> Email is another clusterfuck of a protocol (well, several protocols) that barely functions despite dozens of modern pseudo-standards plastered over it. I’ve written extensively about that too.

SMTP is one of last of decentralized open communication protocols that is still widely used by business. It evolved over time, gained some additions and stayed alive. The biggest issue I have with e-mail nowadays is companies like Microsoft and Google acting like they go out of their way to break protocols and deliver less and less messages from perfectly well working but decentralized sources.

Microsoft is especially bad of the two, with years-long tradition of acting against standards (Outlook Express connecting to recipients' MX, cloud offering accepting messages for delivery and never delivering them [1] etc). Google, I believe, as soon as they find a better way to get hold on user's invoices and receipts, will teach their users that they should use something else instead.

Stating that standard barely functions just because anti-privacy corporations only pretend to use standards in way there were intended, but concentrate on breaking them, is not how I would describe current state of e-mail-related stuff.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27980192

The "decentralization" of SMTP comes from the high level architecture of store-and-forward. It has very little to do with the protocol, which could be expressed more effectively and cleanly on HTTP2 or HTTP3 (it won't be, but should) without risking any of its "openness".

Decentralization was not a quest when those protocols were created. It pretty much became "a thing" with blockchains. It previously... just "was".

It started "not being anymore" with corporations - and once again I bow before Microsoft and Google - using less and less lube over time when telling their own clients what their role is at the ecosystem.

I will absolutely fight any attempt at calling e-mail protocols broken just because a corporations can't figure out their revenue around it.

You’re conflating a number of issues. We are strictly talking about technical specifications. Not about who owns what nor even arguing that everything should be centralised. In fact it is technically possible to create a better alternative to SMTP while still satisfying all of the non-technical requirements you’ve outlined too. You could even drop feed that new protocol into existence the same way we’ve seen IPv6 creep in parallel to IPv4, albeit it would probably take 20 years to do so.

And this isn’t even touching on the problems with IMAP and the insanity that POP3 is even still a thing.

You are right - I may have went too far into blame assigning while explaining too little of my viewpoit. In my opinion e-mail protocols aren't but e-mail ecosystem is getting increasingly broken. Sure, SMTPv2 is _technically_ possible but I don't think it would be allowed to grow, mature and exist as a standard.

Last time I attempted setting up messaging accounts with beforementioned companies, it wasn't possible to use Mutt or bare Thunderbird - one had to use client software allowing some kind of RCE to set up access to those services. Add Google's bubbling[0] and Microsoft's repeated mail losing, and we no longer really have globally functional e-mail based on standards.

When some of the biggest actors don't follow rules describing delivery without proposing changes - yes - e-mail is being broken but not because protocols underneath are broken. It's because people trust these companies and possibly don't know that they may be victims of careful information filtering.

I have done some e-mail - related work for hosting companies in the past. For some years now, POP3 is not really a thing. It exists, it is being set up by mistake from time to time but the number of POP3 users compared to IMAP users was barely noticeable and I don't think it grew. I'm afraid to ask what your issues with IMAP are...

[0] I suspect that Google bubbles its e-mail customers just like its search users. Most non-technical people I know treat "spam" folder like it would literally burn their fingers upon touching. They act similarly, like trained to only look inside there when not seeing awaited messages in the inbox. Google delivering perfectly fine messages straight into "spam" folder has comparable results to Microsoft losing/destroying their customers' mail.

Email protocols are broken because they are bad 1990s protocols that haven't benefited from 20 years of systems learning about building protocols. I don't much care who does or doesn't have a hard time monetizing them.

It’s even older than that. It was originally released in the early 80s but is based on mail transfer protocols developed in the 70s.

Email dates from an era when it was safe to trust people connecting to your server because everyone knew those individuals personally.

That methodology hasn’t scaled in 30 years.

> Email protocols are broken because they are bad 1990s protocols (...)

I see arguments for "non-modern" not "broken". Some wines aging better doesn't necessarily mean that others deteriorate.

I've done POP3 and SMTP and they didn't seem TOO bad but those were just toy implementations which didn't have to work in the real world and I gather things have gotten pretty complex and ugly since then. What would you suggest to replace e-mail while retaining its flexibility?

SMTP doesn’t really have a universally agreed way of handling authentication, error handling nor even encryption. There are several standards floating about, many of which are little more than pseudo-standards.

> What would you suggest to replace e-mail while retaining its flexibility?

There’s no reason why we cannot redesign the email paradigm around a totally new protocol. The problem isn’t that’s it’s technically difficult, it’s that SMTP is too prevalent now. It would take someone like Google abusing their market share so bring in a successor.

Also any replacement would need to be at a protocol level. A lot of the attempts I’ve seen have also tried to modernise the experience as well (like Google Wave) but the reason email is successful is because it is familiar.

As far as I can see, jmap only provides means to upload email to your email provider, it doesn't actually tell how that email ends up from one email provider to another, which is what SMTP does.

Granted it's already nicer for clients not to need to configure SMTP to begin with.

Yes, one confusing aspect of SMTP is that there is a server-server part (listening on port 25) and a client-server part (465 or so, usually authenticated). I haven't dug in-depth, so maybe they are exactly the same protocol though.

Acessing port 25 of server is usually blocked by ISPs as a way to prevent spam.

The difference in ports is due to SSL/TLS expected to be automatically applied on 465 iirc like 80/443 for HTTP(S) (you can also encrypt 25 by issuing STARTTLS after setting up a connection but it's not the default and might fail I think).

Authentication with mail is separate, usually to allow for relaying whilst anyone can usually drop emails IFF your server is the destination.

Confusing and needlessly complex? Yep. Natural result as of uncontrolled evolution? Yep.

One of the big mistakes with the design of IMAP was that there wasn't a standard Out-Box where a client could rely on the IMAP server for sending the email. I'd have loved to see a world where mail clients only had to implement IMAP and nothing else.

You might like TMTP from the mnm open source project (my work).