mail-ng mailing list

Welcome to the Web site for the mail-ng mailing list. The mail-ng mailing list is for designing the next generation Internet mail system, that is, the mail system after RFCs 2821 & 2822.

Initial overview

There seems to be more discussion these days about replacing SMTP and/or RFC 2822 and/or POP/IMAP for a variety of reasons. The discussion seems to pop up on a few different lists and in a few different hallways, and it might be good to have a single list where folks can congregate. Thus, I have set up a mail-ng mailing list.

The first task probably is to determine what the next generation of mail should do, and how that is different than what SMTP/2822/POP-or-IMAP or instant messaging does. It is safe to say that we can ignore actual protocol proposals for many months (if not years) until we figure out what is needed. Once we do that, there are plenty of protocol people who can attack the decided-on requirements.

There is no expectation that there will be significant agreement on the list. It is likely that over time the discussion will split into camps of like-minded design goals. The list might then spawn different lists for the folks of the different camps (mail-ng-shoe, mail-ng-sandal, ...). The list is explicitly not yet meant to be an IETF working group yet (if at all), and is probably more akin to the IRTF. But at the beginning, it will most likely be talking, not research.

Documents from list participants

Some participants on the mailing list have begun to collect ideas that have been presented on the mailing list (as well as their own, of course). They are (hopefully) keeping these documents up-to-date as issues get added or removed. The following is a list of documents that have been posted to the mailing list, listed by the document maintainer.

James Seng

Keith Moore

Mailing List

To subscribe to the mailing list, send a message to mail-ng-request@imc.org with the single word subscribe in the body of the message. To unsubscribe from the list, use that same address with the single word unsubscribe in the body of the message.

There is a complete archive of the mailing list. You can also access the entire archive. Please read through the archive before posting to the mailing list, since many topics of interest have already been discussed.

The Web site for this mailing list is sponsored by the Internet Mail Consortium. If you have any suggestions for additions or corrections to this Web page, please send them to phoffman@imc.org.