COI – Chat Over IMAP • Hacker News Board

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#141

Post by f1refly » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

the_librarian wrote: post #118

Hey everyone. I don't want to start a debate or anything, I'm just looking for a privacy concerned chat service that I can easily teach my fiance to sign up for and use. She gave up on Pidgin, and I would appreciate any pros/cons for your favorite service of this kind. Thank you in advance!

I'd recommend quicksy if she's really clueless. It's an xmpp client that uses the users phone number as identifier and does autodiscovery with the users address book to check if any of their contacts are registered too. That functionality aside it's still a fully functional xmpp client, so you can talk to her with conversations, gajim, dino etc if you want.

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#142

Post by elamje » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

I have seen other users bring this up, so I think it should be stated in its own parent comment: most of the public uses yahoo or gmail to host their email, so chatting with them is all tracked by yahoo or google. That is something that needs to be addressed.

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#143

Post by kalleboo » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

alrs wrote: post #75

Freak_NL wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

It must vary a lot. I live in the United States and I've never encountered anyone who wanted to communicate over WhatsApp.

Certainly it varies a lot. But back in 2017 they had 1.5 billion monthly active users (20% of the world population). The US is probably an outlier here (I hear SMS is still popular in the US whereas I literally can't remember the last time I sent an SMS, it must be over 5 years ago)

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#144

Post by rafbuff » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

richardwhiuk wrote: post #130

xDest wrote: post #61

A German newspaper has some more information on that, for example that this is headed by Rafael Laguna of Open-Xchange https://www.sueddeutsche.de/digital/whatsapp-konkurrent-open... The aim seems to be to create a system that can replace centralized messenger solutions by allowing use of existing IMAP servers or hosting one yourself. I am not sure if this is correct but the article states that they are already suppl…

Note: > three quarters of all IMAP servers doesn't not mean 3/4 of internet users (e.g. I expect Google's IMAP servers represent a disproportionately large number of users). Dovecot is likely more likely to be used by a long tail of smaller nodes.

We have about 7bn total unique active (3 months) accounts in the world, 50-60% is Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo and a few more, 40-50% are real IMAP servers, of which 76% use Dovecot. Very large deployments include companies like Comcast, Deutsche Telekom, 1&1, LGI (Ziggo, Virgin Media, UPC) with 10m+ user deployments, and yes, a veeery long tail of millions of small servers and anything in between. But COI will also play fine with GMail and friends.

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#145

Post by rafbuff » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:34 PM UTC

Illniyar wrote: post #134

If it's basically two mails clients sending emails quickly to eachother, is there anything there that will make sure the user doesn't fill his inbox with tons of "hi","how are you" emails? Does it delete the messages that were read, or something? If it's really going to put all the messages,is it using some kind of dedicated folder?

Chat messages will land in a separate folder for the servers that support COI. For the others they will be collated into normal mail messages with a small delay, but yes, it may end up being many.

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#146

Post by spudlyo » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:34 PM UTC

Y_Y wrote: post #15

This idea is dangerously simple. All the same email is pretty siloed, for personal addresses. Running your own server is a hassle for anyone,and the most popular provider stopped being "not evil" some time since 2004 when I got my address there.

Running your own server is not a hassle for "anyone". I wish people would stop stating this like it's a fact. Having maintained communal SMTP/IMAP servers for the last 20+ years I can tell you that sometimes a year goes by where I don't have to touch it at all.

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#147

Post by titanix2 » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

spalt wrote: post #90

I mean all this really is is two people sending email really quickly to each other....

Which is exactly what Japanese were doing on their legacy "galakei" phones before the iPhone took over.

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#148

Post by nikodunk » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

I like this idea. I could build a client and compete in the messaging space with this tomorrow. As a developer having come of age in a world ruled by FB Messenger, iMessage, Whatsapp etc, this is a whole new freedom and opportunity.

I'm aware that these battles have all been fought in the MSN/ICQ/AIM era too, but it looks like we're going to have to fight them again.

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#149

Post by arbitrage » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

gsich wrote: post #110

kevinsimper wrote: post #64

The biggest problem with IMAP from my point of view is spam, that is why there is only a couple of email providers in the world, although still decentralized, they trust each other more than any newcomers, which is kind of preventing this initiative.

IMAP is for receiving.

IMAP is for retrieving. SMTP is for receiving. And sending.

Re: COI – Chat Over IMAP

#150

Post by Arnt » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

gsich wrote: post #113

Arnt wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, sure. Just download all of the messages. The problem with that is that you run into users like me, who have 25 years of archived email, a mobile phone, and who travel abroad.

Just for a backups sake you should do it.

Are you suggesting that if I want to search on a particular device, then that device should hold my backup storage? If so, then I disagree and have chosen to store my backups on a device that's behind two locked doors, hard to reach, well protected from being accidentally disturbed, and which doesn't run unrelated software.