[HN Gopher] K-9 Mail is looking for funding
___________________________________________________________________
K-9 Mail is looking for funding
Author : BubuIIC
Score : 346 points
Date : 2021-02-14 11:38 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (k9mail.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (k9mail.app)
| spapas82 wrote:
| K-9 is a really great mail app for android! In my opinion it's
| the best app if you want to use a custom SMTP/IMAP server instead
| of using a solution like hotmail/google/etc.
|
| It also has PGP support (with the help of OpenKeyChain to manage
| certificates) that works great! There are no other well known
| solutions for applications supporting PGP in Android; this is
| huge.
|
| People that either want to avoid walled gardens or need proper
| encryption to their mail _need_ to support this project!
| cge wrote:
| >It also has PGP support (with the help of OpenKeyChain to
| manage certificates) that works great! There are no other well
| known solutions for applications supporting PGP in Android;
| this is huge.
|
| As a caveat here, at least in the non-beta version, support for
| PGP signatures is intentionally crippled because the original
| author dislikes them and apparently wants to push encryption
| (eg, https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/issues/2375), ignoring
| everyone who points out that this feature may be important or
| required by policy for them. By default, PGP signatures on
| unencrypted emails are silently hidden and the emails are
| displayed as being unsigned. There is no way to sign emails by
| default, and trying to sign an email results with a popup
| telling you not to.
| upofadown wrote:
| For clarity, the author doesn't like unencrypted but signed
| emails. Which strikes me as weird but at least it isn't
| something that people would normally do. They are OK with
| encrypted and signed emails and presumably encrypted but not
| signed emails. Here is the rationale:
|
| * https://k9mail.app/2016/11/24/OpenPGP-Considerations-
| Part-I....
|
| I think there are implementations out there that don't let
| you send encrypted but unsigned messages (anonymous
| encrypted). This stuff seems to bring out the enforced
| opinions in people.
| Arkanosis wrote:
| > the best app if you want to use a custom SMTP/IMAP server
| instead of using a solution like hotmail/google/etc
|
| IMHO, it's also the best if you're using Gmail: Google has been
| breaking its UIs for years (both on the app and on the web),
| especially for people like me who try to use proper quoting and
| signatures, or to send plain text emails. Apart from some
| glitches with reflow, K-9 does that very well even with Google
| as email provider.
|
| I can't compare against Microsoft products since I've never
| used them on mobile, but seeing how horrible Outlook is on the
| desktop for plain text emails (and that's not an hyperbole), I
| bet K-9 is better as well.
| 0x426577617265 wrote:
| One thing that confuses me about iOS devices is when a gmail
| account is added to the mail program. It isn't clear if it is
| adding SMTP/IMAP or if it is doing some web app type
| configuration and if that gives Google more access to track
| device activity.
| g_p wrote:
| This sounds like the modern OAuth-based sign-in flow (for
| IMAP and SMTP connections, authenticated by OAuth).
|
| This helps avoid app-specific passwords when you use 2FA,
| and lets users use their regular sign-in flow (which could
| include enterprise SSO, TOTP, U2F key etc).
|
| I imagine that there's the ability for Google to set some
| cookies as part of that process, although knowing Apple,
| would not be surprised to learn they had sandboxed that
| instance of the browser, to prevent cookies persisting into
| regular Safari.
| znpy wrote:
| jesus christ gmail is absolutely unusable both on the desktop
| and on mobile.
|
| the only way to make it usable again is to switch to the
| plain html mode, that uses no javascript, loads very fast,
| and reminds me a lot of the first gmail ui, back from ~15
| years go.
| nsriv wrote:
| I've really enjoyed using the Simplify Gmail extension when
| I use Gmail on desktop. Just launched a new v2 that's very
| nice.
