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Comment by hayd | Hacker News Reader

"As the software is open source, however, hobbyists are also free to use it, but to post to this mailing list, they are expected to demonstrate at least a minimal level of 'cluefulness' by using an email address with their own domain name - not just a generic "@gmail", "@yahoo", etc.-type email address."

Makes sense.

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This assumption, like just about everything on that site, is about 15 years out of date. A whole lot of "clueful" people have given up on running their own mail servers for their personal email accounts. They either use Google Apps, if they want their own domain, or they just use Gmail. The spam problem is too great otherwise.

Apparently I am no longer a 'clueful' user then. Makes me chokle.

Nobody with a clue waste hours setting up their own email server when gmail can do it for you in a few minutes.

I set up my own email server, and I consider myself to have a clue.

I pay Fastmail what's currently going for $40/year for an "Enhanced" personal account that includes using my own personal domain.

Having my own domain avoids problems like, oh, Google going mad about true names with Google+ and shutting down my Gmail account.

I have a Gmail hosted address at a personal domain. Took ten minutes to set up.

Mailgun + Cloudflare + Gmail

Who still bothers to do that?

Every address I give out is one of my own domains. Mostly they redirect to my gmail account, but this way I can change to a different provider or suddenly spin up my own mail server and no one has to update their address book.

Edit to add: My point not withstanding, yeah, that's an arbitrary "cluefullness" test.

I've never bothered. Hotmail or Yahoo email addresses were embarrassing back in the day, but I guess the hype around Gmail changed that 10 years ago. I've never felt awkward putting a gmail address on a business card.

You don't find that a gmail address on a business card conveys that it's a 1-2 person operation or very loosely organized? Given the low barrier to entry for setting up hosted email (google apps being $5/mo/user) I personally get the impression the person doesn't take their business seriously, on par with business cards with perforated edges from home printing.

I know my gut reaction when I get a (semi-)professional email from a gmail account is "ok.. what's the scam angle on this one?"

When I was a 1 person operation, and worked as a consultant doing dev work and consulting, I had no problem using my Gmail account. Of course when I started a small company we used a hosted domain.

But before the Gmail days it was weird and unprofessional for even a 1 person operation to have a Webmail address.

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