***POSSIBLE SPAM*** Is webmail a service as a software substitute (SaaSS)?

No it's not, because you're not doing your own computing on the server. On the other hand, the web interface might require nonfree JS, so you should use an email client in that case.

Technically, yes. Service becomes a substitute for Software in whatever you use it for instead of software that you control. You can use a client to fetch, write and manage your e-mails and contacts, but the messages are still being stored on someone else's server. Therefore, using your own client does give you control over some things, but most of the process still goes through the server.

I personally do use a mail service. I don't consider SaaSS by itself to be as bad as proprietary software. Taking someone's freedom away is never good and doing so can and does have severe far-stretched consequences. However, not everyone can afford or knows how to set up and manage their own mail server. Then some people offer them services of mail hosting. Some of those are bad (most of them are), while some of those can be nice, respect the users and follow noble ideals (Riseup, OpenMailBox?). That still doesn't make them good, yes, but I wouldn't call them evil. We should try to regain control over all our services, but these are an acceptable temporary solution for me.

TL;DR: Yes, mail services are SaaSS. If you use a good one, it's acceptable when better options are not accessible. In my opinion, that is.

In my opinion, yes.

The exception is when you run your own email server with webmail. That's the best solution all-round, actually. Check out Mailpile.is for an up-and-coming project that's tackling this problem.

Technically since your personal email will be stored on an external server you could say that, however I don't believe it is the same as say.. using "cloud" apps. I personally have an email server set up that my family uses though I do use an external service for an alternate email address I check less frequently.

Also the FSF has a list of approved webmail systems (I personally use openmailbox.org for my alternate address) so that may be worth looking in to. Ideally, yes, it is best to host your own server but that isn't always a realistic option.

you can run your own email server btw

I have a website and email server through namecheap. I'm very happy with
their service. Recently, though, I switched over to Trisquel and along
with that Icecat. Now the Namecheap website won't function completely
unless I approve a bunch of nonfree js, which I don't want to do.

I once built a VPS and managed my own website and email server, but my
email was constantly being abused by spam accounts. I don't fully
understand how it happened. But when I chatted with people on IRC I got
scolded for running my own email server if I didn't know what I was
doing, because I was contributing to the spam problem.

I would love to run all of that stuff on my home computer, but there's
two main things stopping me.

#1 Is I simply haven't got the bandwidth to pull it off.

#2 I'm afraid of exposing the rest of my computer which is relatively
secure because I'm running a webserver, etc. that I really haven't got
the skills to keep secure, especially when you allow third parties to
contribute content and comments on my blog, etc.

I hope that someday in the future there will be new and easy ways to put
up websites, ways that are decentralized and secure and as easy enough
for grandma to do.

I'm already very hopeful about Bitmessage. I can't wait for the day that
it's in the Trisquel repo. That, to me, seems like an amazing way for
individuals to easily engage in safe and ethical email. Now we just need
something for blogs.

I mean, SaaSS is when you do your computing on someone else's computer (Like Google Docs), while something that has to do with communicating with people (Like this forum, IMing, webmail) is not you doing your computing on someone else's computer.
Webmail is not SaaSS.
However, I do recommend hosting your own email server, as webmail does bring up some privacy issues and such. Or you could use webmail, if that doesn't concern you too much.

Does anyone still use Roundcube on their own servers? http://roundcube.net/download

Hi Adonay,

Congratulations on your student club!

A year or two ago, we talked about making a guide for beginners, but then we both got busy with school. I typed up some rough material ... it's gfdl so you can use/adopt it for your new club if you like.

liberationserif.com

Good luck,

M

What about Bitmessage? Would that be a SaaSS? You store a part of the encrypted database, but not all of it so you can't say that someone else is not storing your encrypted email until you fetch it from the network (from what I understand, please someone with more knowledge on Bitmessage give us some insight).

Hmm it's a difficult question.
I also wonder if actually using a normal mail provider is SaaSS (in contrast to running your own).
I mean, the job your mail provider is doing could be done on your own computer, you just have to install the right libre program, right?
On the other hand, though i don't know much about the technical structure of the internet, i believe your email has to pass a lot of servers anyway, even if you send it with your own mail server.
So it comes down to the question if you want to subdivide the process of sending an email into smaller parts or just take it as one single process.
You can't have email contact to another person just with your own computer, but you could do some parts of it.

There should be more effort on making home email servers easy to install and use. A home email server would barely require any bandwidth or processing power.

The same as most people have home WiFi routers running 24/7, we should instead have small, cheap and low-powered computers running GNU. Those kind of computers should be capable of functioning as a WiFi router (and much better!) and also have servers for email, web, XMPP, federated social networking and anything you want to install.

We seem to have the hardware needed for this (single board computers), but not the software. We need an OS that makes this easy to manage.

JadedCtrl:
> something that has to do with communicating with people (Like this forum, IMing, webmail) is not you doing your computing on someone else's computer.
Webmail is not SaaSS.

An email service and instant messaging aren't a web forum. The point of a forum is that your messages are made public one a specific website - you so everyone can read your posts.

With email and IM your messages typically aren't for everyone read, they are private. Also, you with email and IM you communicate with people who aren't part of a specific site, so being dependent on someone (like Google) becomes an issue.

quantumgravity:
> On the other hand, though i don't know much about the technical structure of the internet, i believe your email has to pass a lot of servers anyway, even if you send it with your own mail server.
> So it comes down to the question if you want to subdivide the process of sending an email into smaller parts or just take it as one single process.
You can't have email contact to another person just with your own computer, but you could do some parts of it.

That's not how it works. If you and I both have an email server, we can send exchange messages without them passing through any other servers. Well, the messages should still be encrypted between the servers, since all information on the Internet goes through third parties such as ISP companies. That's why we use TLS.

quantumgravity:
> I think it makes more sense to ask: Would i be able to avoid giving away control over my data if i use a program on my own computer instead of using this service?
> Because that's what it's all about, right? Control, and therefore freedom;
When it comes to email, the answer is no, both for webmail and mail server.

Can't agree with this conclusion. When people use their own email servers, they gain privacy and independence from email server providers. Hence, they gain control and freedom!