5 ms·

With all this recent attention on HN around imap, smtp, mail servers and the like....i also expected something more modern to be announced - either JMAP or somr

With all this recent attention on HN around imap, smtp, mail servers and the like....i also expected something more modern to be announced - either JMAP or somrthing else altogether. I'm not disappointed because the more, the merrier...but nowadays with so much of my time in the matrix world, i somewhat xpected to start hearing anouncements of alternatives to email.

ThePhysicist 4y ago
My prediction is that e-mail will still be around in 10 years, and Matrix will be mostly abandoned, because e-mail is mostly centered around protocols, whereas Matrix is mostly centered around specific libraries and clients (in my opinion). You can already see Matrix crumble under its own complexity, in a few years they will have added so much functionality that it will become impossible for anyone but Element to provide fully-featured client software. IMAP & POP3, by comparison, are so simple and haven't changed in decades, which is why they are so useful.
- lucideer 4y ago
  My hope is that they're both around (& actively developed & used) in 10 years, but yes: email is much less likely to die than Matrix.
  - ThePhysicist 4y ago
    My prediction is that with further advances in networking, devices will be permanently online and asynchronous communication will become less relevant (because you can always directly reach your peer), so all these fancy E2EE crypto protocols will be replaced with TLS or a similar protocol.
  - Arathorn 4y ago
    I’m not sure you could kill Matrix now even if you wanted to? Heck, given people still run gopher & WAIS & fidonet servers today, so even if everyone runs away from Matrix, it’ll still keep burbling away somewhere :)
    - ThePhysicist 4y ago
      Certainly not kill it, I just don't think it will be nearly as ubiquitous as e-mail.
- mxuribe 4y ago
  > ...e-mail is mostly centered around protocols, whereas Matrix is mostly centered around specific libraries and clients (in my opinion)... I disagree on this, but that's ok that we differ in opinion. Also, i would disagree about the crumbling of matrix - either in the protocol sense or app/client or even implementation sense. Could some areas like clients, UX, etc. improve? Sure, of course! Evolution of software need not end if there's room to improve. I'm an admitted fanboy of matrix, but even i know that its not perfect and i hope for continued improvement of matrix. As great as email has been for decades - warts and all - i simply have been expecting (hoping?) for something else by now. It need not be matrix - though again, i'm a fan - but i just meant i hope for open, decentralized mechanism, protocols that serve the world, and become as solid and de facto as email has been (again warts and all). In 10 years, i also beleieve email will still be around...Now, whether it will be considered as standard and universally-accepted as a means for communications, we'll see i guess.
lucideer 4y ago
> with so much of my time in the matrix world, i somewhat xpected to start hearing anouncements of alternatives to email. I presume you're suggesting a new alternative to email rather than Matrix being itself an alternative (which isn't its intent). The thing about email is it's a set of related protocols - if you want a modern alternative you need to look at those protocols & address legacy problems with them, replacing the ones that need replacing. That's what JMAP is. What you're asking for is JMAP. JMAP probably isn't perfect, but nothing is & there's no better alternatives I know of. And one major provider using it = more adoption than any other modern alternatives.
- catiopatio 4y ago
  > no better alternatives IMAP. IMAP is the better alternative. It’s universally supported and battle-tested. We have great servers and clients for it. It’s not perfect, but it’s also not fundamentally flawed in any way that might put the future of e-mail at risk. Bolting HTTP and JSON onto e-mail via JMAP — and requiring that everyone implement an entirely new, larger protocol stack — is not an obvious value proposition.
  - lucideer 4y ago
    > IMAP is the better alternative. So the definition of the word "alternative" in this instance is "something other than IMAP" - the argument for JMAP is not competing with IMAP, there's a pre-determined assumption that we're already unhappy with IMAP, hence the search for an "alternative". It sounds like you disagree fundamentally with moving on from IMAP in the first place, which is fair enough. That's not a debate I'm getting into here: all I'm saying is IFF we are moving on from IMAP, JMAP looks like the best alternative.
  - tjoff 4y ago
    Disagree, the dominance of IMAP makes email much worse than it needs to be. To the very point of putting email at risk in the long run.
  - einpoklum 4y ago
    > We have great servers and clients for it. I don't know about servers, but I'm still waiting to see a great email client. (For now I get by with Thunderbird, and it's actually going downhill.)

