Hey,

I've been looking forward to self-hosting my favourite piece of Drew's software
that is https://lists.sr.ht/ which IMHO is totally superior to Mailman and much
of what I've seen in the mailing list space.

Unfortunately, I've run into the opaqueness of my own Mailcow[1] mailing setup
and I must admit that I don't understand it all to well? Except for the modest
fact that it does rely on Postfix and Dovecot among other 25 programs that
apparently have to do with hosting a modern mail server. Naturally, the first
thing I did was read Drew's manual[2] on how you're meant to set this thing up
as well as this blog[3].

> This forwards mail to @lists.sr.ht to the LMTP socket, and processes mail to
> @sr.ht to local mailboxes. This is just one part of your setup, however, and
> the remainder of your postfix (or other mail server) configuration is left
> as an exercise to the reader.

I must be a horrible reader, because I couldn't then figure out how to extend
the existing mail server that operates for the whole world to see, yeah, with
a mailing list of its own. So that it wouldn't route _all_ of the incoming
mail directly to the LMTP socket belonging to lists applet. To be honest, at
this point I'm completely willing to dedicate a certain format to it.

For example:

badt@appar.at- I wish to keep to myself within the confines of mailcow.
shopping!@appar.at- Now this, this I feel looks like a mailing list?

I'm not sure whether if this is legal (according to email RFC it is, or so I
was told!) and if it can be done, but if this approach is the only way to
have what I'm looking for, I'll be happy with it.

Let me explain myself.

I've long dreamt of a community, or rather- territory of discourse- that would
allow my people to be platforming, as opposed to gatekeeping their content and
their thoughts. This is how Apparat[4] came to be- a standalone fork of
lists.sr.ht that would support, or rather celebrate- text/html emails for the
purpose of popularising mailing lists among the nonprogramming few who feel
like reading, and perhaps writing emails more often. This is something that is
definitely worthwhile, moreso if you consider the popularity of newsletter
platforms, such as Ghost[5] or Substack[6]. Unfortunately, these sites thrive
on gate-keeping of all things.

I don't like this one bit, in my view Apparat can change this.

Where have you previously had to engage in gate-keeping of the patron content,
you now have the option to give your patrons a platform on equal terms, which
is a whole extra level of engagement that is worth much more. This is where a
meesly $5 subscription extortion deal to read & comment- turns into a $25
subscription to be able and actively participate- in the list, perhaps even
to the point of "hijacking" the conversation at times. So as a creator, you're
now given your paid subscribers a platform, as opposed to a looking glass...

Most people use text/html emails, and Drew is very much against it.

So if anyone feels like giving a hand, it would be very much appreciated.

I simply want to enable my people.

-badt

[1]: https://mailcow.email/
[2]: https://man.sr.ht/lists.sr.ht/configuration.md
[3]: https://drewdevault.com/2018/08/05/Local-mail-server.html 
[4]: https://git.sr.ht/~badt/appar.at
[5]: https://ghost.org/
[6]: https://substack.com/

> I've heard the noise of a virtual machine,
> Now I'm stuck in the reality of backlash
> And cashed–in chips.