Don't remove the option “Move automatically to DeltaChat Folder"!

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23

The rationale given in their post makes absolutely no sense to me.

> E.g. notifications could not be made reliable

my notifications STILL aren’t reliable on a chatmail address

> onboarding was complex

because it’s SO EASY right now to share a chatmail address with someone over the internet, while before it was SO HARD to just tell people an email address you already had memorized

> encrypted messages are annoying in the inbox

THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE OPTION THEY’RE DISABLING!

At this point I just want to know if there’s an alternative chat app that’s like Delta Chat but not ashamed to be built on top of email. DC being based on email was the reason I started using it, and it’s just horrible that they’re trying to move away from that.

24

Show the statistics.
Only I created about 50+ accounts on chatmail servers - I am not a spammer.

25

Same here.

It was because riseup.net terminated their xmpp server and they recommended Delta Chat.
Now I see that it was a mistake.

[xmpp-users] XMPP/Jabber Shutdown Notice on August 27th. 20/08/2021

  • DeltaChat: Uses your e-mail account + OpenPGP to encrypt messages. It should be the easiest solution to migrate to.

The old good xmpp/jabber is the best.

26

We don’t count the number of accounts, it is not a way to count users because of multi-profile and multi-relay setups. The numbers we look at are from Google Play, Apple App Store etc., the number of setups that are used as reported by operating system vendors.

27

Hi all,

when I heard about Delta Chat the first time I was immediately hooked.At that time I was writing with a friend a lot of email back and forth and thought wouldn’t it be great to have chat application like, e.g., WhatsApp but based on email? And suddenly there it was - Delta Chat. Amazing! I convinced a couple of friends to use DC as well. They showed the same kind of enthusiasm. A federated system, based on their existing email environment.

I use mailbox.org and enjoyed the detailed filter options they offer to move chat-emails into the DeltaChat IMAP folder. I could use an alias to make things even easier. Normal emails and chatmails separated while still using the same account with the high security offered by mailbox.org.Even better, by exporting/importing the DC PGP keys, I could open all those emails in my Thunderbird and even use it to write emails to my DC peers (I often used it to transfer links, files, images, etc. from my phone to my laptop).

However, over time some strange design choices were made. One of them was to include non-chat-emails. I didn’t need that so I could just ignore it. Nevertheless, I thought it’s a waste of resources.

But now I can’t even decrypt emails in Thunderbird anymore; how can I be sure that my messages are not altered.The emails are send to “undisclosed recipients”; how can I be sure that these do not include people that are not supposed to get my messages.This has destroyed all trust I had in DC. My friends I had convinced to used DC feel the same. We are all pondering to turn our backs to DC.Setting up relays out of my control and creating new email addresses during the default onboarding process reduces the control users have over what mail provider to use. DC is on its way to turn into a silo, i.e. the very thing DC was supposed to prevent by being based on a federated system.

tl;dr: The spirit of DC is about to get killed!

PLEASE at least reconsider the removal of “Only Fetch from DeltaChat Folder”/Hi all,

when I heard about Delta Chat the first time I was immediately hooked.At that time I was writing with a friend a lot of email back and forth and thought wouldn’t it be great to have chat application like, e.g., WhatsApp but based on email? And suddenly there it was - Delta Chat. Amazing! I convinced a couple of friends to use DC as well. They showed the same kind of enthusiasm. A federated system, based on their existing email environment.

I use mailbox.org and enjoyed the detailed filter options they offer to move chat-emails into the DeltaChat IMAP folder. I could use an alias to make things even easier. Normal emails and chatmails separated while still using the same account with the high security offered by mailbox.org.Even better, by exporting/importing the DC PGP keys, I could open all those emails in my Thunderbird and even use it to write emails to my DC peers (I often used it to transfer links, files, images, etc. from my phone to my laptop).

However, over time some strange design choices were made. One of them was to include non-chat-emails. I didn’t need that so I could just ignore it. Nevertheless, I thought it’s a waste of resources.

