Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Stuart Longland]

On 27/8/20 2:12 pm, andrew fabbro wrote:
>> “It is a fairly specific workflow that is a challenge for some newer
>> developers to engage with. As an example, my partner submitted a patch
>> to OpenBSD a few weeks ago, and he had to set up an entirely new mail
>> client which didn’t mangle his email message to HTML-ise or do other
>> things to it, so he could even make that one patch. That’s a barrier to
>> entry that’s pretty high for somebody who may want to be a first-time
>> contributor.”"
>>
> If someone struggles to send a plain-text email, what are the odds their
> OpenBSD patch is going to be accepted...

It's not like tools don't exist for doing exactly that built into the
version control system… *cough* `git send-email` *cough*.
-- 
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)

I haven't lost my mind...
  ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Stuart Longland]

On 27/8/20 7:27 am, Peter Nicolai Mathias Hansteen wrote:
> Sort of related, I dust off an exchange/outlook rant of mine from a little 
> while back (most of it still applies, unfortunately): 
> https://bsdly.blogspot.com/2011/02/problem-isnt-email-its-microsoft.html 
> 


> The first revelation came when I heard a co-worker praise newer Microsoft 
> Office releases "because 2007 and newer has discussions". I was forced to 
> imagine how life must have been like without threading as we've tended to 
> call it on the USENET and mailing lists since, well, the late 1980s.


I literally laughed out loud at that.  So they've had threading for only
13 years now?  Geez… so it's not just Microsloth's UIs that are "flat".
-- 
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)

I haven't lost my mind...
  ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.

Plaintext vs HTML in email [was Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source]

[Stuart Longland]

On 27/8/20 6:17 am, Daniel Ouellet wrote:
> On 8/26/20 3:08 PM, Chris Bennett wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 12:28:00PM -0500, Mike Hammett wrote:
>>> Text-only was great in 1985. 
>>>
>>>
>>
>> And it's still pretty badass in 2020.
>> I really love the way company networks are brought down by a little
>> helpful Javascript in an HTML email.
> 
> I truly HATE HTML emails.
> 
> Anyone that needs HTML emails really have nothing interesting to say as
> it add absolutely NOTHING to the conversation and is useless.
> 
> I would gladly live in 1985 for ever if that mean I don't have to deal
> with the bulky crap of HTML emails.

I think there are use cases where HTML is valid, but it's also overkill.
 Yes, sometimes it is useful to have some limited formatting, tables and
inline images have their benefits.

That's about where it ends.  I'm the only one in my workplace that uses
plain-text email.  I think it more professional to send an email that is
safely viewable everywhere, rather than to send emails that require
unsafe options to be turned on (I don't care if said options are
normally turned on by default).

That said, I've struck numerous companies that seriously need the IT
security clue-by-four to come a-visiting.

https://stuartl.longlandclan.id.au/blog/2020/08/05/html-email-ought-to-be-considered-harmful/

That's my take on the situation… when you consider the amount that has
been "bolted on" to HTML over the past 28 years, then you consider that
many people use a fully-fledged web browser to access their email (via a
web-based client), the security implications of that are scary.
-- 
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)

I haven't lost my mind...
  ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.

Help fund COVID-19 research:
https://stuartl.longlandclan.id.au/blog/2020/04/20/who-covid19/

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Guy Godfroy]

Let's send patches through Teams or Discord. I think this is the way to go.

On 26/08/2020 10:28, Frank Beuth wrote:
"Linux kernel development  which is driven by plain-text email 
discussion  needs better or alternative collaborative tooling "to bring 
in new contributors and maintain and sustain Linux in the future," says 
Sarah Novotny, Microsoft's representative on the Linux Foundation board.


Said tooling could be "a text-based, email-based patch system that can 
then also be represented in a way that developers who have grown up in 
the last five or ten years are more familiar with," she added.


...

Should it migrate toward something more like, say, issues and pull 
requests on the Microsoft-owned GitHub? “I’m not saying that there will 
be a move in any time that I can see  my crystal ball’s broken  but I do 
think there needs to be expansions in the way people can enter that 
workflow,” said Novotny.


