[Freedombox-discuss] Introductions + failsafe e-mail

[ian at churchkey.org]

On 08/29/2010 11:30 AM, paxcoder wrote:
> Distributed storage isn't local storage replacement. It's an additional
> feature (eg. for making backups your files, as someone suggested).
> GNUnet should take care of reciprocating bandwidth, as well as
> computational power. You earn points, you spend points. One could, of
> course, opt out if he/she wanted to. GNUnet points-earning system may
> perhaps be used for telephony and e-mail keeping as well (useful when
> the recipient's box is unavailable). However, I can't see how SMTP's
> would support such arrangements. Anyone familiar with/interested in
> this? How do you designate an alternative mailbox at your friend's?
> 
> --Luka Marčetić

Maybe the way to do email in a social network uses something like
distributed storage /instead/ of SMTP.

For example, if you have a Maildir/$FRIEND folder in TahoeLAFS for each
of your friends, you should be able to put new messages in a friend's
folder and rely on that data being securely distributed to the rest of
your mutual network. That way it is available to the recipient without
requiring that you both be online  and without having to worry about
configuring a separate protocol for email within the network.

If we setup the mail server to prefer delivering to the TahoeLAFS
maildir folder for all recipients that are in your social network, we
might be able to get external "email" and internal "distributed+secure
message" delivery done rather simply.

-Ian