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simplify-
| gmail/pbm...
| znpy wrote:
| I'm having none of that crap.
|
| Injecting non-google code inside my gmail window sounds
| like a very dumb idea to me, honestly.
|
| I already trust google very little and keep my gmail
| inbox because I'm basically being coerced/forced to (no
| gmail = no apps on android)... The last thing I want is
| adding another entity to the picture.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Imagine if they just used an SSE or mixed-replace to update
| the plain html version in real-time when messages are
| received without JS. But we can't have that (Google even
| unilaterally disabled mixed-replace in
| blink/Chrome/Chromium (except for continuing to support
| MJPEG) many, many years ago so no one else can do that
| either).
| znpy wrote:
| Imagine if they had just fu--ing kept gmail lean and
| slick as it was in the first days.
| edoceo wrote:
| What's a mixed-replace update?
| SilasX wrote:
| I'm a little miffed that this comment has a better explanation
| of "why I should care about K-9 Mail" than anything I could
| find from deliberately looking for that information on their
| site. The "about" page just talks about the team, and their
| blog posts, even the one "what's up with K-9?" just talk about
| release schedules.
| gifnamething wrote:
| The features are listed on the homepage
| cketti wrote:
| K-9 Mail never had a PR or marketing person. But help in that
| area would certainly be welcome.
|
| What information would you like to find on the website
| exactly?
| SilasX wrote:
| Just that by going to "about" I could find some "why K-9"
| page that explains what's great about it esp. compared to
| alternatives.
| Black101 wrote:
| I like FairEmail too... it also supports PGP.
|
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.faircode.email/
| Aachen wrote:
| I didn't know of this one, that looks really nice! Do you
| know why they chose to start over when K9 already existed for
| a long time (it says copyright 2018-2021 on the website), or
| is it a fork?
| g_p wrote:
| FairEmail was made from scratch, and has modern (from the
| ground up) sync logic, that works well with modern battery
| saving measures in Android. Push mail by default, and low
| power consumption during sync. I believe it actually works
| better than Gmail (which has the advantage of Google's push
| infrastructure) - FairEmail just uses IMAP idle (where
| possible).
|
| K9 originated in the old android AOSP email app, and I
| think the developer of FE wanted to cut loose from that and
| build it according to newer design patterns.
| hvdijk wrote:
| That one supposedly has source code available under GPL3 but
| despite GPL3 clause 9, which says "You are not required to
| accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the
| Program", presents the GPL3 as an EULA and refuses to run
| unless the user clicks "I agree".
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| Our of curiosity, has this been raised with the developer?
| hvdijk wrote:
| Not by me. The developer is, as far as I am aware, not
| doing anything illegal, and while F-Droid technically
| are, the developer as the copyright holder is the only
| one who could possibly take any action against it and is,
| I would expect, happier with F-Droid doing what they are
| doing now than with patching out the EULA acceptance
| screen.
| Schiphol wrote:
| I can't be any less of a lawyer, but that sounds OK to me.
| One is not required to accept the license merely by virtue
| of it's having been published under that license, but this
| is surely compatible with the author adding extra
| conditions to run their program if they so wish?
| hvdijk wrote:
| The copyright holder is not bound by the license granted
| to others, so in general is legally permitted to add any
| additional restrictions. However, as this particular
| additional restriction is not one of the additional
| restrictions that GPL3 section 7 permits, section 10
| applies to anyone other than the copyright holder, which
| states "You may not impose any further restrictions on
| the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this
| License." This is a problem for e.g. F-Droid's package,
| which is neither distributed by the author nor
| distributed in accordance with the terms of the GPL.
| Schiphol wrote:
| Thanks for enlightening me :)
| rlpb wrote:
| "I agree" is presumably shorthand for "I agree to the
| linked license", or in other words "I agree to the GPL3",
| or to expand that, "I agree that I am not required to
| accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of
| the Program". Since that's part of the GPL3 text.
|
| So I wouldn't worry about it.
| rajbot wrote:
| That page links to their GitHub:
|
| https://github.com/M66B/FairEmail
| mahmoudhossam wrote:
| I'm surprised there's no work being done on the UI on the
| roadmap, K-9 looks like an app from the "Ice Cream Sandwich" days
| of Android.
|
| With that being said, K-9 is the best Android app I've seen for
| mail that isn't made by Google.
|
| edit: it seems the work has already been done, thanks for the
| correction.
| [deleted]
| BubuIIC wrote:
| Have you looked at the beta versions yet? The UI was overhauled
| over basically the last 1.5 years and the points mentioned in
| the blog post are the bits missing to release that as a stable
| version (IMAP IDLE mostly):
| https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/releases
|
| I've been running the betas since more than a year without any
| problems whatsoever. (If you don't need push obviously)
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| I struggle to understand why there hasn't been a release for
| 1.5 years, especially with a ~full time dev.
