Your state of the project post has me thinking about Freemail- I think that the system is a really nice idea, and I love the fact that you can connect to a standard Mail client, but I think it might be best to retire the system in favor of a modified version of Freetalk.
The primary reason I favor using a modified Freetalk board for email is that it is recycles a lot of what people are already using- You don't need to create one identity to post to the boards, and then a whole separate identity for email.. You don't need to get used to posting to the boards via web interface, and then switch to, and configure Thunderbird in order to do messaging back and forth. This lowers the barrier of entry to users adopting/using the system. I propose that the Freetalk system could be extended to replace the Freemail client entirely, by having each user publish a forum with all of their outgoing mail, and the email "client" for other users would subscribe to it, checking for messages addressed to them. This eliminates spam in the same way that FMS does- Since you are only receiving messages from those people you opt-in to receive from, they can't send unwanted solicitations. If you wanted to support receiving mail from people who you haven't talked to before (which is entirely unnecessary, IMO), you could check a message board for your identity that anyone could post to, and approve senders, just like you do for any other forum. It can be thought of as akin to following someone on twitter- You receive their messages that are directed to you, but no one can spam you, because you aren't listening to their messages. Just thoughts; Please forgive me if I misunderstand the current systems, I'd love to have a better understanding. -Colin
