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JMAP: Like IMAP but Not Really

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Re: JMAP: Like IMAP but Not Really

#51
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if someone had just jammed XMPP and SMTP together" - wasn't that kind of what Google Wave was aiming for?

Yes. And the vision for Google Wave was great . The execution was just abominably bad (primarily on the frontend/UI side), and Google's failures in execution carried over reputationally to the—now dead—Apache incubator.

Not just the UI side. The underlying protocol was also pointlessly over-engineered. SMTP is still around because it is simple. You can get a basic SMTP client running in an hour or two. You can get a basic server running in a similar amount of time, at least in a higher level language. That matters, not because anyone will have anything usable in that time, but because it lets you start to experiment very, very easily.

Wave suffered from a UI that was a mess layered on top of a protocol that made it really hard for people to get started on experimenting with alternative frontends, and without a user-base giving people a reason to persist figuring out how to interoperate with it. Had the protocol been simpler, the UI mess might not have mattered so much - people might have come up with their own ideas.

Re: JMAP: Like IMAP but Not Really

#52
post #26
post #12

The main failure in mail standards is a lack of explicit utf8 clean support lhs@rhs -if this got fixed (it's often called universal acceptance) a lot of things about mail as an ecology would improve. I have view on the spam thing. The whole "your idea will not work because" meme is hugely destructive of innovation in email. It sucks energy and mindshare. It's classic old timer put down. What would (imnsho opinion) ha…

You could pay with computing power. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

The standard response to proof-of-work spam deterrents is that "significant numbers of senders of legitimate email would be unable to continue their current levels of activity"[0]. While I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, it does limit the utility of such a service.

[0]: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/proofwork.pdf

Re: JMAP: Like IMAP but Not Really

#53
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And the vision for Google Wave was great . The execution was just abominably bad (primarily on the frontend/UI side), and Google's failures in execution carried over reputationally to the—now dead—Apache incubator.

Not just the UI side. The underlying protocol was also pointlessly over-engineered. SMTP is still around because it is simple . You can get a basic SMTP client running in an hour or two. You can get a basic server running in a similar amount of time, at least in a higher level language. That matters, not because anyone will have anything usable in that time, but because it lets you start to experiment very, very easi…

You don't even need a client - connecting with telnet and sending emails is pretty straightforward.

I guess the modern equivalent is checking if a REST API is usable just with curl.

Re: JMAP: Like IMAP but Not Really

#54

FastMail is behind this protocol and from what I've read JMAP has evolved out of their web interface. I've been a happy customer, even though lately I flirted with going back to GSuite for my personal email, but after a trial realized that Gmail does many things well, except for being a good email service. So I went back to FastMail and renewed for another 2 years. Seeing this new protocol is exciting, because JMAP i…

I've been a happy Fastmail customer too, until I was made aware that you can impersonate other Fastmail customers by just spoofing the email address. Their servers just happily accept it. SPF and DKIM all pass with flying colours, and the only way you'd know it's happened is if you have DMARC on and happen to notice a pass in the report you don't remember sending. Well, that is if the recipient doesn't reply to the spoofed message - hope the damage wasn't already done though. It's effectively impossible for the recipient to know it's been spoofed.

The worst part is I think Fastmail is aware of it and just don't care (believe that's why they mark their emails with a green tick and text). I understand that email has never been really authenticated, but this just throws any trust I had in Fastmail out the window.

I will be evaluating other mail hosts at the end of my subscription.

Re: JMAP: Like IMAP but Not Really

#55
post #4

The article mentions that JMAP does calendars as well. Anyone have a quick status update on how it compares to CalDav and if it's supported by any of the major calendar clients or servers? I did a quick google and looked at the JMAP site but couldn't find any info. Background for this is that I implemented a calendar client and a calendar server (with SabreDAV) last year and I'm wondering if I should be adding suppor…

Editor of the JMAP specs here. The JMAP calendar spec is currently just a draft, but now JMAP core and mail are (more or less) finalised and JSCalendar (https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-calext-jscalendar-11) is in last call too, we will be looking to take the JMAP Calendar spec through the IETF process in the very near future. Since it is essentially just combing core with the JSCalendar data format, this should be reasonably straight forward.

Re: JMAP: Like IMAP but Not Really

#56

FastMail is behind this protocol and from what I've read JMAP has evolved out of their web interface. I've been a happy customer, even though lately I flirted with going back to GSuite for my personal email, but after a trial realized that Gmail does many things well, except for being a good email service. So I went back to FastMail and renewed for another 2 years. Seeing this new protocol is exciting, because JMAP i…

I've been a happy Fastmail customer too, until I was made aware that you can impersonate other Fastmail customers by just spoofing the email address. Their servers just happily accept it. SPF and DKIM all pass with flying colours, and the only way you'd know it's happened is if you have DMARC on and happen to notice a pass in the report you don't remember sending. Well, that is if the recipient doesn't reply to the s…

What is the reason for allowing this? Laziness?

Re: JMAP: Like IMAP but Not Really

#57

FastMail is behind this protocol and from what I've read JMAP has evolved out of their web interface. I've been a happy customer, even though lately I flirted with going back to GSuite for my personal email, but after a trial realized that Gmail does many things well, except for being a good email service. So I went back to FastMail and renewed for another 2 years. Seeing this new protocol is exciting, because JMAP i…

I've been a happy Fastmail customer too, until I was made aware that you can impersonate other Fastmail customers by just spoofing the email address. Their servers just happily accept it. SPF and DKIM all pass with flying colours, and the only way you'd know it's happened is if you have DMARC on and happen to notice a pass in the report you don't remember sending. Well, that is if the recipient doesn't reply to the s…

Do you have any reference for this issue?

Re: JMAP: Like IMAP but Not Really

#58
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And the vision for Google Wave was great . The execution was just abominably bad (primarily on the frontend/UI side), and Google's failures in execution carried over reputationally to the—now dead—Apache incubator.

Not just the UI side. The underlying protocol was also pointlessly over-engineered. SMTP is still around because it is simple . You can get a basic SMTP client running in an hour or two. You can get a basic server running in a similar amount of time, at least in a higher level language. That matters, not because anyone will have anything usable in that time, but because it lets you start to experiment very, very easi…

The S in SMTP literally stands for Simple. And it was developed in 1982. So it was considered simple in 1982.

That gives you some idea how simple it is.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc821

Re: JMAP: Like IMAP but Not Really

#59

FastMail is behind this protocol and from what I've read JMAP has evolved out of their web interface. I've been a happy customer, even though lately I flirted with going back to GSuite for my personal email, but after a trial realized that Gmail does many things well, except for being a good email service. So I went back to FastMail and renewed for another 2 years. Seeing this new protocol is exciting, because JMAP i…

> ...Gmail does many things well, except for being a good email service.

Gmail/Gsuite seem to be good email services from my perspective as lay user and occasional admin. Can you expand on why you think they are not good email services?

Re: JMAP: Like IMAP but Not Really

#60
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a happy Fastmail customer too, until I was made aware that you can impersonate other Fastmail customers by just spoofing the email address. Their servers just happily accept it. SPF and DKIM all pass with flying colours, and the only way you'd know it's happened is if you have DMARC on and happen to notice a pass in the report you don't remember sending. Well, that is if the recipient doesn't reply to the s…

What is the reason for allowing this? Laziness?

I'm not certain, maybe there's a technical reason they can validate account credentials but not map credentials to addresses/aliases. Doesn't instill confidence either way.
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