I really don't like that the client would require full access to your e-mail account.
Otherwise it's pretty neat.
COI – Chat Over IMAP
31–40 of 259 posts
Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The COI ecosystem is the COI Standard plus compatible Client Apps and Email Servers. > COI works with all email severs, but IMAP servers can be enhanced with extra COI capability. I’d take this to mean that no, changes are not explicitly required; but without the changes COI functions the same as email, but in an IM interface.
They have a description of the client but I could not find a description of the optional server-side enhancements (besides that it should be advertised via CAPABILITY).
Chat over IMAP seem a bit misleading title.
Their proposition is to add additional info in MIME headers. Or later some of them like Message-Id with chat info.
So seem more related to MIME and SMTP.
A client app can get those headers with different protocols too. MAPI, EWS, JMAP, etc.
Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP
#33This is great and all, but you're relying on IMAP, an inherently mobile-unfriendly protocol. They should have worked with Fastmail to get this into JMAP.
Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that was OP's point? To tout it as an alternative, or "breaking free" of WhatsApp, is to discredit one of the pivotal reasons that people use WhatsApp, which is E2E encryption.
I think most people who use WhatsApp don't even know what E2E encryption is and use it only because their peers are using it.
The pivotal reason people use WhatsApp is because it can be used without paying (with money that is), and because up to 90% of people in any country use it¹.
That's it. Facebook could remove E2E today, and lose only a fraction of its WhatsApp users. Of course many little annoyances might mean that a competitor may step up, but WhatsApp is incumbent, and this is no longer about features or technology. It's all about the fact that your friends, family, and colleagues are using it. It can safely ride the network effect for years.
I welcome any protocol that makes chat something that is available for everyone with a computing device again — not just on approved smartphone operating systems.
1: Varies quite a bit per country.
Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP
#35How is this different from https://delta.chat ?
Primarily I guess this is an open specification, whereas deltachat is a closed app? sounds like the same underlying principle to me though. Apparently in the future there would be optional extensions on IMAP servers to make things more efficient. EDIT: looks like delta.chat is open source https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-desktop
Deltachat is opensource for every platform it supports:
https://github.com/deltachat
It also includes a core library in C: https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-core
The spec is documented here: https://github.com/deltachat/spec/blob/master/spec.md
Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP
#36I think this could be a great solution, but consider going after Slack rather than Whatsapp to being with. Unusually I think enterprise customers will make better early adopters than consumers, as they don't care about network effects and their technological inertia actually aligns with your selling point - that it is a thin protocol on top of email. Once people use this for their professional email address they may…
The alternative for Slack is MatterMost, which you can host on-premise, and is free. I can heartedly recommend it.
It's just not an urgent a problem as this is.
Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP
#37I think this could be a great solution, but consider going after Slack rather than Whatsapp to being with. Unusually I think enterprise customers will make better early adopters than consumers, as they don't care about network effects and their technological inertia actually aligns with your selling point - that it is a thin protocol on top of email. Once people use this for their professional email address they may…
"Once people use this for their professional email address they may start to using it for their personal one too."
It's usually the other way around.
Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP
#38They will have a problem with greylisting mail.
Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP
#39This is great and all, but you're relying on IMAP, an inherently mobile-unfriendly protocol. They should have worked with Fastmail to get this into JMAP.
I would have pointed you to their issue tracker, but all I can find is a horrible Confluence wiki. Kind of discouraging for potential contributors.
There is a mailing list though. At the very least they might add a 'why not (also) JMAP' bullet point to the website if you ask about it:
> […] join the COI developer mailing list by sending a mail to dev-join@coi-dev.org.
I would guess that they need IMAP to prevent the whole 'nobody uses it' problem.
Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP
#40"Last but not least, every COI client app can offer a variety of end to end encryption options to keep your communication absolutely private." The fact I had to read quite so far down the page to find this snippet emphasises to me how unimportant the developers of this protocol see E2E encryption to be :( And leaving it to the client seems like a terrible idea, especially if there are options, as then surely it will…
I don’t think that means the developers don’t consider it important; it means that the people that want E2E aren’t necessarily in their primary audience. The prime target of this protocol isn’t power users and developers; it’s the overwhelming majority of users that stick to siloed messaging because it’s convenient, and everyone has it. First and foremost, they need to be shown that this is more convenient, and has a…
I would argue that every user wants E2E, they just don't know (enough) about it. E2E should be the default.