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> 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 alt

> 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.)
mxuribe 4y ago
> I presume you're suggesting a new alternative to email rather than Matrix being itself an alternative (which isn't its intent)... Yes, the intent of my statement was hoping for an alternative to email, and i did not mean to imply that matrix would be the thing that would replace email. Both things seek to achieve different things. and even in some rare overlappiny use-cases, i would say that at this time matrix does not universally replace email. What i should have stated was that with such attention and (at least in some circles) excitement around newer areas like matrix...That maybe traditional email software devs might have - by now - looked into newer alternatives to email. With apologies to email software devs. And, yep, I had heard of JMAP some time ago....and i figured by now that it would be far more popular than it is, and that it would have been implemented by many more entities by now. Oh well.
- lucideer 4y ago
  > i figured by now that it would be far more popular than it is, and that it would have been implemented by many more entities by now. Oh well. Well IMAP is 37 years old and Google still haven't gotten around to implementing it properly. Email as a technology moves pretty slowly.
  - mxuribe 4y ago
    Lol! You are so right on all points there!!! :-D
  - Avamander 4y ago
    To be fair here, IMAP has some terrible ideas that have only been remedied with later standards. For example the (in)famous label thing, why should a letter belong in a single folder. Pointless restriction.
    - lucideer 4y ago
      What's the infamous label thing? Are you talking about IMAP or Gmail's broken implementation? I was under the impression the first public IMAP spec had support for "flags"... did it need later fixing?

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.)

mxuribe 4y ago

> I presume you're suggesting a new alternative to email rather than Matrix being itself an alternative (which isn't its intent)... Yes, the intent of my statement was hoping for an alternative to email, and i did not mean to imply that matrix would be the thing that would replace email. Both things seek to achieve different things. and even in some rare overlappiny use-cases, i would say that at this time matrix does not universally replace email. What i should have stated was that with such attention and (at least in some circles) excitement around newer areas like matrix...That maybe traditional email software devs might have - by now - looked into newer alternatives to email. With apologies to email software devs. And, yep, I had heard of JMAP some time ago....and i figured by now that it would be far more popular than it is, and that it would have been implemented by many more entities by now. Oh well.

lucideer 4y ago
> i figured by now that it would be far more popular than it is, and that it would have been implemented by many more entities by now. Oh well. Well IMAP is 37 years old and Google still haven't gotten around to implementing it properly. Email as a technology moves pretty slowly.
- mxuribe 4y ago
  Lol! You are so right on all points there!!! :-D
- Avamander 4y ago
  To be fair here, IMAP has some terrible ideas that have only been remedied with later standards. For example the (in)famous label thing, why should a letter belong in a single folder. Pointless restriction.
  - lucideer 4y ago
    What's the infamous label thing? Are you talking about IMAP or Gmail's broken implementation? I was under the impression the first public IMAP spec had support for "flags"... did it need later fixing?