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All the new google privacy policy and terms made me think about how to avoid google completely.
KDE is a great opportunity for bringing everything together. What really is missing is their own e-mail-service.
Then it would be even better to sync contacts, calendar and e-mail.
And everything would be integrated in KDE much better

Would be awesome to have a borgprince@kdemail.com which is easy to access by kontact and kmail and korganizer and...

But I don't mean an e-mail for devolopers but for the whole public.


What do you think?

And who is gonna pay for all that?

This of course is an important question. There might be many ways to get this going.

A foundation could raise money for this project.

The KDE association could care about getting donations.

It could be a service that charges people to be part of it.

Maybe one finds sponsors.

Companies could donate servers.

Advertisement could also be a way.

I would pay for it by the way. But maybe it works without making people pay...

I don't know actually how excactly raise the money for such a project, but I am sure it would be awesome to have an KDE e-mail service. It came to my mind and I like the idea.

Sorry, I disagree.
Keep different things separate and rely or (or better enforce) the usage of standards for communication.

KDE is a project trying to produce software. Leave it like that. Putting all sorts of different things into that project will bloat it, distract concentration and make it vulnerable.

There already are millions of alternatives to Google, np one has to use their service. Pick that service you like most by their ideology and service and get going. As long as they offer access to your data via standard protocols (read: not nearly standard protocols, but real standard conform protocols) you have everything already perfectly integrated.

Maybe you want to take a look at ownCloud.org for integration and one of the many freemailers out there.
If there really is a need for one more service provider I suggest an organization like freedesktop.org instead of the kde project. These guys are neutral, love standards and care about free spirit and beer.

arkascha

arkascha wrote:Sorry, I disagree.
Keep different things separate and rely or (or better enforce) the usage of standards for communication.

KDE is a project trying to produce software. Leave it like that. Putting all sorts of different things into that project will bloat it, distract concentration and make it vulnerable.

There already are millions of alternatives to Google, np one has to use their service. Pick that service you like most by their ideology and service and get going. As long as they offer access to your data via standard protocols (read: not nearly standard protocols, but real standard conform protocols) you have everything already perfectly integrated.

Maybe you want to take a look at ownCloud.org for integration and one of the many freemailers out there.
If there really is a need for one more service provider I suggest an organization like freedesktop.org instead of the kde project. These guys are neutral, love standards and care about free spirit and beer.

arkascha

Rudeness is low.

I think such an idea would be a challenge for the open source community.
KDE with it's basic principles i.e. sharing load, has an opportunity to change the scale of perception. become something as big as facebook or google.
Just thing about it, share the load, sharing is caring
Applies on applications, email accounts, electricity, science, finances etc.

kais

I hate to say it, but KDE isn't a service provider, it's a software production organization.

There's a few major issues with the idea;
- Where would reliable long-term funding come from?
- Who would maintain the servers? They aren't cheap.
- Who would answer to security breaches?
- Who would dictate the policies?

If a company runs it, we'd be right back to the Google argument. If you don't like Googles' terms, go with someone else or accept that you don't get free services without parting with time, money, information, or some other thing with value.

If an organization ran it, it would either KDE or a KDE-based foundation. But who would fund it? A free email provider is a money hole unless it can produce a profit. So either a company needs to commit financial suicide or the service would constantly need to ask for funding. And that's dangerious when people are trying to keep personal information like email around, because there's the constant threat of losing it. Worse still, if it was tied directly to the KDE community, what would happen if everything went under?

Volunteers could run it, but would you really trust random people with your sensitive email? If volunteers were limited to a select few trusted people, who would decide who would get to work on it? Would those volunteers be accountable? Who would be accountable if every email you ever sent from that service was hacked? Password reminders, banks statements, personal medical information, embarrasing personal pictures your mother decided to email you: who would be accountable if that got out?

If this is a community effort, I can guarentee there would be a stipulation that some open email service would have 0 accountability because of its structure. I, personally would NEVER accept that risk. Forget "do no evil", At minimum Google is kept in line because it can actually be held truly accountable in court. Imagine if Google dropped the ball and leaked everyones email passwords - there would be a class-action lawsuit.


I'll just say it this way; Googles privacy policy seems fairly reasonable; "You get our service and security for free and we use your content to offer targeted ads".

Would you rather sign up with a company whos policy is either "You get our services for free, but we may go bankrupt unless you donate or some company finances a money-hole, and you risk losing all your emails if you don't regularly backup if we drop the ball" or "You get our services for free, but we offer no security liability and employ volunteers to keep things running, and there's no really serious legal rammifications that keep things in check."


The most constructive idea I have is to just find one with a privacy policy better for you. It may not be as "cool" as having "kde" after the @ symbol somewhere, but there are hundreds of providers which are proven to work all with unique privacy policies. But creating a small email provider isn't the answer when there are already many, many others thinking the way you are. You just have to find them.

Thanks for the information.

I do not want to discuss Google here. Everybody who likes it might use it. I don't care.

My idea was to have a service integration into mail and kontact, korganizer and for plasma active as well.

