Re: section 1, intro, for review

On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Paul Prescod wrote:
> "Roy T. Fielding" wrote:
> >
> >...
> >
> > It wouldn't be less useful.  The point is that it would gain nothing
> > from doing so.  It is a store and forward messaging system -- the application
> > consists of delivering the message, that's all.
>
> If you were tasked with inventing a protocol for fetching mail from a
> remote server, would you choose to make it a specialization of HTTP or
> not? I'm not asking whether there is sufficient cost/benefit to replace
> POP, IMAP, etc. Probably there is not. I'm asking how you decide when to
> invent a new application protocol or just use HTTP.

My 2 cents:  no.

See RFC 3205 for the justification and for a detailed discussion as to
guidelines for using HTTP as a substrate:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3205.txt

Email constitutes a substantially different service than traditional HTTP.

Rob