5 ms·

What if someone designed a new email protocol/etc from scratch without any reference to the existing one. Could it be made better? Can you even define what bett

What if someone designed a new email protocol/etc from scratch without any reference to the existing one. Could it be made better? Can you even define what better is?

Niten 12y ago
That's what Google Wave was intended to be, among other initiatives.
pinkyand 12y ago
There are some cases when encouraging shorter messages is very beneficial.
karellan126 12y ago
Of course. Lots of ideas in this direction. But be warned, thinking about new protocols is the first place engineers like us go without thinking about what getting adoption would really look like (which would be near impossible + need a backwards compatible beachhead imo).
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
huntaub 12y ago
Actually, that's exactly what we are trying to do with AirDispatch [1]. We started out intending to "fix" email with a better protocol, and ended up creating something much greater. The core problems that we tried to solve (to help define "better") were: - Security: encrypting and authenticating your messages - Control: the sender hosts the message, so they can edit or delete them before the receiver sees them - Flexibility: all messages are, in fact, just key-value stores, so any type of data can be sent on the protocol (whether it's Mail, IMs, Vines, Instagrams, or whatever the flavor of the week social network is) I think it's a great product, and we are going to start the developer release of the client (Melange [2]) tomorrow. [1] http://airdispat.ch http://airdispat.ch [2] http://github.com/melange-app/melange http://github.com/melange-app/melange
- inopinatus 12y ago
  Much as it pains me to mention DJB; that sounds very similar to the Internet Mail 2000 model. http://cr.yp.to/im2000.html http://cr.yp.to/im2000.html
  - huntaub 12y ago
    Good catch! We actually completely developed AirDispatch without realizing that it had many of the same tenants as IM2000. I haven't seen any IM2000 implementations, so I'd love to check it out if you know of any. Do you not like IM2000, or have other feelings towards it? I'd love to hear your feedback.
    - jfb 12y ago
      Any reticence to mention it is likely due to the fact that djb is a bit of a polarizing personality.
      - huntaub 12y ago
        I figured it had to do with something like that. However, do you or inopinatus have any thoughts on the system as a whole?
        inopinatus 12y ago
        I think it is an interesting idea that has yet to gain traction, let alone interoperable implementations, possibly due to the cantankerous origins. May have difficulty penetrating the enterprise, where control of policy trumps most other considerations. And as with any multi-sided business model, it requires a community segment with unmet needs to provide initial critical mass. I suggest trying to make the protocol less binary and more like a classical line-oriented exchange, it'll improve uptake amongst implementers. And I wish you well; every effort to reinvent email deserves a red hot go.
blowski 12y ago
I seriously think that what we have is great. Send this text from here to there. It's so simple that almost anything can be done with it. If only social networking had followed the model of a simple protocol with distributed servers, we would have a serious alternative to Twitter's API restrictions and Facebook's privacy invasions. That said, if we could redesign email, my quick wishlist would be: * Better encryption. No surprises that a HN comment thinks we should encrypt metadata as well as contents, and have something better than the way we have to exchange GPG keys at the moment. * Better security. Easier to guarantee that the ostensible sender of a message really did send it. Also, help prevent the viral problem of malware, which spreads through inboxes protected by rubbish passwords.
daigoba66 12y ago
I don't think it could, or should, be created by a single entity or brand. All of the foundational protocols were done by the IETF or the W3C.
lmm 12y ago
There are certainly things I would fix. Require all servers to be 8-bit clean, and default text to UTF-8. Sort out the rendering of HTML email, either using something that's more amenable to embedding in a fixed screen frame, or some more extensible standard to allow different types of document to be attached with dispositional settings. (In fact this is something I'd want to solve in general - embedding objects in webpages has long been a mess, to the point where we've resorted to specific <VIDEO> and <AUDIO> tags rather than trying to solve "embed another file in this web page" in a general way). As another poster said, crypto everywhere and a permission system, from DNSSEC on down. Every assertion would carry a cryptographic chain of its authority. Some kind of multi-user solution would be great. Mailing lists are a hack. To some extent NNTP filled this role though - maybe it's just a case of using the right protocol for the right job. So yeah, it could definitely be made better - very few protocols are perfect. But it's done pretty well considering.
- zokier 12y ago
  > In fact this is something I'd want to solve in general - embedding objects in webpages has long been a mess, to the point where we've resorted to specific <VIDEO> and <AUDIO> tags rather than trying to solve "embed another file in this web page" in a general way Like <embed> and <object> tags in HTML?
  - lmm 12y ago
    Yeah. I think the introduction of <video> and <audio> make it pretty clear that those have failed.

