[Freedombox-discuss] Email on FreedomBoxen?

[bnewbold at robocracy.org]

On Sun, 1 Jul 2012, Nick M. Daly wrote:

> Has anybody given thought to getting FreedomBoxes to send emails?  I
> thought I'd build out a quick win this weekend and add Friendica to the
> plugserver setup scripts [0], but Friendica sends registration emails,
> and there's no other way to deliver the registration information
> (Jabber, etc).  So, until we get email delivery, we won't have that
> particular social networking software.

Hmmm, sounds like the root of this problem is authentication and access 
control for Friendica, right? Is there an OpenId, WebId, or MonkeySphere 
plugin for Friendica? That might be easier than getting email working.

Answering the email question, it seems reasonable to configure a 
system-wide tool (sendmail?) to send email via a secure connection to a 
configured external (or local) server. For most users/developers this 
would be the outgoing mail server of their personal email account, but 
could also be localhost or some other mechanism down the line. 
Requiring/recommending an external outgoing mail service and entering 
personal account credentials probably don't align with the FBx's design 
goals, but this would allow progress for now without getting too side 
tracked, while remaining future-compatible.

I'm not an email expert, but I don't think that low-volume email sourced 
from random or residential IP ranges is reliably accepted by all hosts and 
services for abuse reasons. I would imagine that in the long run, a 
regular-email-sending mechanism hosted on independent nodes (aka, 
FreedomBoxes running at home not relying a specific external service) 
would require the ability to receive email (to handle bounces correctly) 
and "proper" forward and reverse DNS entries (for SPF records; need 
resolved IP of the delivering server to be authorized in DNS records). 
These requirements may very well be achievable under the FBx design goals, 
but doesn't seem to be yet. Apologies in advance if this is misinformed, 
email delivery and abuse reduction is a complicated topic, and these are 
just steps I had to go through to get email delivered reliably from my own 
independent mail servers.

Maybe mixmaster (an anonymous remailer service) could be used? Doesn't 
help with the exit node problem.

-bryan