Re: email over webDAV as IMAP replacement?

robert burrell donkin schrieb:
> i'm interested in associating meta-data with emails stored in a central
> repository accessible from multiple clients. on day i'd like to be able
> to share my mails and meta-data over the internet.
> 
> but this is brings me to IMAP. as a developer, IMAP sucks. IMAP really
> sucks. IMAP *really* sucks for so many reasons.
> 
> it's a big, complex, obscure protocol. good secure server
> implementations are tough to code available only in a limit number of
> languages. it does too much. it's just not safely hackable. 
> 
> webDAV is cool. it's a modern hackable mashable protocol. running over
> http means security, scalability, caching and mirroring can be left to
> httpd. this is great if i want to share my email archives and meta-data
> over the internet. protocols have been successfully layered on top of it
> (subversion, calDAV for example). it strikes me as a good match for an
> IMAP alternative whose strength is read only performance and associating
> meta-data with emails. 
> 
> has it been done before? is this just a crazy idea? 
> ...

It think this is what Hotmail and/or Outlook WebAccess are doing.


> tell me why it won't work!
> ...

I won't, because it would :-)