Re: portable e-mail, now Trying to do too much (was Re: the introduction problem, etc.)

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 5/22/22 15:14, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

> The architecture of mailing lists sucks. It has always sucked. There 
> is no way to implement a push messaging protocol that is not going to 
> suck and a push messaging protocol without ubiquitous authentication 
> is going to suck really bad.

This says nothing about why, or how, it sucks.  I can guess, but it 
would probably help to know specifically what you mean.

> I am aware someone has an IMAP service somewhere for IETF lists and 
> there have been NNTP services. But neither of those work with my mail 
> clients. And configuring my clients to be able to post while accessing 
> the mail that way sucks even worse.

Perhaps, but unless your mail client is very odd, getting it to work 
with IETF's public IMAP server, or switching to a mail client that does 
work with that IMAP server, still seems like it should be easier than, 
say, getting your mesh system widely deployed.

Keith

p.s. Of course, mailing lists predated by 15-20 years anything 
resembling a fully-connected global network, even if you count on-demand 
dialup access as part of that network.  So if the architecture of 
mailing lists has really always sucked, at one time it at least sucked 
less than an alternative that would have required an interactive 
connection to either the sender's host or a central distribution server.