[steering-discuss] libreoffice.org e-mail accounts

Hello,

I received the offer from a well-known German e-mail solutions provider, that they would take care of hosting the @libreoffice.org e-mail forwarders for us, including the development of a web interface so users can maintain their forwardings.

I don't want to disclose the name at the moment as I want their OK to do so, but in general, does anyone see issues with having someone external taking care of that?

It is solely about the members @libreoffice.org forwarders, not about the mailing lists or @documentfoundation.org addresses, so I would like to take it, as it will take a great burden from us.

Thoughts?

Florian

Hi Florian,

I received the offer from a well-known German e-mail solutions provider,
that they would take care of hosting the @libreoffice.org e-mail
forwarders for us, including the development of a web interface so users
can maintain their forwardings.

  A Free software solution, for which they do the maintenance ? and of
course, where the data and software is available to TDF in case we want
to migrate away from that ? and where there are no random corporate
adverts on the pages ? etc. etc.

  It'd be nice to have more details.

  ATB,

    Michael.

Hi,

Hi Florian,

> I received the offer from a well-known German e-mail solutions
> provider, that they would take care of hosting the @libreoffice.org
> e-mail forwarders for us, including the development of a web
> interface so users can maintain their forwardings.

  A Free software solution, for which they do the maintenance ?
and of course, where the data and software is available to TDF in
case we want to migrate away from that ? and where there are no
random corporate adverts on the pages ? etc. etc.

  It'd be nice to have more details.

Yes, and on top of that, we should ask them whether they support the
webfinger protocol (wrt unhosted storage, for the future).

Best,

Dear Florian,

If they offer only forwarding, it is also very important to have an SMTP
server to send E-Mails from the same @libreoffice.org address.

Cheers!

Jaime

Hi Jaime, *,

Dear Florian,

If they offer only forwarding, it is also very important to have an SMTP
server to send E-Mails from the same @libreoffice.org address.

Hmm - why would that be important?
All email-services I know, especially the ones you get from your ISP
allow to use any email-address to send from, some after some kind of
verification that the address belongs to you, some just because you
agreed to some terms of service.

ciao
Christian

Because some E-Mail servers that receive E-Mails from other E-Mails servers
that are not verified with the proper domain, will be blocked
or classified as SPAM. At least that's my experience, I have my own domain
and when I sent E-Mails from my gmail account using my own domain E-mail,
many people told me the E-Mail was classified as spam. As soon as I
configured my domain with Google Apps, the problem was solved.

Maybe I'm wrong or I did something incorrectly, but at least that was my
experience. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Cheers!

Jaime

Hi,

  A Free software solution, for which they do the maintenance ?

Yep. Based on Postfix, probably amavis, ClamAV and other parts of the LAMP stack. They're doing OSS consulting. Will ask if I may make their offer public and mention their name. :slight_smile:

and of course, where the data and software is available to TDF in
case we want to migrate away from that ? and where there are no
random corporate adverts on the pages ? etc. etc.

Yes, and yes.

Yes, and on top of that, we should ask them whether they support the
webfinger protocol (wrt unhosted storage, for the future).

Never heard of that protocol. Do you have any details?

Florian

Hi,

Because some E-Mail servers that receive E-Mails from other E-Mails servers
that are not verified with the proper domain, will be blocked
or classified as SPAM. At least that's my experience, I have my own domain
and when I sent E-Mails from my gmail account using my own domain E-mail,
many people told me the E-Mail was classified as spam. As soon as I
configured my domain with Google Apps, the problem was solved.

Maybe I'm wrong or I did something incorrectly, but at least that was my
experience. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

it depends. :slight_smile:

If the sending mail server is safely configured otherwise (i.e. not blacklisted, ideally whitelisted, PTR records do match etc., the things any postmaster has to know about), then it should be no problem, given that two factors are met:

1. No SPF records configured, or configured with ?all
2. No DKIM records configured, or configured with (IMHO) dkim=unknown

Otherwise, mails would be classified as spam indeed. We made quite good experience in the past: Many of us used their @openoffice.org accounts, but there was no official SMTP server. Worked like a charm, as neither DKIM nor SPF was configured within the openoffice.org domain name.

Florian

Hi Florian,

>> A Free software solution, for which they do the maintenance ?