“It is a fairly specific workflow that is a challenge for some newer 
developers to engage with. As an example, my partner submitted a patch 
to OpenBSD a few weeks ago, and he had to set up an entirely new mail 
client which didn’t mangle his email message to HTML-ise or do other 
things to it, so he could even make that one patch. That’s a barrier to 
entry that’s pretty high for somebody who may want to be a first-time 
contributor.”"


https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/25/linux_kernel_email/

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Sean Kamath]

> On Aug 27, 2020, at 01:16, Janne Johansson  wrote:
> It doesn't matter if it was "change spaces to tabs", "html made carriage
> returns where a space was found" or if it was "make two - - chars into one
> single utf-8 -- token" or "spell check/correction edited fnd_trgl_dsk() to
> find_triangle_disk()" in your C function. You did not ship what you had
> produced in that diff.

I just realized uuencode/uudecode is still shipped on macos, even if emacs 
isn’t anymore.  And it’s in base, of course.

Remembering the old days. . .

Sean

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Frank Beuth]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 05:44:12PM -0700, Constantine A. Murenin wrote:
Why OpenBSD is to blame when Gmail -- after so many years -- still 
doesn't have proper support for sending text-based attachments the 
right way?


Because large corporations are always right, and the idea is to bend the 
world to suit the needs of the Microsofts and Googles.

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Janne Johansson]

Den ons 26 aug. 2020 kl 21:17 skrev Mike Hammett :

> Text-only was great in 1985.
> Mike Hammett
> Intelligent Computing Solutions
> Midwest Internet Exchange
> The Brothers WISP
>

Being able to publish and/or send a really small file from computer A to
computer B unchanged in this day and age is still a required feat if you
want to appear as an internet professional.
It doesn't matter if it was "change spaces to tabs", "html made carriage
returns where a space was found" or if it was "make two - - chars into one
single utf-8 -- token" or "spell check/correction edited fnd_trgl_dsk() to
find_triangle_disk()" in your C function. You did not ship what you had
produced in that diff.

If you can't send data 100% with the tools of your choice, the blame is on
you, not on the recipient who did the checking FOR YOU and notified you
about mangled transmissions.

So when your file integrity check or vpn software says "we dropped the
incoming data due to broken checksums", the correct answer is not for the
receiving end to disable checksums. Really.
To even have to tell this to people...

-- 
May the most significant bit of your life be positive.

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[andrew fabbro]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 2:36 AM Frank Beuth  wrote:

> “It is a fairly specific workflow that is a challenge for some newer
> developers to engage with. As an example, my partner submitted a patch
> to OpenBSD a few weeks ago, and he had to set up an entirely new mail
> client which didn’t mangle his email message to HTML-ise or do other
> things to it, so he could even make that one patch. That’s a barrier to
> entry that’s pretty high for somebody who may want to be a first-time
> contributor.”"
>

If someone struggles to send a plain-text email, what are the odds their
OpenBSD patch is going to be accepted...

-- 
andrew fabbro
and...@fabbro.org

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Constantine A. Murenin]

On 2020-W35-3 08:28 +, Frank Beuth wrote:

"Linux kernel development  which is driven by plain-text email
discussion  needs better or alternative collaborative tooling "to
bring in new contributors and maintain and sustain Linux in the
future," says Sarah Novotny, Microsoft's representative on the Linux
Foundation board.

Said tooling could be "a text-based, email-based patch system that
can then also be represented in a way that developers who have grown
up in the last five or ten years are more familiar with," she added.

...

Should it migrate toward something more like, say, issues and pull
requests on the Microsoft-owned GitHub? ???I???m not saying that
there will be a move in any time that I can see  my crystal ball???s
broken  but I do think there needs to be expansions in the way
people can enter that workflow,??? said Novotny.

???It is a fairly specific workflow that is a challenge for some
newer developers to engage with. As an example, my partner submitted
a patch to OpenBSD a few weeks ago, and he had to set up an entirely
new mail client which didn???t mangle his email message to HTML-ise
or do other things to it, so he could even make that one patch.
That???s a barrier to entry that???s pretty high for somebody who
may want to be a first-time contributor.???"

https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/25/linux_kernel_email/


OMG, LOL!

Why OpenBSD is to blame when Gmail -- after so many years -- still 
doesn't have proper support for sending text-based attachments 
the right way?


Or the ability to include patches in message body, 
without tabs being mangled into spaces?


Or maybe we now have to switch from tabs to spaces in style(9) 
and all our code, because buggy software written in the last 
Z years cannot support tabs properly?


