MBOX-Line: From mrc at CAC.Washington.EDU  Thu May 31 13:45:42 2007
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Mark Crispin <mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:39 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] Subscriptions in IMAP
In-Reply-To: <8046.1180599490.471444@peirce.dave.cridland.net>
References: <alpine.OSX.0.99.0705301048240.11683@pangtzu.panda.com>
	<20070530113546.Q27473@orthanc.ca>
	<alpine.WNT.0.99.0705301146290.5388@Shimo-Tomobiki.Panda.COM>
	<BF01B191-D34E-47DE-A4FB-EAF1CADE4715@apple.com>
	<1180563766.32181.2028.camel@hurina>
	<alpine.WNT.0.99.0705301555120.2080@Shimo-Tomobiki.Panda.COM>
	<8046.1180599490.471444@peirce.dave.cridland.net>
Message-ID: <alpine.OSX.0.99.0705311326310.13729@pangtzu.panda.com>

On Thu, 31 May 2007, Dave Cridland wrote:
> I'm not blaming Mark, or the others involved in RFC3501 here - it's 
> understandable that the semantics of a subscribed mailbox weren't fully 
> described in the original design, because the intent was obvious - 
> unfortunately, as time has moved on, it's less obvious, and requires a 
> certain degree of archeology to detirmine what the intent was, and besides, 
> we have multiple clients gradually pulling the intent in different and 
> contradictory directions.

There is a deeper problem.  The idea of having a generic mechanism to 
support a common concept fails, more often than it succeeds, whenever it 
depends upon a cooperative use of that mechanism.  All it needs is one bad 
actor to render the mechanism useless, and to cause all the other actors 
to flee back into a protected space that it controls.

The bad actor problem afflicts many areas.  Consider what happens when you 
install a media player to play a specific file.  It doesn't just install 
that program.  It also sets that program as the default media player for 
all your other media files; puts an extra icon on the desktop, the start 
menu, the quick launch taskbar; and adds a launcher to the notification 
area.

There's a general tendency of software being designed to seize all of a 
shared resource for itself, in the assumption that only that software will 
ever be used for that resource.  Those of us who design shared resources 
can fight against this all we want, but the eventual lesson is that it's a 
losing battle.

This, in my mind, is what doomed ACAP.  It's easy to blame ACAP's 
overengineering (and it did have that!), but the more fundamental flaw was 
the notion that applications could share configuration without abusing it.

> I *think* that a subscribed mailbox is one that the user has declared an 
> interest in monitoring, specifically for new messages. Equally, I *think* 
> that, like a browser bookmark, one might present a shortcut menu directly to 
> them. And I *think* that that menu might be the default navigation tree for 
> some clients quite sensibly - for instance mobile devices.

I share most of these thoughts.

-- 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.

