person only i guess. you can use
google's smtp after signing up for google apps.
[http://emailrelay.sourceforge.net/](http://emailrelay.sourceforge.net/) is 1
of the ways to relay(actually more forward than relay i guess) via
smtp.gmail.com. now you're not blacklisted? even if you're running your server
at home on dynamic ip? now u just need to be able to update enom or dyn whats
your ip as it changes?

------
wuschel
Happy to see more alternatives to Gmail. I am still using Gmail with the old
HTML interface, as the new one is cluttered with all kinds of stuff I do not
need. Stay with KISS, when it comes to functionality and interface, with
optional integration of PGP. I wanted to quit using google services for long,
but it is only now that I get active in that regard (e.g. duckduckgo as search
engine). As such, I am searching an alternative for the

1\. web based storage of emails 2\. a good web interface.

As for 1., I stil have not found anything really interesting that comes for
free.

As for 2., I was once using Mutt and found it quite efficient, and am now
thinking to try out sup. However, there is still this feeling that there could
be a better client when it comes to usability and ease of installation. Using
Mutt on Windows can be really annoying.

------
cenhyperion
Very cool. Looks like a really good web interface that would be a pleasure to
use.

On a personal note, am I the only one that generally prefers a mail client?
The ability to combine all my emails (work, gmail, @mydomain, etc) into one
unified inbox is why I prefer it.

~~~
brdrak
I do as well. That also opens up other possibilities like the ability to just
drag and drop an email between IMAP accounts. The other day I was getting smtp
errors from Google, so I sent a work email from a personal account, then
dragged it to work sent items, because I won't remember to search for it in
personal.

------
uses
I think we'll see a lot more of this type of software in the near future.

It's easier and cheaper than ever to automate the setup of servers. Imagine
being able to click a few buttons, in something like the webmin of yore, and
suddenly having a private mail server/file sync node/document editor
application, set up at the VPS provider of your choice.

This type of thing will encourage open standards, as the private servers will
need to communicate with each other. It also ties in nicely with concerns
about the implications of everything being hosted and controlled by major
providers.

There are probably business opportunities at many points in this model.

------
dinduks
The Distributed Everything blog post encouraged me to leave most of Google'
services due to their closed ecosystem and the violation of privacy. I managed
to leave everything (GTalk/Hangouts, Agenda, Contacts, Google+, etc.) except
Gmail because of how great and useful filters and labels are. In my opinion,
these two points are the reason why Gmail cannot be easily replaced. I thus
would encourage working on these futures.

Also, I don't want to sound like a troll, but I wish it was build in a more
popular language, such as Java (it's not my favorite) to encourage
contributions. Good luck!

------
babuskov
The main reason I'm using GMail is that it's available everywhere for free -
both in money and my time.

However, I like your project and it would be nice to have an alternative if I
decide one day that I value my privacy more.

------
waterlion
How much of GMail does this do (or intend to do)? Off the top of my head,
GMail does this for me (in this order):

\- Email server that I can run for my domain.

\- Search a large number of messages on the server

\- Spam detection on the server

\- Automatic labelling / categorisation on the server for incoming mail

\- Address book

\- Saving of drafts on the server so I can edit and send on several devices

\- A webmail interface

Is this intended to be a GMail replacement or another webmail interface?

~~~
vorador
I want this to be a replacement. I haven't yet set up spam filtering and
search but I'll get around it eventually.

This is just my MVP.

~~~
waterlion
Cool. Well, good luck. (I don't think this is quite an MVP.)

------
rattray
Quite a minor point of feedback, and not altogether fair, but attempting to
obscure your email (~) gives me a bit of a lack of confidence in the spam
filters you're using. I have my gmail up in plaintext on my homepage, and
don't experience too many problems.

If nothing else, putting your email in plaintext could help you debug your
spam prevention?

~~~
vorador
I haven't setup spam detection yet, so that's why I obscured my email.

------
aioprisan
Kudos! I think the hardest part will come in trying to maintain and scale this
from an interoperability perspective. I used to work at an ISP where 80%+ of
the work on the mail product was getting our IPs un-blacklisted and other ISPs
from not blocking our traffic anymore, as well as pruning out the bad/bot
users.

------
psankar
Support keyboard shortcuts, at the earliest. It is one of the most heavily
used features for heavy email users.

------
cpsaltis
The biggest pain I've experienced with similar web interfaces was mobile. For
the desktop there are a few that are decent, but on mobile they generally
suck. So do the native email clients for Android and iOS.

