MBOX-Line: From richw at richw.org  Wed Sep 19 09:46:59 2007
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Rich Wales <richw@richw.org>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:40 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] Shared group mailboxes and IMAP
In-Reply-To: <6A0572C0907CB8172BC6F693@tyrion.rrz.uni-koeln.de>
References: <46F01DF4.2060804@rde-richw-3.stanford.edu>
	<6A0572C0907CB8172BC6F693@tyrion.rrz.uni-koeln.de>
Message-ID: <46F15283.5000909@rde-richw-3.stanford.edu>

In the scenario I described earlier, the shared mailbox is treated
as a separate IMAP account.  The group mailboxes/accounts are on a
separate IMAP server (not the same as any of the servers where the
users' individual accounts live) -- which is why I said that the
group mailbox(es) will end up in their own, completely separate name
space, with most mail clients showing a dummy "inbox" on the group
mailboxes' IMAP server.

FWIW, all the IMAP servers here are using Cyrus.

Each group account has its own, unique e-mail address, and the group
mailbox acts like the inbox for the corresponding e-mail address
(except, as I tried to explain earlier, they don't really LOOK like
regular INBOX'es to most mail clients, apparently since they are
stored in a name space starting with "group." instead of "user.").

Aside from the fact that the group mailboxes are on a separate IMAP
server of their own, it's felt desirable to treat them as totally
separate "accounts" in any case because the users accessing one of
these group mailboxes generally want/need to assume a special group
identity / personality (e.g., if a group mailbox is used by the staff
of an office, and anyone in the office replies to a message sent to
the group e-mail address, the reply should be "From:" the group
address and NOT from the individual staff member sending the reply).
This also means the current model (wherein all group mailboxes that
a given user has rights to will all show up under a single account)
if NOT good, because it prevents the user from assuming a separate
persona for each separate group account.

The main thing I was hoping to find by posting my original question
was whether anyone can point me to an authentication mechanism that
current IMAP clients could use to allow multiple users to log in to
a single account, with each user having his/her own separate password.

-- 
Rich Wales      ===      Palo Alto, CA, USA      ===     richw@richw.org
http://www.richw.org   ===   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Richwales
    "The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory,
theory and practice are identical -- whereas in practice, they aren't."