My prof at the uni used to say:  Chemistry Saves Lives.  The joke 
goes is that it's a mandatory requirement for the nursing major, so, 
seeding out those incapable of comprehension is not a bad thing. (TM)


Hey, guess what?!  I, too, had to learn how to send mail in a way 
to not have the patches mangled.  It's not rocket science.  
It's kind of the basic knowledge when kernel hacking is at stake.


Maybe if there were minimum qualifications to be a software 
developer nowadays, we wouldn't have dataloss incidents like 
the Adobe Lightroom iOS App Update deleting all the photos 
from your phone, without you the end user having any recourse.


C.

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Umgeher Torgersen]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 04:17:48PM -0400, Daniel Ouellet wrote:
> On 8/26/20 3:08 PM, Chris Bennett wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 12:28:00PM -0500, Mike Hammett wrote:
> >> Text-only was great in 1985. 
> >>
> >>
> > 
> > And it's still pretty badass in 2020.
> > I really love the way company networks are brought down by a little
> > helpful Javascript in an HTML email.
> 
> I truly HATE HTML emails.
> 
> Anyone that needs HTML emails really have nothing interesting to say as
> it add absolutely NOTHING to the conversation and is useless.
> 
> I would gladly live in 1985 for ever if that mean I don't have to deal
> with the bulky crap of HTML emails.

\ o /

> 
> Amen!
> 
> Daniel
> 

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Aaron Mason]

On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 7:27 AM Chris Bennett
 wrote:
>
> I was recently told by a youngster that I was a total idiot for working
> my way through the new CSS to understand it well. I needed to go
> straight over to some Framework that assumes I am stupid, which I
> would be if I didn't take the time to understand what I'm really
> accomplishing.
>

This.  So many projects I've picked up from others use jQuery like
it's somehow a requirement to do anything, when really it just makes
bashing out crappy code faster (something something premature
optimisation) - I refuse to use it partly for that reason, mostly
because I fail to see the benefit in lugging around a sizeable
framework when I intend to use a tiny part of it (never chop down a
tree when just the branch will do - old Aussie proverb) that can
easily be done in vanilla JS.

Someone posted on Quora about a nasty trick they cooked up for a
painful tester to essentially gaslight him (it would randomly resize
elements on the web page, and this guy would claim that everything was
fine on his end and then turn it off before he went over to look at
it) and it was jQuery all the way - with minimal effort I ported it to
vanilla JS.  It's not that hard.

Also, I use gmail with an old account that got overtaken by spam that
I use for mailing lists as well, and it handles patches just fine.
Never been an issue.

-- 
Aaron Mason - Programmer, open source addict
I've taken my software vows - for beta or for worse

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Luke A. Call]

On 08-26 21:47, Pierre-Philipp Braun wrote:
> > Can't get your email to go plain text, attachments work.
> > If they don't, why not change providers?
> > It's a bit of work, but almost anyone can setup their own email server
> > for next to nearly free.
> 
> That is not as easy as it was, mainly because of IP reputation.  If you have
> your own MX and outbound MTA/MSA you will have to go through painful
> processes of getting out of blacklists, and even then your outgoing messages
> might end-up in users' spambox.  The game has changed, and it's for us
> old-timers that life is rough, already.
 
Maybe I am missing the point, but one can change providers without
having to manage a mail server, for example just having their own domain
(or not) at a provider that manages the email servers, such as with pair.com 
(just
a content user, many conveniences and flexibility, and I feel ~"enough"
control over my email, but they run the servers, I can set various kinds
of rules or DKIM things etc if memory serves, but don't have to), and
maybe pobox.com (but it has been a long time since I used pobox), and I
imagine others.

Luke Call

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Sean Kamath]

> On Aug 26, 2020, at 12:08, Chris Bennett  
> wrote:
> 
> Can't get your email to go plain text, attachments work.
> If they don't, why not change providers?
> It's a bit of work, but almost anyone can setup their own email server
> for next to nearly free.

I encourage everyone to do this, but they should have their eyes open that 
there *is* a cost in time (maintenance, updates, etc).  Plus dealing with 
random places blocking you for no reason (I literally had one place tell me 
“everyone uses google, why don’t you?”).

Also, the sending of the mail, as far as I understand, is basically identical 
for all the providers — it’s the mail client that formats the messages (though 
sometimes I craft messages and deliver them to OpenSMTPD directly without a 
“client” per se).

And THAT is one of the biggest problems.