A mail and/or cloud service. As I mentioned before I would pay for a good and non-observed service and so would others, I guess.

@Kver: If you hate to say, that KDE isn't a service provider, tell me the reasons why you hate to say it. Would you also like if it was one?

There is already some problems with @kde.org/kdemail.net addresses.

Anything anyone then says sounds like it's the official opinion of KDE as a whole and not just that one person. This was a genuine problem, which I believe led to @kde.org addresses being given out a lot more selectively even to developers.

But this problem only occurs because @kde.org adresses are so rare.

You wouldn't think that someone who writes from a @googlemail.com account represents Google...

Also: These domains could be named differentely.

So it's settled. If you want a @kde address become a big contributor to KDE.

Yeah - funny...

borgprince wrote:I do not want to discuss Google here. Everybody who likes it might use it. I don't care.

My idea was to have a service integration into mail and kontact, korganizer and for plasma active as well.

A mail and/or cloud service. As I mentioned before I would pay for a good and non-observed service and so would others, I guess.

@Kver: If you hate to say, that KDE isn't a service provider, tell me the reasons why you hate to say it. Would you also like if it was one?

You're thinking more like a "default" service by the sounds of it, similar to how the Ubuntu distro has it's "own" cloud service.

The reason I hate to say it is specifically because a developer-centric email service would lead to developer-centric features. I don't care about the name behind the @, I care because I can imagine a webmail client naturally evolving into a developer hub. I wouldn't imagine a KDE E-Mail service as a consumer service as I'm sure you're imagining it. That's why I hated saying why it wouldn't work, not because of the customer possibilities but because of the developer possibilities. The current invite-only system means such a radically advanced specialty email service would never likely be created.


That being said, I can really, -really- vouch for the "official opinion" post by David, and I'd like to tangent into that. Years ago I was working on an Ubuntu theme and kept it updated on the Ubuntu User-Ideas wiki: I started with a rules and guidelines document eventually producing a theme. Hoo boy. Despite being clearly labeled as a user-idea and unofficial, people took my "rules/guidelines" approach very officially and my wiki was all over a bunch of news sites as the upcoming "official" Ubuntu theme (Unity had not come out yet); I literally had to argue with somone on a forum explaining "I'm not an Ubuntu developer - I'm just a guy making a theme, man!". People were saying, literally, "Ubuntu doesn't care about the community, who's making these rules? We don't have any say!" and others were swearing off Ubuntu because the "Ubuntu devs" were making the default theme look like a "gutted salmon on screen".

I mention this because I can imagine the damage having "KDE" emails would cause. I try to think carefully before posting anything on the internet now, but I've seen firsthand how viral things get very quickly. I posted on an open wiki, had 0 credentials, was not trying to look official - I even told people flat out I wasn't official - but people run with what you say. I know that if 10,000 people signed up for @KDE mail it would be just rare enough that people wouldn't question someone using it as a Dev - even if they weren't claiming to be.

Imagine you hop onto a KDE message board as "b.prince@kde.org" and posted something like "I'm working on making a Wayland-only KDE port, but the graphics are glitched" and "k.vermette@kde.org" replied "Do X Y Z first, did you check video-card support?".

Now, you might be doing that for yourself just for tinkering, but someone would link to it: "KDE without X possible? Devs discuss it", then it's "KDE Devs removing X, will have poor graphics card support" and finally some guy who glues other random facts together comes up with "KDE 4.9 to be Wayland Only, requires open-source drivers, older video cards incompatible" and next thing you know people are on forums swearing off KDE because their graphics cards won't work. And I'm not inflating this - I've seen it happen. It might sound fun, and it's quite neat when you realize it's happening at first, but when you start putting out those fires and you realize how real devs are running around putting them out too - it's not so fun. If several hundred enthusists got KDE emails and made even a few poorly worded posts under those emails, there would be fires everywhere. Davids point on the KDE emails is a really good point, and my direct experience in being mistaken for a Dev might have been much, much worse if I had an official-looking email.

On a side note, this prompted me to look up my old work - apparently people had taken over my themes, handling bug reports and running a priority queue. Open-source really does rock.

I understand well. And I think you're right.

But then it is a problem of name giving:

It could be called kmail (or we'll find another name that doesn't sound like an official kde-developer-address).

I just still like the idea of interlocking e-mail-service with e-mail-software (all of this open source and unobserved) and all the beautiful software opportunities kde has to offer...

If you think this is a good idea, why don't YOU do it?

Personally, and no offense here, I think this is a ridiculous idea. This would be a monumental task in terms of cost and resources. KDE has enough problems without providing a "gmail replacement."

As someone who builds software for a living, these kinds -clueless- suggestions get under my skin. Users/Clients will say, GEE make it work like Facebook, or make it work like gmail, etc, hey it can't be THAT hard! Oh yeah, and have it ready by next tuesday.

Riiiiight... People have no idea what all is involved from an engineering standpoint, and I'm tired of it. Just because its easy to use does not mean it's easy or CHEAP to build.

end rant.