|
| I definitely struggle to udnerstand why IMAP IDLE is critical
| for a release.
|
| Edit: Oh, probably a minSDK force - i.e. the cost of standing
| still in mobile development.
| Aachen wrote:
| What's a minsdk force? I know what minsdk is but the
| sentence doesn't compute for me
|
| Edit: oh, randomly spotted this:
|
| > A major factor was the API level requirement by Google
| Play. It required us to make changes to internals of the
| app in order to be able to publish updates via the Play
| Store.
|
| I don't get the problem. Why not do a release? If google
| doesn't want the hard work and updates yet, fine, you can
| still tag a new release and people can use f-droid,
| download the apk, whatever right? (I'm using it via
| f-droid, thought most people would be doing that since it's
| an open source client with graphics from the 2009, the kind
| of thing you only use as foss fan).
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| In order to release a new version to the appstores, both
| Google and Apple require a certain minimum version for
| the app to be compiled against.
|
| Historically, Apple gives you about a year before you
| have to compile against the latest SDK, and Google gave
| you a lot longer.
|
| However, recently, both have become more aggressive about
| requiring new versions to be compiled against the latest
| SDKs.
|
| Thus you can't do a "proper" release without moving up to
| the latest SDK.
|
| Compiling against the latest SDK often breaks things,
| especially for an app which does a lot of things in the
| background.
|
| This is part of the "cost of staying still" in mobile app
| development, which is both hard to predict, and can be
| very expensive.
| Aachen wrote:
| Does this also mean older devices are forced into
| obsolescence? Since this is minsdk and not maxsdk it
| sounds like it, but there's still many apps that run on
| my 2018 device with Android 7 (and even 2012 device with
| 4.4) so that can't really be.
| swanswan wrote:
| Well anyway older devices are indeed forced into
| obsolescence, at least OS-wise.
| distances wrote:
| No it doesn't. It's about targetSdk, not minSdk.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Sorry, yes, I mean targetSdk not minSdk - though in
| practice they are linked.
| distances wrote:
| No, they aren't linked. Maybe you are mixing it with
| compileSdk, that and targetSdk are usually linked but
| minSdk is almost always considerably behind.
| cketti wrote:
| > I definitely struggle to understand why IMAP IDLE is
| critical for a release.
|
| The functionality is present in the latest stable version,
| but needs to be reimplemented in the new version. As a user
| I would be upset if the app was updated and that feature
| taken away, even if it was only temporary.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Which leads to the question about why it was removed...
| rlpb wrote:
| Something to do with issues with newer Android no longer
| permitting the background connection to remain open for
| battery saving purposes, I think?
| zlynx wrote:
| I am not using the beta version of K-9. I was able to
| make it work mostly correctly on Android 11 by setting it
| to "Not Optimized" in the battery power permissions. That
| will allow it to run in the background. It seems to be
| able to use IDLE and to also run its periodic polling
| that way. Otherwise I would open K-9 and it would be
| hours out of date.
| out_of_protocol wrote:
| Is UI any different from current stable version?
| cketti wrote:
| Yes. This blog post contains a few screenshots:
|
| https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| I tried it from the Github releases page. It has definitely
| been updated a lot from the Play Store version.
| y04nn wrote:
| Thanks for the tip, the GitHub release makes a real
| difference compared to the outdated version on the Play
| Store. It's sad that there is not many reliable email client
| alternatives to GMail that works with custom server.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| You can subscribe to the beta channel on the play store,
| too
| rjzzleep wrote:
| I mostly agree, but I'm quite liking Fairemail [1]
|
| [1] https://github.com/M66B/FairEmail
| berkes wrote:
| I've moved to SimpleEmail, which is a fork of FairEmail.
| Donated to both though. SimpleEmail ripped out the donation
| part in their fork, which is their right under GPL, but not a
| nice move IMO. Main reason for me is the fast pace with which
| FairEmail was iterating. Often with breaking changes. I like
| my email app to be boring. Which FairEmail is, thanks.
|
| K9, to me, is just too much options and features. A lot of
| which needed tweaking and tuning, and were not something one
| could simply ignore.
| g_p wrote:
| FairEmail has (at least for me) reached a point of relative
| stability now - it's mostly iterative improvements and
| minor edge case/bug fixes.