ThePhysicist 4y ago

My prediction is that e-mail will still be around in 10 years, and Matrix will be mostly abandoned, because e-mail is mostly centered around protocols, whereas Matrix is mostly centered around specific libraries and clients (in my opinion). You can already see Matrix crumble under its own complexity, in a few years they will have added so much functionality that it will become impossible for anyone but Element to provide fully-featured client software. IMAP & POP3, by comparison, are so simple and haven't changed in decades, which is why they are so useful.

lucideer 4y ago
My hope is that they're both around (& actively developed & used) in 10 years, but yes: email is much less likely to die than Matrix.
- ThePhysicist 4y ago
  My prediction is that with further advances in networking, devices will be permanently online and asynchronous communication will become less relevant (because you can always directly reach your peer), so all these fancy E2EE crypto protocols will be replaced with TLS or a similar protocol.
- Arathorn 4y ago
  I’m not sure you could kill Matrix now even if you wanted to? Heck, given people still run gopher & WAIS & fidonet servers today, so even if everyone runs away from Matrix, it’ll still keep burbling away somewhere :)
  - ThePhysicist 4y ago
    Certainly not kill it, I just don't think it will be nearly as ubiquitous as e-mail.
mxuribe 4y ago
> ...e-mail is mostly centered around protocols, whereas Matrix is mostly centered around specific libraries and clients (in my opinion)... I disagree on this, but that's ok that we differ in opinion. Also, i would disagree about the crumbling of matrix - either in the protocol sense or app/client or even implementation sense. Could some areas like clients, UX, etc. improve? Sure, of course! Evolution of software need not end if there's room to improve. I'm an admitted fanboy of matrix, but even i know that its not perfect and i hope for continued improvement of matrix. As great as email has been for decades - warts and all - i simply have been expecting (hoping?) for something else by now. It need not be matrix - though again, i'm a fan - but i just meant i hope for open, decentralized mechanism, protocols that serve the world, and become as solid and de facto as email has been (again warts and all). In 10 years, i also beleieve email will still be around...Now, whether it will be considered as standard and universally-accepted as a means for communications, we'll see i guess.

lucideer 4y ago

> with so much of my time in the matrix world, i somewhat xpected to start hearing anouncements of alternatives to email. I presume you're suggesting a new alternative to email rather than Matrix being itself an alternative (which isn't its intent). The thing about email is it's a set of related protocols - if you want a modern alternative you need to look at those protocols & address legacy problems with them, replacing the ones that need replacing. That's what JMAP is. What you're asking for is JMAP. JMAP probably isn't perfect, but nothing is & there's no better alternatives I know of. And one major provider using it = more adoption than any other modern alternatives.

catiopatio 4y ago
> no better alternatives IMAP. IMAP is the better alternative. It’s universally supported and battle-tested. We have great servers and clients for it. It’s not perfect, but it’s also not fundamentally flawed in any way that might put the future of e-mail at risk. Bolting HTTP and JSON onto e-mail via JMAP — and requiring that everyone implement an entirely new, larger protocol stack — is not an obvious value proposition.
- lucideer 4y ago
  > IMAP is the better alternative. So the definition of the word "alternative" in this instance is "something other than IMAP" - the argument for JMAP is not competing with IMAP, there's a pre-determined assumption that we're already unhappy with IMAP, hence the search for an "alternative". It sounds like you disagree fundamentally with moving on from IMAP in the first place, which is fair enough. That's not a debate I'm getting into here: all I'm saying is IFF we are moving on from IMAP, JMAP looks like the best alternative.
- tjoff 4y ago
  Disagree, the dominance of IMAP makes email much worse than it needs to be. To the very point of putting email at risk in the long run.
- einpoklum 4y ago
  > We have great servers and clients for it. I don't know about servers, but I'm still waiting to see a great email client. (For now I get by with Thunderbird, and it's actually going downhill.)