JMAP – a much needed modern email open standard

Re:JMAP – a much needed modern email open standard by pravus on Tuesday May 30, 2023 @03:31PM (#36129441)

I had a similar idea to this and wanted to add a couple of more features. It essentially is policy-based email so I thought:

  * Every cert is put into a trust classification that can dictate a default policy
  * Policy items could include things such as rate limits, message sizes, spam filter weights, etc.
  * Identities can be tied to multiple certs to allow for different modes of communication when desired
  * Allow for a trust classification labeled as "public" that is the default classification (with strict limits by default)
  * Make common mail items first class objects and allow URLs (e.g. attachments are no longer inline but must be a URL with metadata that can be verified before my system is willing to pull it on my schedule).

I have other ideas as well; This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. One other feature that would be nice is if you could somehow link it up to SMTP gateways. I realize that sort of defeats the purpose, but that would accelerate adoption of any new technology since it has so much gravity.

Anyway, just ideas for now...

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Re:JMAP – a much needed modern email open standard by gcanyon on Tuesday May 30, 2023 @06:47PM (#36132157)

Nice! If there were a reasonable path to get from here to there, I'd say we should share a google doc to firm up the definition/requirements. But since (as far as I know) there is zero chance of something like this working, we'd both be wasting (more of) our time :-(

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Re:JMAP – a much needed modern email open standard by grepfru_it on Wednesday May 31, 2023 @01:42PM (#36141203)

I think this would work, question is what’s the market and does the product fit? If there’s a (potential) user base I’ll jump in a build with ya!

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Re:JMAP – a much needed modern email open standard by gcanyon on Wednesday May 31, 2023 @02:22PM (#36141825)

I think the market is:

    1. anyone who wants a clean inbox -- maybe less profitable
    2. any company that wants better protection against phishing attacks -- maybe more profitable
    3. Edit to add: someone pointed to https://www.mailinblack.com/ I don't speak French, but that's apparently a company that (somehow) provides a service similar to the description here to high-profile targets.

If the skateboard version of this seems technically do-able without having to convince the entire world to switch to a new protocol I'd be happy to jump into a google doc to noodle it further.

On the surface it seems like:

    1. it would have to rely on email addresses alone -- I don't know another way to transmit information from sender to receiver that fits within current "what's your email?" standards.
    2. it would have to have a sparse enough address space that accidental collisions are unlikely -- so maybe 8 alphanumerics for ~41 bits?

But if you have other ideas I'd love to hear them -- griping about email has been a thing of mine for 20 years...

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Re:JMAP – a much needed modern email open standard by grepfru_it on Friday June 02, 2023 @08:27AM (#36164175)

Rather than start from scratch, build cake slices to test the theory out. Look at something like OPA, it provides a generic policy language with a pluggable framework. You could extend postfix if it is not supported and then implement the policies you described. Then look for market fit and pivot as necessary

I have nothing going on right now and looking for things to fill the void. Let’s start a google doc and build an mvp. Worst case, we have a GitHub repo with our names on it :D

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