Subject: The IETF should run an IMAPS server for its lists

From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 17:03:48 -0500

The IETF should run an IMAPS server for it's lists.  Preferably users
should be able to get accounts for the purpose of read/replied/... flag
state keeping, but if truly read-only, users could just fetch IETF list
emails into local stores.

Also: provide a subscription option that allows posting but does not
deliver any posts to the subscriber.

If spammers start gathering email addresses from this service, then require
an account and let only subscribers to at least one IETF list have that.

I know there exists an RFC about this.  Let's just do it.

This will solve the some/many-posts-appear-as-spam problem for at least
those users who can get access to (e.g., firewall exemption) this service
when they need it.

Also, i find the archive views awful.  I'd rather we have the traditional
mailman archive view plus something more akin to a read-only web forum for
those sad sad people who prefer web forum interfaces to mailing lists.  For
the saddest users maybe also write-only web forum.

Only semi-facetiously yours,

Nico
--

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From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 11:31:58 -0400

The IAOC sent out an RFP for review by the IETF community last June.  The RFP can be found here: https://iaoc.ietf.org/documents/IMAP-Service-RFP-2014-06-16.pdf

We have received bids, and questions were sent to at least one of the bidders.  I expect an award to be made soon.

Russ

On Aug 29, 2014, at 6:03 PM, Nico Williams wrote:

> The IETF should run an IMAPS server for it's lists.  Preferably users should be able to get accounts for the purpose of read/replied/... flag state keeping, but if truly read-only, users could just fetch IETF list emails into local stores.
> 
> Also: provide a subscription option that allows posting but does not deliver any posts to the subscriber.
> 
> If spammers start gathering email addresses from this service, then require an account and let only subscribers to at least one IETF list have that.
> 
> This will solve the some/many-posts-appear-as-spam problem for at least those users who can get access to (e.g., firewall exemption) this service when they need it.
> 
> Also, i find the archive views awful.  I'd rather we have the traditional mailman archive view plus something more akin to a read-only web forum for those sad sad people who prefer web forum interfaces to mailing lists.  For the saddest users maybe also write-only web forum.
>

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 11:58:17 -0400

This is good working within the established specs.

IMAP almost does what we need, but not quite. What we really need is a
mechanism that makes it really easy to add an IMAP mailing list
subscription into an email client or Webmail interface.

I am currently logged in to my gmail account reading the IETF
Discussion Mailing List.

Seems to me that if the mail messages come with a header that says
'available in IMAP form', then it would be really easy for Google to
offer me the choice of a one click subscription to access the IMAP
version.

This would save them about 7Gb of mail storage for me. Multiply over
the thousand members of the IETF and we have saved a whole hard drive.

Multiply over the population of Gmail users and we have saved:

* A huge amount of bandwidth.
* A huge amount of storage.
* A huge load on the spam filters and the worst of the corner cases.

Yes, it would probably take a little more than just a button. In
particular we have the issue that there is a mailing list account and
there is an email account and they both have credentials.

And it might just be that IMAP isn't the best mode for retrieval for
this use case. But this is the way to solve the problem long term.

We can even put JSON curly brackets and some crypto in place.

On Sat, Aug 30, 2014 at 11:31 AM, Russ Housley <[email-masked]> wrote:
> The IAOC sent out an RFP for review by the IETF community last June.  The
> RFP can be found here:
> https://iaoc.ietf.org/documents/IMAP-Service-RFP-2014-06-16.pdf
>
> We have received bids, and questions were sent to at least one of the
> bidders.  I expect an award to be made soon.
>
> Russ
>
>
> The IETF should run an IMAPS server for it's lists.  Preferably users should
> be able to get accounts for the purpose of read/replied/... flag state
> keeping, but if truly read-only, users could just fetch IETF list emails
> into local stores.
>

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 13:03:06 -0400

--On Saturday, August 30, 2014 11:58 -0400 Phillip Hallam-Baker
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> IMAP almost does what we need, but not quite. What we really
> need is a mechanism that makes it really easy to add an IMAP
> mailing list subscription into an email client or Webmail
> interface.
>...
 
> Seems to me that if the mail messages come with a header that
> says 'available in IMAP form', then it would be really easy
> for Google to offer me the choice of a one click subscription
> to access the IMAP version.

An obvious way to do this would be to extend the "List-" header
vocabulary established in RFC 2369 (and registered in
http://www.iana.org/assignments/message-headers/message-headers.xhtml#perm-headers),
presumably in conjunction with the already defined IMAP URL (see
RFCs 5092 and 5593.

Should we anticipate an I-D that lays out the details?

Of course, am MUA might want to have some mechanism (perhaps a
user profile flag) to expose those fields but that is a separate
issue and really one of convenience.

     john

p.s. RFC 2369 is in extremely wide use by multiple independent
implementations (including the IETF incarnation of MAILMAN).
Can anyone think of a reason it should not be a full Standard?
Volunteers to do the writeup and herd whatever and whomever need
herding?

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 11:49:22 -0700

Hi John,
>Volunteers to do the writeup and herd whatever and whomever need

See http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-rfc2369bis-04

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 13:05:00 -0400

Hi.  I've responded to the RFC 2369 aspects of this on the
apps-discuss list, with Subject "RFC2369 to Internet Standard)
Re: The IETF should run an IMAPS server for its lists", on the
theory that it belongs there and there is no reason to further
clutter the IETF list with it at this point.

   john

--On Saturday, 30 August, 2014 11:49 -0700 S Moonesamy
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> Volunteers to do the writeup and herd whatever and whomever
>> need herding?
>

---

From: Nico Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 14:58:21 -0500

On Saturday, August 30, 2014, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
wrote:
> [...]

As far as storage dedup for a gmail-like service, they can (and do) already
do it.  As far as network dedup, yes this might help (depends, it might
not).

What we really need is MUA support for read-only IMAP, keeping
read/old/deleted/flagged/muted flags locally (but there's no need for
folders and filing).  Plus better caching.  Or an IMAP proxy that does the
same (which I desperately want for mutt, since it doesn't recover well from
servers closing their connections; the proxies I've used disconnect the
client when the server disconnects the proxy).

Each list could be a folder in the same service.

The service should support a public / anon login credential with email
addresses anonymized somewhat, or else don't anonymize at all.

BTW, I used to have a small script that restored the mailman "mbox"
archives into proper mbox format.  I left it behind at Sun^H^H^HOracle.
 What i mean is: a trivial transfromation of email addresses isn't terribly
good protection against spammers.  If s/[@]/ at /g is all we'll ever do
then we might as well use the identity function and stop making life
difficult for us non-spammers.

Nico
--