|
| Good example, a recent release [1] fixes a couple of bugs
| that look to have originated from upstream Android
| projects, and added some new support for removal of
| "tracking" parameters from Facebook URLs.
|
| I'd agree with your comment that stripping out donations is
| "allowed", but "not nice" - I can only sympathize with the
| developer of FairEmail - it is clear he puts a huge amount
| of time into an app that has no "covert monetisation" like
| most apps.
|
| I was never particularly happy with other email apps and
| privacy (especially not the commercial closed source ones
| which receive your emails on their own server back-end, but
| keep this part quiet in their description, just to make
| push easier) - for me, at least, FairEmail delivers the
| same or better, but all entirely on-device. There's even
| some basic learning-based on-device support for sorting
| mail automatically into folders (spam, FYI stuff, etc).
| That's for me the spirit of FairEmail - doing what others
| do server-side, on-device, without spying.
|
| But it is clearly a challenge to make money from this, and
| I think (based on FAQs) that the developer has a struggle
| with those who think that everything should be free.
|
| No relation to the app, just a happy user that likes to pay
| for open source apps rather than become the "product".
|
| [1] https://github.com/M66B/FairEmail/releases/tag/1.1488
| Krasnol wrote:
| Tried to install it from F-Droid, didn't work.
|
| Installed it from Github, it wanted me to pay for putting a
| colour on my account(??) and it will remind me of something
| something.
|
| Nah man...don't do that if you actually want to sell a pro
| version. Just state it upfront and I will consider it.
| putting it in while I'm already adding an account and letting
| me read some long list of features I won't have if I continue
| right in the middle of the configuration is a dark pattern to
| me.
|
| They lost a potential customer here.
| freebuju wrote:
| Fairmail is not meant to be a free-to-use product. I very
| well remember checking their readME and almost immediately
| recognizing this fact.
|
| OTOH the "free-tier" is what attracts your interest as
| bait, probably accounts for the number of app installs
| visible on the store too etc.
| jorams wrote:
| The README has a single section about Pro features, and
| it starts with "All pro features are convenience or
| advanced features".
|
| That definitely looks like the non-pro version is meant
| to be a free-to-use product.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| I use the free version and happy with it.
| g_p wrote:
| I sympathise a lot with the developer here.
|
| > Tried to install it from F-Droid, didn't work.
|
| Developers get very little say in what version F-Droid
| builds and ships [1]. I think there are some very minor
| differences between the F-Droid build and the regular (open
| source) build when it comes to OAuth API keys - centralised
| mail providers often don't agree to the keys being used in
| those builds made by third parties.
|
| > Nah man...don't do that if you actually want to sell a
| pro version. Just state it upfront and I will consider it.
|
| Not really sure how much more the developer could do here
| to make it clear - the app description [2] states it
| contains in-app purchases (at the top). The 5th line of the
| description says "Almost all features are free to use, but
| to maintain and support the app in the long term, not every
| feature can be for free. See below for a list of pro
| features.", and there's a full list of pro feaatures lower
| down the description.
|
| Not really sure if I would agree this is a dark pattern as
| such - I've seen far worse store listings that don't call
| out "pro" features until you start using the app, and
| discover 90% of the advertised features are paid.
|
| Maybe I have more sympathy for open source developers, but
| I think it's getting increasingly difficult for them to
| compete with the commercial apps that are "free" (with data
| mining), or are paid. Looking at how regularly updated FE
| is, and how responsive the developer is, I imagine it could
| be a monthly paid subscription, based on how much time many
| people spend using email, and it would probably be more
| than worth it. Certainly looking at SV SaaS pricing, it
| feels that FairEmail is probably very much under-priced.
| And open-source too, so people really are just paying for
| convenience.
|
| Comparing it with hey's email service + client at 99
| USD/year, it's not easy for open source apps to compete,
| but it's in our collective interest for there to be good,
| credible open source options available.
|
| [1] https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-5-0-fairemail-
| fully-f... - commenting on not knowing when F-Droid will
| ship that version.
|
| [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.fairco
| de.em...
