[conspire] (forw) Re: [Golugtech] Fw: [Alpine-info] O365 XOAUTH2 via fetchmail

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Akkana Peck (akkana at shallowsky.com):

> In case Alex or any other gmail user wants to try OAuth2, and get a
> head start on May, I wrote up the steps I've been following and what
> doesn't work, as a blog-post-to-be:
> https://shallowsky.com/tmp/oauth2-gmail-smtp.html
> (I'm hoping to find a solution before actually putting it on the blog.)

One hot-take reaction:  

I'm a member of a number of Google Groups (FeltonLUG, BerkeleyLUG, some
others), subscribed from rick at linuxmafia.com, _not_ from a GMail
account, and in every case so far, I've been able to see the archives
perfectly well (contradicting what your draft says).  I've not yet had
occasion to want to unsubscribe, so I haven't tested that bit.

A few peripheral words about the join-Google-Groups-not-from-GMail 
matter:  Over the years, some standard instructions on the Web for doing
so have ceased working, while others still do.  I have two "Google
Groups" links on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Mail/ that document joining
such groups from non-Googly addresses.  As of 2018, the first of those
two tips worked reliably (tested by me).  I'm guessing the second one is
probably broken.

On the first page, I include some musing about the recurring pattern of
"Google occasionally makes existing methods to join Google Groups
without using a Google Account mysteriously cease to work".  One can
adjust one's paranoia to suit about whether this is passive-aggressive 
discouraging of non-Google infrastructure, or just Stuff Happened.

Regardless, typically when I'm on _even_ a LUG's Google Group (I mean, 
by that, a forum where I'd normally expect most people to stubbornly 
act to protect their computing autonomy), I'm usually literally the
_only_ member present who's not subscribed from GMail.  (Michael Paoli
is sometimes the other honourable exception.) So, irrespective of
whether the discouraging-GMail-non-true-believers thing is deliberate
policy or not, the effect is the same.

I'm not quick to blame Google/Alphabet/whoever-this-week for the result,
but I'm also slow to trust them even a tiny bit.