I use Apple Mail (don’t hate on me, it’s what I use).  One change they recently 
made was to remove the option of showing the paintext version of an email 
instead of the HTML version.  Now I have no choice, and if I *really* want to 
see the plaintext message, I have to view source.  This is not a rant against 
Apple (and for the love of god, don’t turn it into one), but rather a rant 
against all the “providers” who are trying to get everyone to use their 
“product” and damn the consequences of someone attaching 50MB of files/images 
in their messages, that’s not *their* problem (and fsck the infrastructure!).

It’s screaming into the wind to complain.  I used to rail against the bloat of 
browsers, and now you can run entire emulators in them.  They’re HUGE.  They do 
everything.

Still.  Run your own email server.  You’ll learn a LOT!

Sean

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Peter Nicolai Mathias Hansteen]

> 
> “It is a fairly specific workflow that is a challenge for some newer 
> developers to engage with. As an example, my partner submitted a patch to 
> OpenBSD a few weeks ago, and he had to set up an entirely new mail client 
> which didn’t mangle his email message to HTML-ise or do other things to it, 
> so he could even make that one patch. That’s a barrier to entry that’s pretty 
> high for somebody who may want to be a first-time contributor.”"
> 
> https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/25/linux_kernel_email/
> 

Wouldn’t even the Outlooks, gmails and fruity things and their ilk keep the 
patch in a pristine state if it was added to the message as an attachment?

I know Apple mail at least does weird stuff including its own version of 
autocarrot behind your back, but surely attachments would be kept intact?

Sort of related, I dust off an exchange/outlook rant of mine from a little 
while back (most of it still applies, unfortunately): 
https://bsdly.blogspot.com/2011/02/problem-isnt-email-its-microsoft.html 


All the best,

—
Peter N. M. Hansteen, member of the first RFC 1149 implementation team
http://bsdly.blogspot.com/ http://www.bsdly.net/ http://www.nuug.no/
"Remember to set the evil bit on all malicious network traffic"
delilah spamd[29949]: 85.152.224.147: disconnected after 42673 seconds.






signature.asc
Description: Message signed with OpenPGP

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Chris Bennett]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 09:47:24PM +0200, Pierre-Philipp Braun wrote:
> > Can't get your email to go plain text, attachments work.
> > If they don't, why not change providers?
> > It's a bit of work, but almost anyone can setup their own email server
> > for next to nearly free.
> 
> That is not as easy as it was, mainly because of IP reputation.  If you have
> your own MX and outbound MTA/MSA you will have to go through painful
> processes of getting out of blacklists, and even then your outgoing messages
> might end-up in users' spambox.  The game has changed, and it's for us
> old-timers that life is rough, already.

Bare metal servers often have cheap lower end servers. Yes, if it's not
in the cloud, some people think they aren't in the latest fad.

I've yet to end up on any blacklist except SpamRats which dropping a
message on their form page instantly clears up the problem. That is
usually because of some little thing that hasn't propagated yet thorugh
DNS.

Spam boxes are no longer very useful. Censorship is in full swing.
If I were to mention the last name of the founder of Windows, this email
would immediately go into the spam box of places like gmail.
If I were to send you an HTML email with that word in the text, same
thing.

Right now, us oldtimers are the only ones with much fundamental
knowledge and experience.

I was recently told by a youngster that I was a total idiot for working
my way through the new CSS to understand it well. I needed to go
straight over to some Framework that assumes I am stupid, which I
would be if I didn't take the time to understand what I'm really
accomplishing.

Setting up an email server for strictly personal use is not that big a
deal. For many users in a commercial setting, much harder.

All IPs can get blacklisted. Bad IPs, change ISP's. One month to set
things up and transfer over to a new server. Once everything is working,
drop the crappy corporate email service. No big rush.

My thoughts, for whatever they are worth.

Chris Bennett

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Pierre-Philipp Braun]

Can't get your email to go plain text, attachments work.
If they don't, why not change providers?
It's a bit of work, but almost anyone can setup their own email server
for next to nearly free.


That is not as easy as it was, mainly because of IP reputation.  If you 
have your own MX and outbound MTA/MSA you will have to go through 
painful processes of getting out of blacklists, and even then your 
outgoing messages might end-up in users' spambox.  The game has changed, 
and it's for us old-timers that life is rough, already.

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Daniel Ouellet]

On 8/26/20 3:08 PM, Chris Bennett wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 12:28:00PM -0500, Mike Hammett wrote:
>> Text-only was great in 1985. 
>>
>>
> 
> And it's still pretty badass in 2020.
> I really love the way company networks are brought down by a little
> helpful Javascript in an HTML email.

