Firstly, this is basically a standard UNIXy virtual mail solution with RoundCube chucked on the top. Nothing special. Does not deserve the manifesto spew. You can get this solution canned by just installing this on your own kit: http://www.iredmail.org/ (or build it yourself). Or you can get it at WebFaction and many other hosters for a small fee. You can even stick it behind your firewall and IDS on your DMZ and rejoice!
I very much doubt anyone who throws this out in no time at all actually has the capacity or planning to operate a virtual mail system. I planned and ran an 80k-user (not many!) exim/cyrus outfit for an ISP and it was a full time job and it required some serious kit at the time. To give you an idea, we had 2 SMTP front ends, COTS NFS appliance for mailboxes, 2 IMAP servers, 2 web servers, tape library, 2 redundant LDAP servers, dedicated UPS etc. The lowest CPU at the time was a dual Xeon Pentium III. The whole thing was a full 42U rack and sucked up power. Even with the progress with virtualisation and storage etc, you're going to need big iron to shift email or run a free service like that.
I doubt the security of the solution. You don't know where it is hosted, there is no motivation (in the form of cash) to actually not puke your details everywhere, there is no SLA, the software may have been modified etc etc.
No thanks.
Edit: just to add that I really like the core idea and concepts but this cannot work in the real world of capitalism, the corporate-controlled Internet and the current global surveillance situation.
Comments
Some criticisms:
Firstly, this is basically a standard UNIXy virtual mail solution with RoundCube chucked on the top. Nothing special. Does not deserve the manifesto spew. You can get this solution canned by just installing this on your own kit: http://www.iredmail.org/ (or build it yourself). Or you can get it at WebFaction and many other hosters for a small fee. You can even stick it behind your firewall and IDS on your DMZ and rejoice!
I very much doubt anyone who throws this out in no time at all actually has the capacity or planning to operate a virtual mail system. I planned and ran an 80k-user (not many!) exim/cyrus outfit for an ISP and it was a full time job and it required some serious kit at the time. To give you an idea, we had 2 SMTP front ends, COTS NFS appliance for mailboxes, 2 IMAP servers, 2 web servers, tape library, 2 redundant LDAP servers, dedicated UPS etc. The lowest CPU at the time was a dual Xeon Pentium III. The whole thing was a full 42U rack and sucked up power. Even with the progress with virtualisation and storage etc, you're going to need big iron to shift email or run a free service like that.
I doubt the security of the solution. You don't know where it is hosted, there is no motivation (in the form of cash) to actually not puke your details everywhere, there is no SLA, the software may have been modified etc etc.
No thanks.
Edit: just to add that I really like the core idea and concepts but this cannot work in the real world of capitalism, the corporate-controlled Internet and the current global surveillance situation.