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| I don't know, the UI is good. I like the "Ice Cream Sandwich"
| look, honestly. I wonder if the time of an open-source project
| is best served by re-doing the UI just to keep up with trends.
| kgwxd wrote:
| I think it's rarely worth the effort, but eventually they're
| forced into it. I really hate the current mobile software
| ecosystem. Hope we get something like the xfce of mobile
| environments at some point where things don't really change
| for decades.
| gkya wrote:
| This is a very benign and positive UI change tbf. I say that
| as someone who heavily uses this app since many years and who
| is _very_ conservative w.r.t. software. I've switched to the
| beta and am really happy with it. Not just changed, really
| improved.
| [deleted]
| jerome-jh wrote:
| No, do not touch the UI. If the UI is changed I don't pay!
| (half joking ;)
| kgwxd wrote:
| Too late :) I just updated to the beta after I read about it
| in this thread. Seems like more clicks to jump around
| accounts, I have 3. I don't really care though, it's still
| better than any alternative.
| daptaq wrote:
| > I'm surprised there's no work being done on the UI on the
| roadmap, K-9 looks like an app from the "Ice Cream Sandwich"
| days of Android.
|
| TBH, that's actually a good thing. Material Design was a
| mistake.
| rglullis wrote:
| If the developer is checking this thread: take a look at the
| Brave Creators program. If you have an account there I will
| gladly add you to my list of regular contributions. Brave
| userbase is growing in and millions of users are receiving BAT
| which can them be used to support developers and content
| creators.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| How to create one super successful email client.
|
| - Support IMAP IDLE
|
| - Support all the major business platforms: Web, Windows, Mac,
| iOS, and Android.
|
| - Support email encryption on a one off basis as needed. Nothing
| fancy just encrypt the email with AES256. Don't worry I'll get
| the key to the reipient.
|
| Why this would be super successful.
|
| 1) It would eliminate instant messaging for most business use.
|
| 2) Consistency, simplicity and ease of support.
|
| 3) Contrary to popular opinion, 99 percent of business
| communication is not super secret stuff. It doesn't warrant the
| complexity of full time end to end encryption. But it is nice to
| bave it readily available for the 1 percent where it is really
| needed.
|
| And yes, I have used K9 personally and I will support it but it
| doesn't begin to meet my business needs.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| You can't do IMAP on iOS in the background.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Apple's inadequacy doesn't have to be universally applied.
| pabs3 wrote:
| I think support for IMAP NOTIFY scales better, since it is per-
| connection instead of per-folder.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| IDLE and NOTIFY kinda work together don`t they? In any case,
| all I really need is "instant" notification of new messages.
| cketti wrote:
| Probably not the right app for your use cases, but check out
| Delta Chat for an example of how unobtrusive email encryption
| can be:
|
| https://delta.chat/
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Delta Chat has a lot of good stuff.
|
| What I need and what I think most businesses need is Delta
| Email instead of Delta Chat.
| rakoo wrote:
| I think business doesn't actually want Email, it wants
| NNTP. The semantics are different enough that both models
| have a reason to exist and complement each other:
|
| - With email you write to a specific address. With NNTP you
| write to a group. In a business you almost always want to
| target multiple people, because activity is interesting
| (and relevant) to many people.
|
| - To solve that we have a hack that is mailing lists; they
| work, but still only allow people to receive content _if
| they were in the recipient list from the beginning_. With
| NNTP the actual users are abstracted from the recipient,
| which allows people to read content in a group _even in the
| past_, or unsubscribe from a group and not bo bothered by
| new content
|
| - Because it is ingrained in the protocol,
| creating/modifying/removing groups is easy to do, contrary
| to mailing lists. You don't need a special team to do that.
| Many times there is some content that needs to include
| multiple lists, but not everyone in those groups is
| relevant to the discussion... but you still include the
| different maliing lists because "that's the people who
| _might_ be interested". No more CC forwarding ad nauseam.
|
| - Side-effect of having well-defined groups: because groups
| are more fluid they match better to actual people, and so
| the groups becomes a good denominator of what the "mail"
| might be about and whether it is important or not (compared
| to a sender and 189 random recipients)
|
| Just look at the way the latest business IMs like Teams are
| working. They might not be perfect but they map much more
| to NNTP semantics, and have become the preferred way to
| communicate, even in long-ish form, rather than email.
|
| (They do have one big advantage over NNTP though: message
| editing)
|
| At this point, if a new software is needed anyway, we might
| as well ditch email and use a better protocol (even if it
| is not NNTP)
| folmar wrote:
| Message editing is supported over NNTP with Supersedes:
| header.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _I think business doesn 't actually want Email, it wants
| NNTP_
|
| Or how about just an email client with better support for
| mailing lists?
