It is literally one of the last free and open channels on the Internet – I suggest you work on supporting its use and keeping it that way rather than moving to something controlled for profit or data harvesting.

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SoftTalker 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It being free and open is exactly what the big providers can't stand and why they are coming up with ever more "standards" that are complex to configure as well as "reputation" scores that are hard for small senders to clear.

Also why they do non-standard stuff like accepting mail but then simply not delivering it, rather than bouncing it.

	▲	nine_k 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		DMARC is not hard. "Reputation scores" and blacklists / greylists started in late 1990s / early 2000s as multiple grassroots efforts when spam started to overwhelm systems. Gmail did not exist, outlook.com did not exist, it was easy and expected to run your own SMTP (which I did). And it was very unpleasant. DMARC appeared 10 if not 15 years ago. There's no reason for a sane MTA configuration not to have it.
	▲	expedition32 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Microsoft has provided free email addresses to the public for decades.

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pixl97 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There is no such thing as a free and open channel on the internet that will not suffer the tragedy of the commons.

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anonymous908213 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Calling it a "free and open channel" when 80% of consumers are on Microsoft/Google addresses that control who can deliver e-mail is laughable. It's dead, Jim.

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urbandw311er 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Fair point - I meant free in the sense that the protocol is open. I didn’t mean that it’s not under threat.

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stephbook 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You seem to miss the point WHY customers go there. I, for one, switched when I realized Google filters spam effectively.

	▲	theK 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That WHY seems to only address a very small slice of the market. Some other WHYs I've encountered - it was a way to outsource the mail server administration and already free in our corporate package Which is pretty much all I have from the corporate side. On the personal or small business side its most often - I don't really care that much about running my own stuff - I needed a personal email address All these are valid reasons/motivations but none explicitly argue that email messaging should become proprietary.