Being unauthenticated as a default certainly doesn't jive with modern security practices.
SMTP is the protocol that's used to route email between servers. How is Fastmail supposed to authenticate with Gmail or Yahoo with Hotmail? Better yet, how is a new mail server in the internet supposed to authenticate with all existing mail servers? Really, authentication for all uses of SMTP doesn't make sense.
Re:JMAP: A modern, open email protocol
by closeparen on Tuesday May 07, 2019 @03:26AM
(#19847286)
If only there were infrastructure and standards for asserting ownership over domain names.
I haven't done much with IMAP, but I did setup a watcher for my mailboxes that uses the IDLE extension. I consider it a flaw that I need to create a separate connection, each needing their own session, for each folder I want to watch simultaneously. Servers understandably limit the amount of simultaneous connections you can have, so that limits the amount of folders you can watch simultaneously.
I don't know if JMAP fixes that, and I don't know if I'd prefer JMAP over IMAP as a protocol, but there are things that could be better with IMAP.
> The part that really needs fixing is SMTP.
What's wrong with SMTP?