But now I can’t even decrypt emails in Thunderbird anymore; how can I be sure that my messages are not altered.The emails are send to “undisclosed recipients”; how can I be sure that these do not include people that are not supposed to get my messages.This has destroyed all trust I had in DC. My friends I had convinced to used DC feel the same. We are all pondering to turn our backs to DC.Setting up relays out of my control and creating new email addresses during the default onboarding process reduces the control users have over what mail provider to use. DC is on its way to turn into a silo, i.e. the very thing DC was supposed to prevent by being based on a federated system.

tl;dr: The spirit of DC is about to get killed!

PLEASE at least reconsider the removal of “Only Fetch from DeltaChat Folder”/"Move automatically to DeltaChat Folder” as one of the last great things left in DC!

To end on a positive note: what would it take to keep this great option alive? Any financial input perhaps?as one of the last great things left in DC!

To end on a positive note: what would it take to keep this great option alive? Any financial input perhaps?

28

The mails you cannot decrypt are probably messages sent to self that are encrypted using SEIPDv2. The issue about supporting SEIPDv2 in RNP, the library used by Thunderbird, is at Implement support for v2 SEIPD packet. · Issue #1770 · rnpgp/rnp · GitHub

The To field can always be completely fake, checking the To field does not tell you what actual recipients are. This is how Bcc works, by sending messages to additional recipients not included in the To field. But it can also be the other way round, you can include recipients in the To field but not actually send to them.

The reason for hiding the recipients in the To field is to reduce metadata when sending to multiple servers. If you are on mailbox.org and send to example.org and example.net, you do not need to tell example.net that you have also sent copies to example.org and vice versa. This is achieved by not disclosing the recipients in the unprotected To field. All the recipients are included in the encrypted part in a protected To header using RFC 9788.

As for “only fetch from delta chat folder”, the option is likely to be replaced by a per transport “IMAP folder” setting, this is how the removal draft is implemented: Remove mvbox_move and only_fetch_mvbox by link2xt · Pull Request #7780 · chatmail/core · GitHub
But we don’t recommend making any new setups using it.

29

Thanks for the detailed explanation. Perhaps it’s too complex for me to go into the details, but oh well, as long as it’s possible to use email addresses promiscuously, I’ll continue to do so, even at the expense of the order of my inbox.
For me it’s too convenient to use dc for both purposes, even though I understand that if everyone were to follow your instructions precisely, the overall ending scenario would be better.
In the end, for me, DC is a compromise: getting the features that interest me most at the expense of a few minor compromises.

In this regard, I would like to point out something that is a little strange and, in some ways, also inherent*.
“Discourse” can also function as a mailing list.
I decided it would be wonderful to participate in your forum using only my lovely deltachat client :heart: .
So I tried activating this setting.
I’m still testing it and don’t know if it works well, but I’ve already received some notifications for messages I wasn’t subscribed to.
However, it seems that I cannot respond.
In a way, I can understand this for chatmail accounts (which, as I remember, can no longer send unencrypted messages), but for a normal email account where I can receive and reply to normal emails, why can’t I reply to notifications I receive from Discourse?
The problem is that the box for writing a reply disappears completely.

*
*If you’re wondering why this is inherent, well, it’s one reason why it might be desirable to be able to use deltachat as an email account (and for things related to dc such as the forum). This is an example of compromise, DC is not designed for writing on forums, but it can potentially do so.

30

This will be fixed soon: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1752799 Thunderbird just doesn’t support this standard yet but they’re working on it.

31

RIP :-/

For me, the attraction of delta was that it “just worked” with my existing infra. No need to change anything, install new services, create new accounts, or worse, use other peoples’ computers. I was an immediate, and happy, user for… I don’t even know. At least 8 years.

Ir’s fine for the project to focus on other users and other use cases, of course, but it’s worth recognising that in doing so, you close off others. I don’t want a delta-only email account to maintain, or for delta messages to pollute my inbox, or for other peoples’ computers to be involved. It was fine as it was, even if notifications were occasionally a bit janky ^^.