I truly HATE HTML emails.

Anyone that needs HTML emails really have nothing interesting to say as
it add absolutely NOTHING to the conversation and is useless.

I would gladly live in 1985 for ever if that mean I don't have to deal
with the bulky crap of HTML emails.

Amen!

Daniel

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Chris Bennett]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 12:28:00PM -0500, Mike Hammett wrote:
> Text-only was great in 1985. 
> 
> 

And it's still pretty badass in 2020.
I really love the way company networks are brought down by a little
helpful Javascript in an HTML email.

Can't get your email to go plain text, attachments work.
If they don't, why not change providers?
It's a bit of work, but almost anyone can setup their own email server
for next to nearly free.

Chris Bennett

> 
> 
> - 
> Mike Hammett 
> Intelligent Computing Solutions 
> 
> Midwest Internet Exchange 
> 
> The Brothers WISP 
> 
> - Original Message -
> 
> From: "Frank Beuth"  
> To: misc@openbsd.org 
> Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2020 3:28:50 AM 
> Subject: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source 
> 
> "Linux kernel development which is driven by plain-text email 
> discussion needs better or alternative collaborative tooling "to bring 
> in new contributors and maintain and sustain Linux in the future," says 
> Sarah Novotny, Microsoft's representative on the Linux Foundation board. 
> 
> Said tooling could be "a text-based, email-based patch system that can 
> then also be represented in a way that developers who have grown up in 
> the last five or ten years are more familiar with," she added. 
> 
> ... 
> 
> Should it migrate toward something more like, say, issues and pull 
> requests on the Microsoft-owned GitHub? “I’m not saying that there will 
> be a move in any time that I can see my crystal ball’s broken but I do 
> think there needs to be expansions in the way people can enter that 
> workflow,” said Novotny. 
> 
> “It is a fairly specific workflow that is a challenge for some newer 
> developers to engage with. As an example, my partner submitted a patch 
> to OpenBSD a few weeks ago, and he had to set up an entirely new mail 
> client which didn’t mangle his email message to HTML-ise or do other 
> things to it, so he could even make that one patch. That’s a barrier to 
> entry that’s pretty high for somebody who may want to be a first-time 
> contributor.”" 
> 
> https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/25/linux_kernel_email/ 
> 
> 

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Mike Hammett]

Text-only was great in 1985. 




- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 

Midwest Internet Exchange 

The Brothers WISP 

- Original Message -

From: "Frank Beuth"  
To: misc@openbsd.org 
Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2020 3:28:50 AM 
Subject: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source 

"Linux kernel development which is driven by plain-text email 
discussion needs better or alternative collaborative tooling "to bring 
in new contributors and maintain and sustain Linux in the future," says 
Sarah Novotny, Microsoft's representative on the Linux Foundation board. 

Said tooling could be "a text-based, email-based patch system that can 
then also be represented in a way that developers who have grown up in 
the last five or ten years are more familiar with," she added. 

... 

Should it migrate toward something more like, say, issues and pull 
requests on the Microsoft-owned GitHub? “I’m not saying that there will 
be a move in any time that I can see my crystal ball’s broken but I do 
think there needs to be expansions in the way people can enter that 
workflow,” said Novotny. 

“It is a fairly specific workflow that is a challenge for some newer 
developers to engage with. As an example, my partner submitted a patch 
to OpenBSD a few weeks ago, and he had to set up an entirely new mail 
client which didn’t mangle his email message to HTML-ise or do other 
things to it, so he could even make that one patch. That’s a barrier to 
entry that’s pretty high for somebody who may want to be a first-time 
contributor.”" 

https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/25/linux_kernel_email/ 

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Ian Darwin]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 02:37:24AM -0700, Greg Thomas wrote:
> "... he had to set up an entirely new mail client which didn’t mangle his
> email message to HTML-ise... That’s a barrier to entry that’s pretty
> high..."
> 
> Wow.  Life's rough.

Surely easier than RTFMing to find out how to send plain-text email
in the existing client.
 
