JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019)

Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by newscracker on Monday September 26, 2022 @12:05AM (#32979303)

JMAP sounded promising several years ago, and it was great to hear it published as a standard. But it seems like it’ll just remain as what Fastmail (the email provider) uses. Maybe the JMAP team is very small and can’t get more people. Maybe Fastmail doesn’t have enough money and/or enough interest to make it easier to use and to evangelize it with major email providers and email client developers.

I don’t see Outlook365 or Gmail (or even Apple for its iCloud email that has a relatively smaller user base) announcing any implementations of JMAP on their services. I don’t see smaller paid email service providers announce support for it. As it stands now, I don’t see a future for JMAP outside of Fastmail.

A popular client like Mozilla Thunderbird still hasn’t started implementing JMAP [1] and one of the reasons is because…the client and server documentation for JMAP haven’t been updated for a few years. [2]

So yeah, JMAP is like IMAP, but not really. We probably need a successor to JMAP that is liked enough to be implemented by email service providers and by email clients.

[1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1322991

[2]: https://github.com/jmapio/jmap/issues/323

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by brongondwana on Monday September 26, 2022 @02:12AM (#32979983)

I have more faith in JMAP's eventual success than you do, but I do agree that it's frustratingly slow. We knew that adoption would be frustrating slow of course, but I do hope that in 3 years' time we'll have a much better story than we have had in the three years since initial standardisation of the core and mail parts.

Certainly once calendars and contacts are done, and hopefully tasks as well, that will make a more complete ecosystem that is even more attractive than just the email component!

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by Loic on Monday September 26, 2022 @03:32AM (#32980433)

My personal take is that JMAP would start being widely used if we had some simple Python/Go bindings to easily manipulate the emails.

My first reaction as I have seen this standard popping up was not "my email will be faster/better", but "I will be able to setup a nice [email protected]" email address and have both email/web integration with it.

If developers start to embrace JMAP for a derivative usage, I think it could drive the adoption.

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by calvinmorrison on Monday September 26, 2022 @09:23AM (#32982782)

I think one of the cooler 'derivative' uses is the integration between fastmail and 1password via "masked email".

https://blog.1password.com/making-masked-email-with-jmap/

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by x0x0 on Monday September 26, 2022 @07:06PM (#32989786)

Are you all thinking about, or planning to allow plugins?

eg say I wanted to use jmap to implement some of hey's functionality -- for instance the screener that isolates and allows ban of new emails on first contact. Rather than a client, can I have a server that listens to my fastmail inbox and (potentially) moves emails as they're delivered?

Any chance you're thinking about allowing UI space for things like that?

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by alberth on Monday September 26, 2022 @11:09AM (#32984130)

Hi Bron - love Fastmail and the innovation you leading.

Question: what do you think is the rough timing on Calendar/Sharing/Contacts/Tasks to be ratified? Within the next year, 2-years, etc?

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by rsto on Monday September 26, 2022 @02:51PM (#32986780)

Hi, I am one of the people writing and coding these standards at Fastmail. There are IETF standard drafts for JMAP calendars, contacts and tasks in the works (not just by Fastmail). We aim at publishing them in 2023. You can check the progress in the IETF calext and jmap working groups and we appreciate any input on the mailing lists!

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by alberth on Monday September 26, 2022 @04:18PM (#32987794)

Awesome. Thanks for much for all you and your colleagues do.

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by robert_foss on Monday September 26, 2022 @03:05AM (#32980289)

I've had it confirmed by on of the top two mobile OS providers, that their email developers have JMAP on the roadmap.

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by froh on Monday September 26, 2022 @12:56PM (#32985442)

did they share some ETA?

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by robert_foss on Thursday September 29, 2022 @05:11PM (#33027277)

No :/

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by ForHackernews on Monday September 26, 2022 @10:07AM (#32983272)

> Maybe Fastmail doesn’t have enough money and/or enough interest to make it easier to use and to evangelize it with major email providers and email client developers.

All the other major email providers are selling their own proprietary services or only offering webmail clients.

They have no interest in implementing modern open specifications. They only support things like SMTP and IMAP for legacy reasons.

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by jasonmunro on Tuesday September 27, 2022 @12:02AM (#32991450)

You are likely right about all of these things. I agree commercial E-mail providers don't currently have a reason to offer JMAP support. Thunderbird already has robust IMAP support so why change it. But JMAP provides a new avenue to E-mail client development that is both easier for existing clients to deal with and encouraging for new development.

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by pjc50 on Monday September 26, 2022 @08:06AM (#32982073)

> Outlook365 or Gmail

Why would either of these build a bridge over their lock-in moat?

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by efdee on Monday September 26, 2022 @08:58AM (#32982550)

Weird comment considering how both of them already support POP3 and IMAP.

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by danpalmer on Monday September 26, 2022 @09:28AM (#32982852)

I think the cynical response would be that these a) may have added these protocols before their market dominance when it was of clearer benefit to them, and b) are widely used in business where businesses have certain demands like interoperability.

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by bitwize on Monday September 26, 2022 @11:56AM (#32984742)

I think Microsoft is deprecating the use of anything but Outlook.

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Re:JMAP: It’s Like IMAP but Not Really (2019) by mariusmg on Monday September 26, 2022 @02:13AM (#32979988)

"to evangelize"

It's sad that superior standards need to be evangelized to even hope to gain traction.

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