
Email gateways and gatekeeping - axiomdata316
https://www.labbott.name/blog/2020/09/01/emailgateway.html
======
nixpulvis
Email is generally undervalued by most people I know.

We should realize its inherent value as the location to send messages to a
user at a domain, and work tools to fix people's UX problems. All these other
messaging services are just skirting the problem, and generally reducing my
ownership of the system.

I say this as someone with a barely functioning inbox...

~~~
deepstack
>We should realize its inherent value as the location to send messages to a
user at a domain, and work tools to fix people's UX problems. All these other
messaging services are just skirting the problem, and generally reducing my
ownership of the system.

try matrix.org

------
blakesterz
Both this post and the original that inspired it a pretty well balanced, and
don't really say anything close to "Email sucks, let's do everything
different!" which is good. I guess I'm just old enough now that I've been
reading "Death to email" and "This new thing is going to replace email" for so
long I now thing nothing will ever replace email. I bet at some point I even
thought "Death to email" and now email is just a part of life.

I liked this quote from the linked Register article:

“I’m not saying that there will be a move in any time that I can see – my
crystal ball’s broken – but I do think there needs to be expansions in the way
people can enter that workflow,”

I think that's a good way to look at this entire email thing, not just as it
applies to the Linux Kernel, but in general.

------
catern
>“But e-mail is so much better for discussion and patch review” it’s hard to
differentiate sometimes between “better because I’m more familiar with it” and
“better because it has features I care about”.

>Again, there is documentation out there to explain how to contribute but it
doesn’t actually need to be this complicated.

I'm not sure... email provides a nicer patch review system in many ways than
any web-based patch review system. If it doesn't need to be this complicated,
why haven't those other systems caught up? It's not clear to me... and at
least for now, those features aren't replicable without email.

------
dusted
The bigger problem is how many ISPs handle email. First, they block outgoing
port 25, so you can't actually SEND email.

Then they forget that some of their customers need to actually send email from
their computers and out to the internet, as opposed from using some third
party service. Or they make it available only on "professional" over priced
subscriptions.

Back when I started hosting my own email, o my ADSL, I called my ISP and just
told them, "I setup postfix, I can recieve mail, but I can't send it out?"
They told me the outgoing port was blocked, but that I was free to use their
email gateway, they gave me the hostname, and all was good.

When I switched to fiber, I called my ISP and asked them what their email
gateway was, they gave me the hostname, and all was well in the world.

But last time I switched ISP, I couldn't get the hostname of their email
gateway, support kept giving me some URL for their webmail, and I couldn't
explain to them that I didn't want to use their email service, I had my own,
and I wanted to send mail out onto the internet thankyouplease. They then told
me, that if I used my own, I should call the company that hosted it for me.. I
explained to them that there is not company, just my computer. They told me it
was not possible to send mail directly from a computer because outgoing port
25 was blocked.. I explained to them, that I knew! That the very fact that I
was having this conversation was because they blocked port 25 and needed to
provide me with the hostname of their email gateway/relay server. No success.

I did some grey area research, and found their stupid relay server, but it
rejected relaying me mail with a nonsensical error. I called support again and
explained the error, nobody knew what that machine was, but that their webmail
was located at...

Fast forward, I befriended a technician at the ISP and he told me the name of
a netops guy, I found him on linkedin, and explained the error.. He told me
their relay host would only relay mails for IPs that reverse-dns resolved to
the FROM domain.. Fair enough I guess..

Called customer support, asked for reverse-dns, I couldn't convince them that
such a thing exited and they kept telling me I needed to contact a DNS
provider and pay for the domain.. I told them that I had the domain, and DNS
configured, but that that company couldn't possibly assign reverse dns to my
IP at this ISP.

Back to netops guy, I owe him some beer, but he setup a reverse dns for me..
And I could send email.

It didn't feel like a triumph, it feels like "The Internet" is deeply fucking
broken and I fear for the future, I fear that next time they change
infrastructure, or I move to a new house, I'll have to go through this hell
again.

I get why people are not happy with git send-email, because, getting the
privilege of actually sending a fucking email from your "Computer PC" in 2020
seems next to damn impossible.

~~~
alextingle
You need a different ISP.

~~~
dusted
I gosh-darn know that! but you know what? There's no realistic choice. They
own the fiber, I'd literally cost millions to get new infrastructure.

