Posts on using email for open source projects
Open source communities rely on borrowed platforms to talk to their own people. A mailing list on your own domain is land you own, not a stall you rent. Here is why that matters, what it costs, and where it still falls short.
Tokyo Python, one of the longest-running developer communities in Japan, has moved their domain email onto KaiMail. Their lead organiser sent us a note that captures, better than I have managed to, what I have been trying to build.
I gave a talk on email protocols and Python's email toolkit at the Tokyo Python Meetup in April 2026. This is the expanded, written version with all the code examples, the context I had to skip, and the parts where I tripped over my own slides.
Why you should use your project or community custom domain for your emails too.