Re: [ietf-822] WSJ/gmail/ML, was a permission to...

[Ned Freed <[e-mail]>]

> >> Those two problems can be solved in different ways.  Gmail could use a
> >> third party's submission server just like they use its pop/imap one.
> >
> > Gmail does allow you to use a third party submission server, and it looks
> > like we may have to encourage its use even more in the future.

> I'm not sure how realistic that is in practice for users who aren't
> uber-nerds.

> To set up to use Yahoo's submission server from Gmail, I tried to
> configure it in the popup Gmail provided, which failed with an error
> message that told me to go log in at Yahoo.  I did, didn't help.  After
> some poking around I found a message in my Yahoo inbox that suggested I
> needed an app specific password.  (How many people will realize that Yahoo
> considers Gmail to be an app?)  It provided a link to the place in their
> credential server to create such a password, which is otherwise not easy
> to find.  So I finally found it, and made a password for Gmail, and then
> went back to Gmail, and used it, and indeed it worked.

> But how many people without CS degrees are going to be able to go through
> all that?

That's just the beginning. Even if you get the interface right (other
providers reportedly do this a bit better than Gmail), you now have the
problem that the submission server can't see the actual client IP address,
which is needed for logging and filtering purposes.

Of course there's a way to solve this problem: The XCLIENT extension or
a standardized variant of it. But for this to work there has to be
a recognizable relationship between all submission servers and all
send-on-behalf-of agents. Which sure looks like O(N*M) to me.

				Ned