Re: [Imap-protocol] If Crispin were creating IMAP today how would it be different?

Bill Janssen <[email protected]> Sat, 07 Mar 2015 21:50:32 -0800
Newsgroups gmane.mail.imap.general
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Ladar Levison <[email protected]> wrote:

> People like what they already know.

Yep.

> Myself included. Doesn't mean its the better choice.

Yep.

> A number of non-IETF blessed messaging protocols have already switched to JSON.

I'll just note that "popular" and "correct" are not synonyms.

> > Personally, I'd do everything in binary, but that's just me obsessing
> > about packet sizes.  I'm thinking about designing a secure email
> > protocol built on CCNx (http://www.ccnx.org/), which provides digital
> > signatures, encryption, and router caching.  There's no concept of
> > a "connection" at all, or a "mail server"; just messages.  That's
> > the future.
> 
> That sounds like JSON-RPC, only you've your encoding the
> requests/responses in binary instead of JSON.

CCN is a peer-to-peer broadcast content-caching protocol, so there's no
"RPC call" from a client to a specific server which then sends a
response.  The difference is somewhat like point-to-point versus
packet-switched CDN; instead of encrypting the channel the messages flow
on, the messages themselves are encrypted and attached to a unique
handle, and then just "handed out to passing strangers" for them to copy
and pass on to others (this is exactly what's happening in the
implementation of an SSL-encrypted TCP connection, of course).  At some
point the receiver issues a call for that particular handle (which can
be different for each message), and anyone who has a copy sends it on.

But what I'm doing is an MTA-to-MTA protocol; what you're looking at is
an MUA-MTA protocol, like IMAP.  On the other hand, in my design the MUA
*is* the MTA, so perhaps there's no difference.

Bill
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