32

as you said it was “janky” and not good, if you have your own infra you can use it! you just need a dedicated inbox/address in your server, if you have an email server, inboxes/addresses are not an scarce resource, you probably even have already several email addresses

I see that you and some other people are attached and somewhat obstinately obsessed with the idea of using the same address/inbox both for chatting and emailing, and that is just not a good idea, that ship already sailed, no point on clinging to the past, if you are going to stop using Delta Chat over such thing instead of just creating an new address in your server, that is sad but that is up to you, we can’t make everyone happy, sadly

33

I see that you and some other people are attached and somewhat obstinately obsessed with the idea of using the same address/inbox both for chatting and emailing

Wow, let’s reflect on that wording for a sec.

Herein lies the essence of the community relations blunder you keep making:

1. portray the shift from practically supporting hybrid setup to chatmail-only as no big deal – it’s a minor technical detail at worst and an evolution in the “only” good direction at best

2. disregard the feelings of your staunchest advocates (early adopters) – these typically make up 10% or less of any userbase but are instrumental in fostering long-term, widespread success of any product.

3. villainise said advocates for expressing a feeling of betrayal at removal of a feature they felt essential to their daily comms workflow from day one

4. in communications re. this, ignore your project’s reputation with other communities (like riseup dot net) for being built on the oldest surviving open communication technology

As a dev, I finally understand (and can somewhat agree with) the technical rationale which was eventually explained in a post here. Email is hard, and most providers make it even harder. I get it.

As a user, I am upset that the tool I used as a daily driver on my email account abandoned practical support for that use-case without fanfare visible to me. Simply marking something as “legacy” and posting one or two notifications (which I missed) when what is really going on is a major workflow shift is a huge mistake. Then also implying users were irrational to use the old workflow in the first place, when said workflow was clearly advertised in the past, and was even the selling point for many in the first place. These are mistakes which developers everywhere make all the time, and causes grievance with stakeholders even in professional settings.

I will not ask the team to reverse their stance on Chatmail being the only thing they ultimately wish to work on. I thank the DeltaChat team for their service in bringing us this far, helping us transition to encrypted email, and even providing a decent chat UI along the way.

But I believe you owe it to everyone to communicate this shift away from email much more clearly. And to acknowledge that hybrid setups were a big deal to some of your biggest fans, who got many others to join in the first place. Just try a little more acknowledgement and “sorry we really wanted to but just can’t anymore” – I think you’ll be very surprised at how far it goes in defusing that “obstinance” you so despise.

Then we can move on. Perhaps someone will fork the project and inevitably get burned out trying to support what you couldn’t. Perhaps more of us will adopt chatmail (I’m still keen to try hosting). Or perhaps some will go back to XMPP, or just cave to the pressure again and use Whatsapp.

Regardless, eventually, your remaining community will stabilise around your new dev vision. And then more change will come. When it does, please communicate it better.

Because your ability to fulfill your core intent of impacting the world with good Free software is gated more by how you treat your fans than by your technical ability or limitations.

34

I live in totalitarian Russia. ChatMail servers are blocked here. I can only use Mail.ru.

35

There is a ‘technical’ term for this. It starts with enshitt and ends with ification.

I’m not opposed to ChatMail relays but I’m not convinced that they won’t be used liberally by bad actors to eventually either limit users (see Russia) or at least watch users.

I was initially attracted to ‘use any email provider’ and while I never really used my email provider to do both DC and regular email, I liked the simplicity of the concept for the average user.

Devs and engineers nearly always tend toward complexity and additional features and they always believe their direction is ‘better’, but irl that is rarely the case. (I speak from a long life of experience in the white goods industry.)

Anyway. I’ll stick with DC as long as I can and move on when it gets too ‘better’ for my use. I am enjoying WebXDC apps as they are simple to use and understand. Hopefully they stay that way.

36

This problem is quite easy to solve. Just go to the email settings and set the receiving rules. Select the condition that contains characters related to DC and move them to your newly created folder.
What I’m curious about is which email account you use as the relay? Is there any issue with message delay? I use the QQ email account and the messages are always delayed by 3-5 minutes.

你这个问题很好解决。直接进邮箱里面设置收件规则，选择条件带有DC相关字符的移动到你新建的文件夹即可。 我很好奇的是你用什么邮箱做中继的？没有消息延迟这个问题吗？我用QQ邮箱，消息总是延迟3-5分钟。