I was researching WebMail providers, and noticed that most WebMail providers recommended in privacy communities are labelled as proprietary by AlternativeTo.
I made a list of WebMail providers, private or not, to see which ones were actually open source:
Proprietary
AOL Mail: Free
Cock.li: Free
CounterMail: Paid
Fastmail: Paid
GMX Mail: Free
Gmail: Free
HEY Email: Paid
Hushmail: Paid
iCloud Mail: Free
Mail.com: Free
Mailbox.org: Paid
Mailfence: Freemium
Outlook.com: Freemium
Posteo: Paid
Rediffmail: Paid
Riseup: Free
Runbox: Paid
Soverin: Paid
StartMail: Paid
Yahoo! Mail: Freemium
Yandex Mail: Freemium
Zoho Mail: Freemium
Open source
Criptext: Free
Disroot: Free
Forward Email: Freemium
Infomaniak kMail: Freemium
Kolab Now: Paid
Lavabit: Paid
Mailpile: Free
Proton Mail: Freemium
Roundcube: Free
Skiff/Notion: Freemium
Tuta: Freemium
Unless I’m missing something, it seems like people overlook this when deciding on WebMail providers. Is it a distinction between a proprietary backend server and a proprietary app, or is there a different way to decide if a WebMail provider is proprietary vs. open source? Lavabit was labelled proprietary by AlternativeTo, but open source by Wikipedia.
Note
If I have labelled an open source WebMail provider as proprietary by mistake, please provide evidence by linking to the source code, and I will happily change it.
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
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@Charger8232 Lists from #Alternativeto (which this is based on) are usually not very reliable and show information that just isn’t correct on a service or often includes services that are not real Alternatives to what you were looking for in the first place. The only thing that helps against that is doing your own research.
To pick out one example (I don’t have time to them all): they list #Posteo as being proprietary which just isn’t correct. That company is as #opensource as they come.