Re: Message Routing Philosophy

Chuq Von Rospach <[email protected]> writes:
> Allow me for a second to play the heretic.
> 
> Has e-mail passed it's time? Should we be doing this at all? Or should
> we focus on standards enhancing IM protocols with store and forward
> capabilities and a backing store for when you're offline?
> 
> Do we need mail-ng, or do we already have it?

I would go so far as to say that a replacement for current email that
isn't also the best IM system out there would be a waste of time.

However, we're more likely to propose the Right Thing if we don't get
ahead of ourselves.  We should work out (1) what sort of properties
the ideal email system would have and (2) what overall architecture the
solution might have, before we start to think about (3) how we might
play well with existing protocols and (4) what actual protocol we
might propose.  Otherwise we're in danger of looking at our feet and
missing the horizon - even if we decide to sacrifice some strengths of
a radically different mail system in return for better backward
compatibility, we should know what we're sacrificing.
-- 
  __  Paul Crowley
\/ o\ [email protected]
/\__/ http://www.ciphergoth.org/