[Dovecot] Thinking Outside the Box - Extending IMAP

[andy.shellam-lists at mailnetwork.co.uk]

I disagree about SSH.

Firstly, how do virtual users fit into your proposed setup?
Secondly, as a service provider to the general public, the absolute LAST thing
I want to be doing is opening up SSH access to my servers.

Mark has a valid point in that you have to connect to the server via IMAP to
get your mail, why should you have to have a second protocol to do other
things with the same mailbox?  And why worry about a whole second set of
authentication when you've got a pre-authenticated connection ready and
waiting?

I agree it's not portable, and not ideal (ie. look at M$ Exchange's handling
of custom server features), but Timo's suggestion of using the METADATA
extension may strike the ideal balance between an extensible feature and the
IMAP standard.

Andy.


Johannes Berg <johannes at sipsolutions.net> wrote:

> On Sun, 2007-05-13 at 06:55 -0700, Marc Perkel wrote: 
> > Here's some thoughts I'd like to throw out there. I know it's not 
> > standard IMAP protocol but someone has to try new ideas first and I want 
> > to see what people (Timo) think of this.
> > 
> > IMAP establishes a connection between the client and the server. 
> > Wouldn't it be great if it could be a conduit to let custom Thunderbird 
> > plugins talk to custom server application over the IMAP interface? 
> 
> Why do you always want to stuff everything into IMAP?
> 
> > For 
> > example, personalized server settings.
> 
> Isn't there some protocol similar to IMAP that solves this?
> 
> > Who likes this idea?
> 
> I strongly disagree with this idea. Too little definition, too much
> server dependence, not portable across installations.
> 
> IMHO defining some behaviour that is so little related to the original
> purpose of IMAP is counterproductive.
> 
> Besides, why do you need to do this with IMAP? There's a protocol that
> supports all this already, it's called ssh. You can even tunnel pre-auth
> IMAP tunnels through the same ssh connection :)
> 
> johannes
> 

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