Yep. Based on Postfix, probably amavis, ClamAV and other parts of the
LAMP stack. They're doing OSS consulting. Will ask if I may make their
offer public and mention their name. :slight_smile:

  Sounds great to me.

>> and of course, where the data and software is available to TDF in
>> case we want to migrate away from that ? and where there are no
>> random corporate adverts on the pages ? etc. etc.

Yes, and yes.

  Perfect for me :slight_smile: Great to have such guys helping out building our
community ! :slight_smile:

  ATB,

    Michael.

Hi,

>> A Free software solution, for which they do the
>> maintenance ?

Yep. Based on Postfix, probably amavis, ClamAV and other parts of the
LAMP stack. They're doing OSS consulting. Will ask if I may make
their offer public and mention their name. :slight_smile:

>> and of course, where the data and software is available to TDF in
>> case we want to migrate away from that ? and where there are no
>> random corporate adverts on the pages ? etc. etc.

Yes, and yes.

> Yes, and on top of that, we should ask them whether they support the
> webfinger protocol (wrt unhosted storage, for the future).

Never heard of that protocol. Do you have any details?

Yes. This protocols helps to store data other than emails (for instance
it could be used to store documents, see the works from the unhosted
project). Implementing webfinger is perhaps already done (Gmail and
Yahoo implement it), it's just an obscure stuff no one really has heard
about but it could be of perennial importance.

Best,
Charles.

Hi,

Yes. This protocols helps to store data other than emails (for instance
it could be used to store documents, see the works from the unhosted
project). Implementing webfinger is perhaps already done (Gmail and
Yahoo implement it), it's just an obscure stuff no one really has heard
about but it could be of perennial importance.

I never heard about it, and I doubt that it is even available for simple e-mail forwarders. We will not *store* user's e-mails, but rather *forward* them to their real account. So, at least mid-term, for the @libreoffice.org forwarding service, I doubt webfinger will be important. I we plan to have something like an hosted or cloud solution, it might get important later on. :slight_smile:

Florian

Ah, then I might have misunderstood the initial proposal
completely! :slight_smile: I thought this provider was offering us actual
mailboxes. But in any case, it's always good to ask them about the
protocol...

best,
Charles.

Hi,

Ah, then I might have misunderstood the initial proposal
completely!:slight_smile: I thought this provider was offering us actual
mailboxes. But in any case, it's always good to ask them about the
protocol...

oh, no, right now, we've only been talking about mail forwarders. :slight_smile: I guess we should leave it that way, and if we move onto hosted e-mail, cloud and the like, we should re-investigate.

Florian

Hi,

Von: Florian Effenberger <floeff@documentfoundation.org>

I never heard about it, and I doubt that it is even available for simple
e-mail forwarders. We will not *store* user's e-mails, but rather
*forward* them to their real account. So, at least mid-term, for the
@libreoffice.org forwarding service, I doubt webfinger will be
important. I we plan to have something like an hosted or cloud solution,
it might get important later on. :slight_smile:

As long as we do not have the foundation in legal terms, we should be
very carefull in partnering with external parties when it comes
to storing data. German law is very strict when it comes to storing
private data (there has been some discussions that even storing
IP addresses might be considered as private date, as it can be used
to identify a person).

So - mail forwarding should be ok (there should be a written agreement,
that no traffice data gets stored or archived).

For all the rest we should wait until we have the foundation. Not
speaking on behalf of OOoDeV here, but I'd like to prevent this risk
for the association.

regards,

André

Hi,

As long as we do not have the foundation in legal terms, we should be
very carefull in partnering with external parties when it comes
to storing data. German law is very strict when it comes to storing
private data (there has been some discussions that even storing
IP addresses might be considered as private date, as it can be used
to identify a person).

So - mail forwarding should be ok (there should be a written agreement,
that no traffice data gets stored or archived).

For all the rest we should wait until we have the foundation. Not
speaking on behalf of OOoDeV here, but I'd like to prevent this risk
for the association.

thanks for raising this, and I absolutely agree. From a legal and technical perspective, now it is the wrong time to issue @libreoffice.org accounts. I, however, heard lots of people demanding it, so I wanted to be at least prepared to give them to our registered members.

If it can wait until the foundation has been legally established, that would be even better, of course.

Florian