Recently I was locked out of my own Ghost blog platform because they decided they were going to add Email 2FA. I also cannot add any other authors because that requires email verification.
Today I was looking at installing Bonfire and came across this:
Bonfire requires working email for user signups, password resets, and notifications. Most installations will need email configuration before the instance is usable.
Setting up email is a pain in the ass, costs money, is dependent on 3rd parties, violates privacy, and is just completely unnecessary. Why wouldn’t you give users the option to not use it? It’s infuriating!
If you’re self hosting, the email service only needs to be accessible to those services. Set up a postfix container if you don’t want these messages going out.
You can read them locally, or configure postfix to forward them to some other host if you desire.
I’m starting to wonder if a mailpit instance is a bad idea. Just a page you go to where any email goes, make sure it’s not externally accessible.
Ooh, that’s a useful thing to know about! Thanks!
I don’t want email to be accessible to those services. I don’t want those services to use email at all.
Then you’re free to patch it out.
Why do you assume everyone you interact with is a software developer?
I don’t think that assumption was inherent in the comment
If you want an unpopular feature that doesn’t exist on an open source platform sometimes your only options are to code it, or ask someone else to. The skillset of the feature requester doesn’t change that
I wasn’t asking for options, I was asking for an explanation.
In your OP, sure.
But this comment reads as a desired state, and in some situations thats a feature request (in this case it seems like there are architecture / system workarounds):
Did you get an explanation you’re happy with?
To be fair, you are on a Self-hosting community but maybe read up the wiki or file the issue to suggest an option to make it not required on their git repo? 🤷
Otherwise, I’m not sure what else are we suppose to say
I wasn’t asking for advice, I was asking for an explanation.
You should probably ask the developers then. But the answer is probably to support things like password resets in environments with multiple users. It’s less development effort to implement it this way than to maintain multiple code paths with varying levels of account management.
…which ones?
https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost
This is the repo (unless I have the wrong software).
However, it seems they’re running a business, which means revenue generating features will probably be prioritized. They’re not running a charity.
I’m sure if you donate enough money you can probably get them to implement better self hosting functionality. Chances are the email requirement is just what they have for other features.
Was about to add that very idea, maybe I should write a compos file with postfix setup