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It's a neat idea that, thanks to the applications-not-protocols approach taken by many platforms today, probably isn't viable any longer. When the article was

It's a neat idea that, thanks to the applications-not-protocols approach taken by many platforms today, probably isn't viable any longer. When the article was written, my workplace communicated over e-mail (IMAP-enabled), our calendars supported CalDAV, and we did have an instant messaging system that ran over extensions to SIP, which _was_ compatible with libpurple. We also all had voice phones on our desks for very-impromptu calls. The ironic part of all this: it was Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Lync. I at the time was using Linux with Pidgin and Evolution, there being no Microsoft clients for any of the stack. Nowadays, our stack is GApps with Slack, and a heathy dose of Zoom. To get Slack out of the way: good luck; the XMPP and IRC gateways were retired ages ago, and interactive API clients even today appear to be second-class citizens. GApps is interesting in that they do support standards like IMAP and CalDAV, but only if your organization allows for "insecure authentication" options, which mine does not. Otherwise, you're glued to a browser app that sometimes breaks in browsers that aren't Chrome. And let's not even start with Zoom. My point in saying this is: in 2014, this would have been seen as a cool project, and I'd bet some coworkers would've even encouraged me to try and get it working. In 2021, this is how I'd get fired.

closeparen 5y ago
Offering an IMAP service runs the same security risk under Exchange as it does under G Suite, namely, it’s a username and password login flow. It’s also disabled in Office 365 if you opt for a secure configuration. The one difference might be, if you have a Windows domain, you could integrate MFA into your domain login process and then use AD’s built in Kerberos to authenticate mail clients to the IMAP server. That’s still relatively Microsoft-proprietary stuff. Thunderbird on Linux probably won’t access that, even though “Kerberos” and “IMAP” are nominally things it supports. I think what changed here was a less a shift towards proprietary architecture and more an increased emphasis on MFA.

closeparen 5y ago

Offering an IMAP service runs the same security risk under Exchange as it does under G Suite, namely, it’s a username and password login flow. It’s also disabled in Office 365 if you opt for a secure configuration. The one difference might be, if you have a Windows domain, you could integrate MFA into your domain login process and then use AD’s built in Kerberos to authenticate mail clients to the IMAP server. That’s still relatively Microsoft-proprietary stuff. Thunderbird on Linux probably won’t access that, even though “Kerberos” and “IMAP” are nominally things it supports. I think what changed here was a less a shift towards proprietary architecture and more an increased emphasis on MFA.