What if someone designed a new email protocol/etc from scratch without any reference to the existing one. Could it be made better? Can you even define what better is?

Niten 12y ago

That's what Google Wave was intended to be, among other initiatives.

pinkyand 12y ago

There are some cases when encouraging shorter messages is very beneficial.

karellan126 12y ago

Of course. Lots of ideas in this direction. But be warned, thinking about new protocols is the first place engineers like us go without thinking about what getting adoption would really look like (which would be near impossible + need a backwards compatible beachhead imo).

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

huntaub 12y ago

Actually, that's exactly what we are trying to do with AirDispatch [1]. We started out intending to "fix" email with a better protocol, and ended up creating something much greater. The core problems that we tried to solve (to help define "better") were: - Security: encrypting and authenticating your messages - Control: the sender hosts the message, so they can edit or delete them before the receiver sees them - Flexibility: all messages are, in fact, just key-value stores, so any type of data can be sent on the protocol (whether it's Mail, IMs, Vines, Instagrams, or whatever the flavor of the week social network is) I think it's a great product, and we are going to start the developer release of the client (Melange [2]) tomorrow. [1] http://airdispat.ch http://airdispat.ch [2] http://github.com/melange-app/melange http://github.com/melange-app/melange

inopinatus 12y ago
Much as it pains me to mention DJB; that sounds very similar to the Internet Mail 2000 model. http://cr.yp.to/im2000.html http://cr.yp.to/im2000.html
- huntaub 12y ago
  Good catch! We actually completely developed AirDispatch without realizing that it had many of the same tenants as IM2000. I haven't seen any IM2000 implementations, so I'd love to check it out if you know of any. Do you not like IM2000, or have other feelings towards it? I'd love to hear your feedback.
  - jfb 12y ago
    Any reticence to mention it is likely due to the fact that djb is a bit of a polarizing personality.
    - huntaub 12y ago
      I figured it had to do with something like that. However, do you or inopinatus have any thoughts on the system as a whole?
      - inopinatus 12y ago
        I think it is an interesting idea that has yet to gain traction, let alone interoperable implementations, possibly due to the cantankerous origins. May have difficulty penetrating the enterprise, where control of policy trumps most other considerations. And as with any multi-sided business model, it requires a community segment with unmet needs to provide initial critical mass. I suggest trying to make the protocol less binary and more like a classical line-oriented exchange, it'll improve uptake amongst implementers. And I wish you well; every effort to reinvent email deserves a red hot go.

blowski 12y ago

I seriously think that what we have is great. Send this text from here to there. It's so simple that almost anything can be done with it. If only social networking had followed the model of a simple protocol with distributed servers, we would have a serious alternative to Twitter's API restrictions and Facebook's privacy invasions. That said, if we could redesign email, my quick wishlist would be: * Better encryption. No surprises that a HN comment thinks we should encrypt metadata as well as contents, and have something better than the way we have to exchange GPG keys at the moment. * Better security. Easier to guarantee that the ostensible sender of a message really did send it. Also, help prevent the viral problem of malware, which spreads through inboxes protected by rubbish passwords.

daigoba66 12y ago

I don't think it could, or should, be created by a single entity or brand. All of the foundational protocols were done by the IETF or the W3C.

lmm 12y ago

There are certainly things I would fix. Require all servers to be 8-bit clean, and default text to UTF-8. Sort out the rendering of HTML email, either using something that's more amenable to embedding in a fixed screen frame, or some more extensible standard to allow different types of document to be attached with dispositional settings. (In fact this is something I'd want to solve in general - embedding objects in webpages has long been a mess, to the point where we've resorted to specific <VIDEO> and <AUDIO> tags rather than trying to solve "embed another file in this web page" in a general way). As another poster said, crypto everywhere and a permission system, from DNSSEC on down. Every assertion would carry a cryptographic chain of its authority. Some kind of multi-user solution would be great. Mailing lists are a hack. To some extent NNTP filled this role though - maybe it's just a case of using the right protocol for the right job. So yeah, it could definitely be made better - very few protocols are perfect. But it's done pretty well considering.

zokier 12y ago
> In fact this is something I'd want to solve in general - embedding objects in webpages has long been a mess, to the point where we've resorted to specific <VIDEO> and <AUDIO> tags rather than trying to solve "embed another file in this web page" in a general way Like <embed> and <object> tags in HTML?
- lmm 12y ago
  Yeah. I think the introduction of <video> and <audio> make it pretty clear that those have failed.