Re: [Endymail] Restart Endymail to discuss the Mathematical Mesh?

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Sun, Apr 7, 2019 at 4:26 PM John R. Levine <[e-mail]> wrote:

> > I see a like option set already in Gmail.
> >
> > I can attach an object in line or add a link to it in their cloud.
>
> We've had message/external-body for over 20 years.  See RFC 2017.
>
> I realize it's not implemented all that widely but it's there if anyone
> wants it.
>

The aim of the Mesh was to start off with a completely green field approach
ignoring all existing infrastructure to see what the system would then look
like.

Having done that, it is of course entirely reasonable to look at how we
might retrofit the feature set to the existing mail infrastructure. And in
fact that is one of the things that the Mesh helps with. I can use the Mesh
to manage my S/MIME and OpenPGP keys across my devices and achieve
zero-effort security.

But this is also like building a high speed rail system and only using it
to move the spare parts needed to keep Amtrack running.

The other point here is that there is a big difference between use of
detachments as an optional feature you can choose to implement and use and
use of detachments as something you are absolutely forced to use because
Mesh Messages are limited to 65535 bytes and the service won't accept them
if they are 65536.

Limiting the messages in the control channel means that a service should
never end up being blocked because 16 different users are all receiving
10MB files at the same time. It also means that we can support really
enormous files seamlessly - provided that the recipient actually wants the
data.