Ubuntu is under attack

[Matthew Garrett]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 07:43:26PM -0800, Mike Bird wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-12-20 at 18:24, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > 1) You can't just provide an email address. You also need to provide a 
> > smarthost.
> 
> For the typical consumer, that's the same host that they told
> Outlook Express to use for SMTP when they setup their Internet
> Account.

Assuming they did. Many people just use webmail nowadays.
 
> > 2) Many of our users won't have an email address, or indeed any sort of 
> > internet access
> 
> Are you arguing that Firefox and Evolution should be removed
> from the default install?  If not, how is this relevant?
>
> Mail can be delivered locally (or to /dev/null for those who
> prefer that).

Delivering the mail locally means that lots of people won't read it. So 
it's necessary to have a mechanism to notify people that doesn't depend 
on them opening a terminal and typing "mail".
 
> > 4) It's an extra couple of questions on install that would only benefit 
> > a tiny number of users
> 
> Most people have working email.  Everyone on this list has
> working email.  I don't actually know of any Linux user that
> doesn't use email, although I concede the possibility that a
> small number of such users exist.

This list is gatewayed to ubuntuforums.org, so that's an assertion 
without evidence.
 
> > As I said, a better approach would be to ensure that notification 
> > reaches the users it needs to reach independently of email. I think 
> > that's achievable.
> 
> How?  Why?
> 
> When your Uncle's PC has a problem, would you rather get an
> email in your inbox or would you rather have your Uncle read
> it to you over the phone from a notification bubble?  I've
> had far too many of those calls from Windows users - I don't
> want to start getting them from Ubuntu users too.

If I'm able to deal with my uncle's technical problems at that sort of 
level, I'm able to install postfix, configure it as an internet site and 
get it to email me. It's a tiny amount of work compared to the work 
involved in actually supporting him. 

> What does your notification system NOT do that email CAN
> do - including local and remote routing (or routing to
> /dev/null) and reliable queuing?

It ensures that the information is actually provided to the user, which 
just depending on traditional Unix mail doesn't.

Just in case you're in any doubt - if important information is being 
generated by the system, it is not acceptable for that information to be 
dropped in a file in /var/spool that many users will never interact with 
in any way. The assumption that people use the command line on a regular 
basis is no longer true. The "alternative" of sending it to their 
existing email account is also unworkable, because it means adding 
difficult* configuration questions to the installer.

There is a problem here, but postfix doesn't solve it. If you're 
interested in helping to specify a solution that /does/ solve it, then 
that would be excellent and worthy of discussion on ubuntu-devel. 

* And potentially unanswerable - one of the UK's biggest ISPs doesn't 
provide an SMTP smarthost, and blocks outgoing port 25. How is postfix 
supposed to get important notification mails to their webmail account?
-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org