Do you plan to stick with a desktop version? Will you always design 'destop
first'?

------
yurikoval
Would be nice to see people get together and finalise a viable alternative.
Keep up the good work! Meanwhile, here is another potential solution.
[https://assemblymade.com/amail](https://assemblymade.com/amail)

------
tiatia
Afterlogic has a free lite version

I like it compared to other scripts like SquirrelMail or Horde.

webmail.afterlogic.com

~~~
yogo
This is pretty neat. Not sure if these are features available in the pro
version but two things I think it's missing are (or that I didn't see in the
demo): \- multiple identities, so that when sending email you can pick the
from email address + signature \- setting filters for any header. This is
useful for filtering mail based on the spam level header so that they go
straight to the spam folder.

Really nice web interface though.

~~~
tiatia
I think the demo is the pro version already. They have a decent forum:
[http://www.afterlogic.com/forum](http://www.afterlogic.com/forum)

I installed it on a hosting account and it works well. But I still fighting to
get a tiny VPS running to host my email. I plan to co-run Afterlogic and
alpine via SSH. Alpine allows for multiple identities - you can put whatever
you want in the FROM field if you enable this in the configuration settings.

------
infocollector
Great Job. Ignore all the other projects that are out there please (If they
are not BSD, they are useless for me). This is what I was waiting for. I would
recommend developing both mobile / desktop together.

------
northisup
check out
[https://github.com/roundcube/roundcubemail](https://github.com/roundcube/roundcubemail)
for a mature gmail alternative.

------
s-topper
Tried out the demo; it's nice. Keyboard shortcuts and threaded display would
be nice to have. Will check out the source for my learning.

------
macmac
Search is mentioned as a keep feature a lot in this thread. Would using
elasticsearch be a feasible solution? It certainly scales easily.

------
tete
XMPP would be cool too and suddenly you have a chatbox.

Would be cool to have in all the "home server" platforms (Freedom Box, ArkOS,
...) too!

------
Joeboy
Great, as far as I know Roundcube is the only decent open source webmail
thing, and it could do with some competition.

~~~
tiatia
No, there is Horde and Squirrel mail.

I myself prefer webmail.afterlogic.com It has a free light version.

~~~
babuskov
Horde seems to be full of bugs regarding security. Several of my friends run
it on their servers and had the server compromized. Looking at web server
logs, the backdoor was always some part of Horde/Imp web interface.

They have all moved away from it since, so I can't tell if all of those have
been fixed recently, but the whole architecture of it is not something I would
trust.

------
danbmil99
have you seen/heard about mailpile?

~~~
vorador
Yes I did. I figured out that I should go ahead anyway. More choice is always
good, right ?

~~~
DoubleMalt
Yes. Go ahead. Competition is the driver of innovation.

However I am afraid without the opportunity to put a man year work into it, it
will be hard to tick all the boxes.

I really hope you succeed, though.

(Disclaimer I am a backer of Mailpile)

------
hipsters_unite
Is there a mailing list to track this project? I can't see any way of
monitoring updates on the page.

------
Wingman4l7
Can anyone comment on Spamassassin's efficacy as compared to Google's spam
filters?

~~~
thrownaway2424
It's fucking terrible by comparison.

~~~
brdrak
I beg to differ.

------
samspenc
This looks great. Just curious: Roundcube didn't cut it for you?

------
rshlo
I appreciate the hard work. Nevertheless, IMHO it would be better if open
source projects will bring original ideas to the market, instead of copying an
existing product.

~~~
cryptolect
I'd argue that post-PRISM, there's a big opportunity to re-create self-hosted
options for services known to be open books to the government. It might not be
creative, but it does provides users a familiar alternative to storing their
data in the cloud.

~~~
mverwijs
> post-PRISM

Post? You optimist you. If anything we're smack in the middle of it.

------
fit2rule
Squirrelmail?

~~~
jagermo
Nice client - but looks so 90s. No offense meant, but i have the mail client
open all day. I need a fast, responsive client with a good search engine and
spam detection. And a good look. Not sure if squirrelmail could do it.

~~~
stass
What is the benefit of a web client if you keep it open the entire day? I find
standalone clients, like Sylpheed, much easier to use and you're not
constrained by what you can run in browser.

~~~
jagermo
Agree, but all day means several different systems as well (Tabelt, Notebook
etc pp). I prefer to have everything online

------
hajderr
+1. Would use it.

