MBOX-Line: From mrc+imap at panda.com  Mon Oct 31 15:28:35 2011
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Mark Crispin <mrc+imap@panda.com>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:46 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] BODY.PEEK[section]<origin.size> FETCH response
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Message-ID: <alpine.OSX.2.00.1110311455120.9034@hsinghsing.panda.com>

On Mon, 31 Oct 2011, Brandon Long wrote:
> I have no idea who you talked to, but my team owns the Gmail IMAP server.

In that case, at the very least, there is a lack of a consistent and
coherant policy regarding standard compliance.

> Almost all of our IMAP users mostly use the web interface, so yes,
> they want the IMAP experience to mimic the Gmail interface.  There are
> settings that can be set to make the experience more "IMAP normal"
> than "Gmail normal", but the defaults favor the more common use case.

Do you actually have research and firm numbers to back up the contention
that customers want their IMAP clients to behave incorrectly, including
malfunctioning, so that some IMAP clients seem to mimic Gmail?

Or is this just a matter of religion that has never been challenged, much
less bolstered with research?

> I know its not compliant, we even have a support page where we list
> the cases where we explicitly decided against compliance.
> Interoperability is a goal, however.  That doesn't mean we want to
> force Gmail users to use the IMAP mailbox model, however.

So, instead, you force Gmail users to use a non-compliant model that
violates guarantees in IMAP and causes some IMAP clients to malfunction.

> And I argue that we made the design decisions we did with good
> reasons.  I also argue that there were no perfect decisions to be
> made, and usability was a more important goal than correctness.

Thank you for confirming, in public, that the Gmail IMAP server is
non-compliant and that Google has no intention to make it compliant.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

