gochatmail

README

gochatmail

A chatmail server written in Go, based on the original Python implementation.

What is this?

I want to improve my skills with Go, and I think that it would be good for everyone if it were much easier to deploy a chatmail server. Imagine if you could stand up a chatmail server for you and your friends in 30 minutes or less with minimal technical knowledge. Maybe this would help put a dent in the market shares of services like Discord and WhatsApp. I don't think I can get it to be as easy as the "new guild" button in Discord. I'm hoping that I can help make computing into a tool for creativity and expression again, instead of a tool for surveillance and control.

In order to make that happen, I'm building a Go implementation of the chatmail server components, wiring them up to the Go email server Maddy, and wrapping it all up with GoKrazy. This makes a Raspberry Pi image or x86 virtual machine image that you can deploy as a chatmail server very easily.

How do I use it?

This isn't anywhere close to ready yet. Once there is something runnable, I'll update this section with directions.

What's on the to-do list?

Deployment tooling

• Generate chatmail server sign-up/privacy webpages
• Check for correctly set-up chatmail DNS records
• Automatically configure DNS records with popular registrars (Cloudflare, Porkbun, Gandi, etc.)
• Build a clear, user-friendly UI for setting things up (maybe with bubbletea if that works well on Windows too, or possibly a cross-platform GUI toolkit like Qt)
• Build the deployment command that actually generates a GoKrazy image with everything in it

Chatmail server programs

• Implement milter to reject outgoing unencrypted email
• Implement SASL authentication plugin that creates accounts on first use
• Build a tiny web server that serves the sign-up/privacy webpages and obtains HTTP-01 LetsEncrypt certificates
• Build a TLS ALPN sniffing proxy to multiplex HTTP, SMTP, and IMAP on port 443 (for beating firewalls and increasing censorship resistance)
• Build inactive user cleanup process
• Build prometheus/openmetrics metrics endpoint
• Add /new endpoint to the tiny web server to generate new accounts automatically.
• Implement push notification support for iOS/Android

Testing

• CI of some description, so that I don't break it by accident
• Add more unit/integration tests, and check coverage metrics
• Test the documentation and UI with less technically-inclined friends to make sure that it is clear, understandable, and easy enough to use.

How do I help?

Open an issue or a PR!

What is the license?

MIT, as with the upstream project. See LICENSE.txt. Note that this project also follows the Delta Chat community standards and practices.