|
| The SMTP protocol supports multiple recipients adequately
| enough --- it's the client software that could stand some
| improvement to make it easier to apply/use.
| rakoo wrote:
| I thought it would be sufficiently explained in my
| message. Mailing lists don't fix that because there's no
| standardized protocl for creating, modifying and removing
| them. Moreover even if there was, if a user isn't part of
| the mailing list but wants to see some message someone
| needs to forward it. If a message was sent before you
| joined, too bad, you can't see it.
|
| Everything is just a very clunky experience made with
| ducktape and handmade scripts for something that can't
| even do all we want. It's totally normal that people
| flocked to other solutions.
| tlamponi wrote:
| FYI, two points from the Roadmap from the linked website:
|
| > IMAP IDLE - This is the last big item blocking the release of
| a new stable version.
|
| > Integrate Autocrypt support
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Yes, and these are welcome improvements.
|
| Unfortunately, they only apply to Android with K9.
|
| K9 would be much more popular if businesses could simply tell
| employees, "Use K9 for mail" or even "Use K9 for mobile
| email".
| stonesweep wrote:
| PSA: if you've not used it in awhile, use the betas via F-Droid:
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.fsck.k9/ You have to click
| "Versions" from the F-Droid app and specifically opt-in (and
| upgrade) the betas, F-Droid will default to installing the older
| stable version.
|
| The betas are almost night (mode heh) and day apart, the UI and
| operations have almost a complete overhaul from the old days and
| it looks (and works) really great on my Android 11 device. This
| isn't K-9 Mail on your T-Mobile G1 anymore, it's a brand new day
| for the betas.
| zufallsheld wrote:
| I just checked: you can access the beta program in the play
| store, too!
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| This is huge! Thanks for sharing.
| dr_hooo wrote:
| Thanks for the pointer - much improved indeed! I was getting
| the impression that development had ceased and never knew that
| F-Droid doesn't always install the latest available version.
| antibuddy wrote:
| It's a bit annoying that you can't make F-Droid auto-update
| to latest when the "suggested" is not the latest.
|
| The version is also split on GitHub[1] and I can only guess
| why.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/k9mail/k-9
| tubularhells wrote:
| Oh wow the beta looks nice. I'll test it and donate if it's
| something I'll change over to. Currently I use FairEmail, a
| Dutch opensource project done buy a local guy. It's good but it
| has some nuances and way too much granularity for my taste.
| [deleted]
| padraic7a wrote:
| K9 used to feel like a great app, but I think it has been
| creaking around the edges for a while.
|
| I've thrown in a few quid.
|
| There isn't anything to rival it so I hope it gets some more
| developer time.
| wizeman wrote:
| I've been using FairEmail (from F-Droid) and it works extremely
| well. Looks better and seems more reliable to me.
| padraic7a wrote:
| FairEmail puts some of it's features in a pro version only.
| Which is fine, I support developers getting paid to work, but
| in this case I would rather help crowd fund K9 which can
| offer these features to anyone - whether they can pay or not.
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| Was going to donate but there are no crypto payment options.
| elevation wrote:
| I use K9 for a small LLC, and would like to support the
| developer. My CPA advises that anonymous[1]/charitable
| contributions are not tax deductible business expenses. However,
| if the recipient publicly acknowledges your sponsorship, it's
| considered an "advertising" expense.
|
| To accept contributions from small corporations using your app,
| consider offering a low-friction non-charitable service such as a
| one-year placement on a "sponsors" page of your website, like
| (the Python Software Foundation does this for contributions of
| any amount. [0])
|
| Another option could be an annual per-user license (for
| organizations large enough that the person with a credit card
| wanting to support you cannot also influence the advertising
| budget.)
|
| If you're a solo developer, don't forget small businesses when
| considering how to raise funding!
|
| [0]: https://www.python.org/psf/donations/ [1]:
| https://liberapay.com/about/
| cketti wrote:
| I understand it's difficult for a company to give money to an
| open source project. But none of the options you've mentioned
| sound very appealing to me.
|
| GitHub displays the avatars of sponsors. Maybe that's an option
| that satisfies the "acknowledges sponsorship" criterion?
| https://github.com/sponsors/cketti
| fxtentacle wrote:
| They could release a paid upgrade that allows you to
| customize the splash screen to show your company logo
|
| That's clearly advertisement and paying extra to have your
| logo on a product is an established business practice.
