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google defined websocket protocol not long ago. We didn't actually need it. They did. With such a huge browser market share, all they crave for is information.

google defined websocket protocol not long ago. We didn't actually need it. They did. With such a huge browser market share, all they crave for is information. All of it. And most of us (developers) embrace this flow because each and every "fault" they "discover" and use to create a new idiotic standard is an opportunity for us to profit. And we feed it. I don't need jmap, none of us do. They need it, so they wrote 200 pages of stupid, extremely complicated specs with the hope that it will gain traction and we'll start developing. They can't do it alone. They need us to embrace it. I won't and I hope none of you will. I hope this standard will die with a whimper. I am doing my best to keep my e-mails where they belong. Far away from browser. I use SMTP. There's nothing wrong with it. It works. I use MIME. There's nothing wrong with it. It works. I personally don't use IMAP. ODMR is all I actually need. But I configure and maintain IMAP servers. I see nothing wrong with it either. It works. What baffles me is cyrus project accepting this idiocy. I just hope it won't become the new deal and the others (dovecot et all) will stay away from it. Panic and fear can and will escalate the process. So how long until "everything is JSON"-shit will take over? I'm 40 years old and my bet is I will live to see it happening. This is actually scary. And not because json or hydras.

isodude 7y ago
I tend to agree with you, even so, if not for these moves we wouldn't have any change at all. Email is not a solved problem, we just have a lot of fixes that makes it sort of stable. If not else we get a competing extension to IMAP because someone does not want JMAP.
microcolonel 7y ago
To be honest, JSON is pretty reasonable. The parsing speeds are very good, the grammar is a lot simpler than SMTP/HTTP/IMAP, it actually has numeric and boolean types. It is no surprise to me that the two people here complaining that IMAP is somehow acceptable don't even use it. JMAP solves real problems inherent with IMAP, particularly on clients that are not suitable for local archiving of messages (hence, ODMR/POP is not an option), and where IMAP sends considerably more data than the client actually uses (making it slow). I don't like the use of JSON for local IPC, as is showing up in some systems, but for RPC over an unreliable network, JSON is more convenient than not. As for the use of HTTP, it's not ideal in my view, and I tend to think it's overused. The one argument though, is that it allows JMAP to go over port 443 to a host that has an existing https service on that port (since you likely have a reverse proxy, probably NGINX, as your listener anyway) without having to send a bespoke upgrade request, which defeats the simplicity benefits of a custom protocol, since you have to implement HTTP to do the upgrade.

isodude 7y ago

I tend to agree with you, even so, if not for these moves we wouldn't have any change at all. Email is not a solved problem, we just have a lot of fixes that makes it sort of stable. If not else we get a competing extension to IMAP because someone does not want JMAP.

microcolonel 7y ago

To be honest, JSON is pretty reasonable. The parsing speeds are very good, the grammar is a lot simpler than SMTP/HTTP/IMAP, it actually has numeric and boolean types. It is no surprise to me that the two people here complaining that IMAP is somehow acceptable don't even use it. JMAP solves real problems inherent with IMAP, particularly on clients that are not suitable for local archiving of messages (hence, ODMR/POP is not an option), and where IMAP sends considerably more data than the client actually uses (making it slow). I don't like the use of JSON for local IPC, as is showing up in some systems, but for RPC over an unreliable network, JSON is more convenient than not. As for the use of HTTP, it's not ideal in my view, and I tend to think it's overused. The one argument though, is that it allows JMAP to go over port 443 to a host that has an existing https service on that port (since you likely have a reverse proxy, probably NGINX, as your listener anyway) without having to send a bespoke upgrade request, which defeats the simplicity benefits of a custom protocol, since you have to implement HTTP to do the upgrade.