Re: [yam] draft-daboo-srv-email: POP3S/IMAPS?

[Ned Freed <[e-mail]>]

> On Sun, 17 Jan 2010, Ned Freed wrote:
> >
> > > Why does the spec provision for IMAPS and POP3S?
> >
> > Because a provisioning mechanism that fails to deal with the needs ot
> > real-world deployments - and there's plenty of this secure port stuff deployed
> > out there - makes itself far less likely to deploy.

> In that case shouldn't it also document smtps?

Is smtps as widely deployed as pops or imaps? If it is then yes, it should be
in there. But if it isn't - and my experience has been that it isn't - then
there's no need.

This all goes back to when the various different protocols added and deployed
extension mechanisms as compared with when SSL/TLS support was added and
deployed. The SMTP extension mechansim came first in terms of definition and
deployment, so that when SSL/TLS came along the path of least resistance was to
use STARTTLS inside the protocol. POP3 extensibility came much later, so pops
was the past of least resistance there. And IMAP is somewhere in the middle.
(I actually don't know if in terms of deployment imaps is worth having in
there, but pops sure is.)

				Ned