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| You could also sell access to some "extra documentation". It
| doesn't have to be particularly useful or add any value at
| all, it just has to be there. You could probably go as "far"
| as just writing a two-page rundown of IMAP or something.
| Maybe even put it online for free and sell access to a PDF.
| The point is there's a tangible "benefit".
|
| This does not apply solely to taxation, but also what is an
| easy sell to management.
|
| All of this is extra administrative work that understandably
| you don't want to deal with, but it may open the door to
| significantly more sponsorships, so it could be worth looking
| into.
|
| Disclaimer: I am neither a lawyer nor a CPA.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Fully agree. Nobody is going to ask about me purchasing a
| monthly license or a monthly recurring advertisement slot with
| company money. But monthly donations are a PITA with regards to
| taxes and you run a risk of having to pay taxes on them as if
| they had been pure profit.
|
| So give me a way to "purchase" and I'll be happy to donate.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Love this app. Recently, it became less and less usable, with
| deal breaker bugs like mails not sending reliably or at all.
|
| So I'm going to donate, because this app is fantastic and I
| really want it to keep existing.
| bogwog wrote:
| I remember using K-9 when I got my first (or second?) Android
| phone. I don't remember the exact version, but it was probably
| pre-ICS. I do remember that I liked it a lot.
|
| Fast forward to a couple of years ago, I tried the app again and
| was disappointed at how it looked basically identical to the last
| time I tried it. Seeing that, I just assumed it became
| abandonware.
|
| Does this fund raiser mean I was wrong, and the app was always
| under development, or that it was recently revived?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Try the beta. It was a new UI.
| kgwxd wrote:
| The release version is from 2018 but I just found out about the
| beta version in this thread, which looks more modern, not sure
| how modern though, just about every app I use looks different,
| so I'm not sure what today's standards are. I've been using it
| for at least 5 years without much issue.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I used K-9 back in my Android days (5+ years ago). It's biggest
| weakness was, and to my knowledge, still is, inability to support
| modern OAuth authentication schemes that Google and Microsoft
| have largely switched to. Sometimes I get a notification from a
| comment on the GitHub issue still.
|
| It used to be able to connect to Exchange servers, but hasn't
| been able to for nearly a decade.
| m-chrzan wrote:
| What exactly do you need this for? If it's for authenticating
| with their IMAP/SMTP, app passwords have worked for me with
| Gmail, even on 2FA-secured G Suite accounts. No idea about
| Microsoft though.
| folmar wrote:
| You can't get them on _non_ 2fa gsuite for example .
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Exchange administrators usually disable IMAP. K-9 originally
| was one of the few apps that could still talk to Exchange
| servers. But it's failed to keep up with the times.
|
| Currently you have to allow "less secure apps" on your Google
| account to use K-9.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| Outlook supports app passwords too.
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/using-
| ap...
| soheil wrote:
| I wanted to give a quick shoutout to Hey [0] while giving K-9 a
| potential solution. Hey is fiercely approaching email like no
| other email client has in decades. It is a fundamental shift in
| the way we interact with email. For anyone who hasn't tried it,
| you're missing out on what email can be. They have a free trial
| but it isn't free nor is it ad supported or backed by a VC, which
| brings me to the point about funding. You shouldn't be sorry
| about charging your customers or feel only if some investor would
| give you money all your problems would go away. I gladly pay for
| Hey because it solves a real problem elegantly, sure it's not
| perfect, I still have to have my gmail on the side as sort of a
| backend to my email experience, but the problems it solves are
| well worth paying for. So if K-9 provides real value where no
| other email client provides the same level of value then their
| users should be more than happy to pay for it, I know I would.
| But if it provides some esoteric feature like PGP where even
| those who use it don't really know why they do and most certainly
| would not pay for then sure maybe you do need outside funding.
|
| [0] hey.com
| NikxDa wrote:
| While I really enjoy Hey, I think a $99 per year price tag is
| insane. You'll likely use your email for tens of years to come,
| so that's multiple thousands of dollars for a software that
| doesn't need to change. Running a mailserver isn't expensive,
| either. It could as well be an email client with a one-time
| payment, in my opinion. Would I pay $99 once and use it with my
| existing providers? Sure! Would I pay yearly and switch all my
| emails so that I am basically trapped inside a subscription?