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 2:31 AM Frank Beuth  wrote:
> 
> > "Linux kernel development  which is driven by plain-text email
> > discussion  needs better or alternative collaborative tooling "to bring
> > in new contributors and maintain and sustain Linux in the future," says
> > Sarah Novotny, Microsoft's representative on the Linux Foundation board.
> >
> > Said tooling could be "a text-based, email-based patch system that can
> > then also be represented in a way that developers who have grown up in
> > the last five or ten years are more familiar with," she added.
> >
> > ...
> >
> > Should it migrate toward something more like, say, issues and pull
> > requests on the Microsoft-owned GitHub? “I’m not saying that there will
> > be a move in any time that I can see  my crystal ball’s broken  but I do
> > think there needs to be expansions in the way people can enter that
> > workflow,” said Novotny.
> >
> > “It is a fairly specific workflow that is a challenge for some newer
> > developers to engage with. As an example, my partner submitted a patch
> > to OpenBSD a few weeks ago, and he had to set up an entirely new mail
> > client which didn’t mangle his email message to HTML-ise or do other
> > things to it, so he could even make that one patch. That’s a barrier to
> > entry that’s pretty high for somebody who may want to be a first-time
> > contributor.”"
> >
> > https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/25/linux_kernel_email/
> >
> >

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[James Huddle]

She never really says how old her "partner" is.
Perhaps he is a developer who has literally "...grown up in the
last five or ten years..."

On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 9:50 AM Rafael Possamai  wrote:

> >- Original message -
> >From: Greg Thomas 
> >
> >"... he had to set up an entirely new mail client which didn’t mangle his
> >email message to HTML-ise... That’s a barrier to entry that’s pretty
> >high..."
> >
> >Wow.  Life's rough.
>
> Most desktop/web email clients I've ever used have plain-text mode for
> composing.
>
>

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Rafael Possamai]

>- Original message -
>From: Greg Thomas 
>
>"... he had to set up an entirely new mail client which didn’t mangle his
>email message to HTML-ise... That’s a barrier to entry that’s pretty
>high..."
>
>Wow.  Life's rough.

Most desktop/web email clients I've ever used have plain-text mode for 
composing. 

Re: Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Greg Thomas]

"... he had to set up an entirely new mail client which didn’t mangle his
email message to HTML-ise... That’s a barrier to entry that’s pretty
high..."

Wow.  Life's rough.

On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 2:31 AM Frank Beuth  wrote:

> "Linux kernel development  which is driven by plain-text email
> discussion  needs better or alternative collaborative tooling "to bring
> in new contributors and maintain and sustain Linux in the future," says
> Sarah Novotny, Microsoft's representative on the Linux Foundation board.
>
> Said tooling could be "a text-based, email-based patch system that can
> then also be represented in a way that developers who have grown up in
> the last five or ten years are more familiar with," she added.
>
> ...
>
> Should it migrate toward something more like, say, issues and pull
> requests on the Microsoft-owned GitHub? “I’m not saying that there will
> be a move in any time that I can see  my crystal ball’s broken  but I do
> think there needs to be expansions in the way people can enter that
> workflow,” said Novotny.
>
> “It is a fairly specific workflow that is a challenge for some newer
> developers to engage with. As an example, my partner submitted a patch
> to OpenBSD a few weeks ago, and he had to set up an entirely new mail
> client which didn’t mangle his email message to HTML-ise or do other
> things to it, so he could even make that one patch. That’s a barrier to
> entry that’s pretty high for somebody who may want to be a first-time
> contributor.”"
>
> https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/25/linux_kernel_email/
>
>

Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source

[Frank Beuth]

"Linux kernel development  which is driven by plain-text email 
discussion  needs better or alternative collaborative tooling "to bring 
in new contributors and maintain and sustain Linux in the future," says 
Sarah Novotny, Microsoft's representative on the Linux Foundation board.


Said tooling could be "a text-based, email-based patch system that can 
then also be represented in a way that developers who have grown up in 
the last five or ten years are more familiar with," she added.


...

Should it migrate toward something more like, say, issues and pull 
requests on the Microsoft-owned GitHub? “I’m not saying that there will 
be a move in any time that I can see  my crystal ball’s broken  but I do 
think there needs to be expansions in the way people can enter that 
workflow,” said Novotny.


“It is a fairly specific workflow that is a challenge for some newer 
developers to engage with. As an example, my partner submitted a patch 
to OpenBSD a few weeks ago, and he had to set up an entirely new mail 
client which didn’t mangle his email message to HTML-ise or do other 
things to it, so he could even make that one patch. That’s a barrier to 
entry that’s pretty high for somebody who may want to be a first-time 
contributor.”"


https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/25/linux_kernel_email/