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Why has SMTP evolved in all those years? Email could handle much more automation, and be friendlier to on-demand inclusion in discussion threads, but AFAIK, it

Why has SMTP evolved in all those years? Email could handle much more automation, and be friendlier to on-demand inclusion in discussion threads, but AFAIK, it doesn't support a standard way to provide: 1. End-user controlled behaviour. 2. Whole-thread forwarding initiated by the end-user. #1 would require a way to allow stantard plugins to be written, either by sysadmin or end-users. (Obviously, the capability and authorization of each would be different. End-user ones would only be allowed to touch end-user own emails.) #2 would allow easier evolution of email threads. I'm not talking about proprietary extensions to a particular SMTP implementation. I'm talking a standardized protocol addition to support these scenarios. Am I missing something? Were changes to SMTP ever attempted?

dsr_ 11y ago
You can forward a whole thread. That's client-side behavior. The simple way is to select the thread, encapsulate it as an attachment of type RFC822/email, and send it off. The complicated but more user-friendly way is to reconstruct the messages into a single non-repeating conversation view and send that. In either case, SMTP doesn't need to change, and you don't even need support on the receiving client, just the sender.
Someone1234 11y ago
> Why hasn't SMTP evolved in all those years? Real answer: A duopoly in the email space give two-three companies too much power over SMTP and email in general (and they have no interest in changing it, IE 6 style). These companies? Microsoft (Exchange, Hotmail/Outlook.com), Google (Gmail, Google Apps, Google Apps for Education), and Yahoo! (Yahoo! Mail). If these "big three" don't want to support something then it doesn't exist. If they do want to support something then you're adding it to your SMTP/mail server stack regardless of how much you wish to. Now, I know what you're going to say "what about Sendmail, Postfix, and other SMTP daemons?" But these open source email daemons are very beholden to what the "big three" do. If your SMTP daemon doesn't work with their servers then it is effectively broken and nobody will run it. The reality is that the SOURCE of almost all non-automated email on the internet comes from these big three (Exchange shouldn't be under-estimated in this context). So that's why, we're in an IE 6 situation all over again, but this time Google and Yahoo! are also playing gatekeeper in addition to Microsoft.

dsr_ 11y ago

You can forward a whole thread. That's client-side behavior. The simple way is to select the thread, encapsulate it as an attachment of type RFC822/email, and send it off. The complicated but more user-friendly way is to reconstruct the messages into a single non-repeating conversation view and send that. In either case, SMTP doesn't need to change, and you don't even need support on the receiving client, just the sender.

Someone1234 11y ago

> Why hasn't SMTP evolved in all those years? Real answer: A duopoly in the email space give two-three companies too much power over SMTP and email in general (and they have no interest in changing it, IE 6 style). These companies? Microsoft (Exchange, Hotmail/Outlook.com), Google (Gmail, Google Apps, Google Apps for Education), and Yahoo! (Yahoo! Mail). If these "big three" don't want to support something then it doesn't exist. If they do want to support something then you're adding it to your SMTP/mail server stack regardless of how much you wish to. Now, I know what you're going to say "what about Sendmail, Postfix, and other SMTP daemons?" But these open source email daemons are very beholden to what the "big three" do. If your SMTP daemon doesn't work with their servers then it is effectively broken and nobody will run it. The reality is that the SOURCE of almost all non-automated email on the internet comes from these big three (Exchange shouldn't be under-estimated in this context). So that's why, we're in an IE 6 situation all over again, but this time Google and Yahoo! are also playing gatekeeper in addition to Microsoft.