| No...
| soheil wrote:
| Running email isn't expensive neither is breathing air while
| walking to work, but that misses the point. They had to build
| a product to make email less crazy that has real value and it
| takes massive effort and creativity.
| btittelbach wrote:
| K-9 Mail is like, the _only_, sane e-Mail Android app out there.
| Pitching in for sure.
| GordonS wrote:
| Not the _only_ one - I started using Nine a year ago, after
| switching from something else that has been abandoned (I forget
| the name, but I 'd been using it for years because it supported
| bypassing Exchange security lock down).
|
| Absolutely love Nine - it works marvellously with my own IMAP
| and SMTP servers, my work O365 etc. And _everything_ in the UI
| is configurable. I think Nine is actually the _only_ Android
| app I 've ever actually paid for - highly recommended it.
| stonesweep wrote:
| I have licenses for both Nine and AquaMail with the same
| purpose (operates with work-required MFA via
| O365+adfs+RSASecureID token) and would highly encourage you
| to look at AquaMail. If you thought Nine was configurable,
| hold on to your hat - AquaMail is all that and more, I highly
| prefer AquaMail to Nine for business email.
| rkagerer wrote:
| I've been using Nine for ages and it's great*. How well
| does AquaMail work with Exchange / ActiveSync?
|
| (*My only real complaint about Nine is if I try to import
| more than a few months worth of email history into the
| local cache it slows to a crawl and starts breaking. I'd
| pay for an app that locally indexes a few tens of GB of
| email history and makes it instantly searchable.)
| stonesweep wrote:
| I'm afraid I've never used it with direct Activesync; my
| Exchange connection has always been EWS/OWA-based
| (whatever they call the web endpoint now in O365 hosted
| Exchange).
| pmontra wrote:
| I've been using K-9 since forever, maybe since 2011 if it's as
| old as that. I don't need any new feature, all I need is that it
| downloads mail from POP3 accounts. Manual pull only, customers
| already send me push messages on Slack ;-) Still I'm donating
| some money because I want that it keeps working on new Android
| versions.
| jonquark wrote:
| I've not donated through Liberapay before but this prompted me to
| donate to k9-mail and in turn after poking around on Liberapay
| for a bit, I've set up small recurring donations to other OSS
| that I use (like GIMP).
| normaler wrote:
| I really love K9 Mail. I startend donating 5EUR per month now.
|
| What I love the most is how easy it is to sort E-Mail and to
| actually use existing Folderstructures.
|
| I almost dont need a desktop client anymore to handle my mail.
| jdboyd wrote:
| I sometimes wish k9mail was available on the desktop.
| tubularhells wrote:
| Yeah, Thunderbird is a mess. I wish we had something better.
| folmar wrote:
| Try alpine. It is very similar in spirit, save for the lack
| of GUI.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| i recently started getting into selfhosting email and k9 mail was
| the goto app for android. i first got the f-droid version but
| switched to github beta version and the experience has been
| awesome
| ntnsndr wrote:
| Switched to FairEmail and never looked back. Just a beautiful
| piece of software.
| toyg wrote:
| Is there an equivalent for iOS? I'm currently using Outlook,
| which does all the basic stuff very well, but I'd like something
| a bit more "power user"...
| cptnapalm wrote:
| I was running local mail on my main machine called "Brainmachine"
| after a computer in the old 1960s Dalek comic strip. Looking
| around for an Android program to access it, I found K-9.
| Serendipity.
| Fnoord wrote:
| I can recommend K-9 fork p[?]p [1] which has material design.
|
| [1] https://pep.security
| michw wrote:
| i use it on a daily basis. amazing!
| Arkanosis wrote:
| K-9 is one of these programs I use every day, several times per
| day. And among these programs, one of the (rare) ones that have
| never needed any care from me: it just works, and has kept
| working for years.
|
| That being said, there are lots of things that could be improved
| upon the current release version (especially wrt search), and I
| understand that just keeping up with the Android ecosystem is not
| a small task.
|
| I've just set up a small recurring donation. It's more than worth
| it.
| amaccuish wrote:
| And I am afraid, for the sake of my battery, if it doesn't
| support ActiveSync, it won't happen.
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