[jerf]

"We have never really even tried to address problem 1 as an open source community. Networks, name lookup, and VPNs remain incredibly complex topics that beginners cannot hope to wrestle with."

I kinda disagree. It's probably easier than ever to set up your own mail server, in some abstract sense. You can get a virtual machine, use docker, heck, someone can hand you a complete image that you just have to bring up and set up with some config.

The problem is, it literally doesn't matter how much the 'open source' community comes together, it simply can not provide a turn key solution as good as

     Desired email account: [________]@gmail.com
     Password:              [________]
     Verify Password:       [________]
     [X] I agree to have all my data used in arbitrary ways

It's not possible. There is no way to set up a server that easily, even in principle.

Or at least, not in a sane way. I can set up a site where you feed me your credit card number and pick a domain name, and I set up your AWS account for you, register your DNS name for you, configure DNS, and stand up everything you need and set it all up... but then we've got a split ownership interest. I can hand it all back to you, but you don't understand the setup. I can give you root on the system, but when you change anything, my automation stops working.

[ryukafalz]

>It's not possible. There is no way to set up a server that easily, even in principle.

I partially agree, but I think we could get a lot closer than we are now. It feels like the main reason this isn't possible is because you need to go through a registrar to get a DNS name, and that's tricky to do as part of a FOSS project. Maybe you could integrate with the APIs of a few registrars, but... it's not ideal.

As far as the "run thing on server" side of it goes, though, projects like Sandstorm[0] have gotten really far re: making it a simple process. I stood up this instance of Etherpad with a few clicks on a web UI, for example: https://sandstorm.terracrypt.net/shared/aR2HXaoLSkLuXLhhAQon...

Sandstorm in particular doesn't quite work for mail servers just because the software is heavily oriented towards webapps, but there's no reason a similar system couldn't work in principle.

[0] https://sandstorm.io/

[jerf]

The involuntary back burner started designing "how would I set this up as a business", and I definitely ended up with setting up docker containers. Sandstorm, unfortunately, is an example of being a bit too ahead of its time... sandstorm has a lot of stuff in it that just isn't that big an advantage to me vs. being in a Docker container. (I'm aware of at least some of the differences, but... it's just not that helpful to me for the most part.)

I think something that could be like sandstorm but using docker containers might be a good thing, but there's still the "you need to hand me your credit card if you want me to register a domain for you" which is a big barrier vs. the screen I showed above. A credit card off the top is already 4-6 entry fields, and everyone knows to be a bit nervous about entering those....

[Avamander]

> It feels like the main reason this isn't possible is because you need to go through a registrar to get a DNS name

I can't agree, getting a domain is much easier than it is to configure the abysmal shit that is Postfix+Dovecot+WebGUI. God forbid you want proper search as well.

[ryukafalz]

Basically all of that could be done programmatically though. There are sane defaults that can be used for these things; projects like Mail-in-a-Box do most of that heavy lifting for you. (When all you want is a basic SMTP/IMAP/webmail server... a standard config can work just fine.) It doesn't even necessarily have to be done through a command line.

What can't so easily be done programmatically is DNS registration, because it involves money changing hands and there's no standard "registrar API". You'd have to either support an arbitrary number of differently-shaped APIs of different registrars or pick a "blessed few" to support.

[tracker1]

Realistically, you could support half a dozen DNS providers and get a LONG way towards making it easier to roll your own.

GoDaddy, GCP/google=domains, AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean and a couple others would provide enough for a LOT of people. Especially since godaddy and google domains include dns, and DO doesn't charge for it.

I've setup a script to make it easier to manage a handful of dev domains (commit to a repo, and it updates via build/event pipeline) with DO.. was surprisingly easy. I don't think doing similar for the biggest cloud/dns providers would be all that hard to integrate.