7 ms·

Actually this gets me thinking: what about making a signaling server for webrtc chats using IMAP ? This way we got a truely decentralised chat system.

pjc50 10y ago
Long ago I knew someone who effectively used email as a chat system: the delivery latency was low enough for local email that you could just put the message in the Subject and reply immediately. This did indeed rely on IMAP IDLE. Unfortunately message delivery latency has gone up a lot these days. It might be saner to ask, "can we deliver mail over MQTT?" instead.
- thatcry 10y ago
  As someone who is fascinated by decentralized social networks, I always come back to email as the ultimate solution to that problem.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- sametmax 10y ago
  You missunderstand, the goal is not to use email for the messages, the goal would be to use IMAP to signals users to each others, THEN switch to webrtc to chat.
stevekemp 10y ago
I'm not alone in writing a proof of concept "Forum" which was just a view on a private NNTP server.
juiced 10y ago
Email can be decentralized because of DNS as its underlying routing "protocol". To reach somebodies emailserver, you need to know the MX record of its domainname (which is part of the emailaddress). Maybe we can build a decentralized chat system based on this same principle, by using TXT records for example.
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  > Maybe we can build a decentralized chat system based on this same principle This is how Matrix works, but using SRV records: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse#setting-up-federation https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse#setting-up-federation I've tried Matrix, and I feel it has potential, but right now the standard homeserver is slow and a bit of a memory hog. There are some on-going projects to develop other implementations, but they are far from complete, and not usable. I'm also a bit miffed why they didn't just choose the standard "user@domain" format for user identifiers.

pjc50 10y ago

Long ago I knew someone who effectively used email as a chat system: the delivery latency was low enough for local email that you could just put the message in the Subject and reply immediately. This did indeed rely on IMAP IDLE. Unfortunately message delivery latency has gone up a lot these days. It might be saner to ask, "can we deliver mail over MQTT?" instead.

thatcry 10y ago
As someone who is fascinated by decentralized social networks, I always come back to email as the ultimate solution to that problem.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
sametmax 10y ago
You missunderstand, the goal is not to use email for the messages, the goal would be to use IMAP to signals users to each others, THEN switch to webrtc to chat.

stevekemp 10y ago

I'm not alone in writing a proof of concept "Forum" which was just a view on a private NNTP server.

juiced 10y ago

Email can be decentralized because of DNS as its underlying routing "protocol". To reach somebodies emailserver, you need to know the MX record of its domainname (which is part of the emailaddress). Maybe we can build a decentralized chat system based on this same principle, by using TXT records for example.

lucaspiller 10y ago
> Maybe we can build a decentralized chat system based on this same principle This is how Matrix works, but using SRV records: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse#setting-up-federation https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse#setting-up-federation I've tried Matrix, and I feel it has potential, but right now the standard homeserver is slow and a bit of a memory hog. There are some on-going projects to develop other implementations, but they are far from complete, and not usable. I'm also a bit miffed why they didn't just choose the standard "user@domain" format for user identifiers.