# IMAPS and SMTPS to disappear one day



## Spartrekus (Jun 25, 2019)

Hello,

Will IMAPS and SMTPS disappear one day for messages, emails, because new possibilities are available today?

It is more frequent that admins offer only webdav for emails or Outlook with Microsoft Exchange. Large companies can benefit of so said better security with these Microsoft servers.




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						Creating a WebDAV server on Windows and connecting it to ONLYOFFICE - ONLYOFFICE
					

Find out how to create a WebDAV server on Windows and connect it to ONLYOFFICE.




					helpcenter.onlyoffice.com
				




What is your opinion?


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## kpedersen (Jun 25, 2019)

No-one uses them anyway. Everyone uses IBM Lotus Domino for their email infrastructure.

... because Notes and Domino are... much... more... user-friend... *snigger*.

Darn, I couldn't keep a straight face.


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## Crivens (Jun 25, 2019)

Lotus? Begone, hellspawn!

Did you have to bring that up before bedtime?


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## obsigna (Jun 26, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> ... What is your opinion?


WebDAV (HTTP extension) and IMAP/SMTP are totally independent protocols which are used for different things, and I fail to see how the first one could replace the others.

WebDAV is a considerably well working alternative to FTP for accessing file services over the internet in a lightweight and secured fashion, and in addition for sharing addresses and calendars with the CalDAV/CardDAV extensions. While IMAP/SMTP are THE mail service protocols. Also the site which you have referenced does not give any hint that MSoH (Mail System over HTTPS) is lurking, and I am not talking about Web Mail which is only a frontend to IMAP/SMTP backends.


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## ralphbsz (Jun 26, 2019)

A: I think Spartrekus is hallucinating, which is not uncommon. Or more accurately, he sees monsters and devils everywhere.

B: But strangely, I agree with him. I think mail transport (both between MTAs, that is SMTP, and MAU to MTA, that being IMAP and POP) will become more and more rare. That's because every provider is trying to make mail more secure, easier to use, and spam-proof. For example, I know of very large companies (with hundreds of thousands of employees) where the internal mail is *ONLY* accessible via a web interface, and the use of any non-web mail clients (which could use IMAP) or SMTP servers inside the company is completely prohibited and technically impossible. You take that attitude, and the relative rapid move of everything to the cloud, and in 5 or 10 years there may be only a dozen companies who have functioning mail implementations (the usual suspects: Amazon/Baidu/Google/Microsoft/Tencent/...). At that point, only those dozen companies will need something like SMTP to talk to each other, and the protocols can become completely secret, private, and very good and secure. I actually think this would be a good thing, because correctly using SMTP and IMAP is very hard, and many setups are gaping security holes.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 26, 2019)

ralphbsz: btw would mutt work with webdav?


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## Alain De Vos (Jun 26, 2019)

Doesn't Zimbra has a Webdav Client ?


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## Spartrekus (Jun 26, 2019)

Alain De Vos said:


> Doesn't Zimbra has a Webdav Client ?


What about FreeBSD Webdav, libre, free server for your mutt client?


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## toorski (Jun 26, 2019)

*About Zimbra  *








						Zimbra - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				



*Included open source projects*
The ZCS Server uses open source projects such as:[17]


Postfix *<-- Take a note of this!*
MariaDB (since version 8.5)
OpenDKIM (since version 8.0)
OpenLDAP
Jetty (since version 5)
Lucene
ClamAV
SpamAssassin
Amavis (amavisd-new)
DSPAM (deprecated starting 8.7)
Aspell
nginx (since 5.0)
ØMQ (since 8.0)
Zimbra and others, who provide web front email, messaging and group collaboration client apps, use common TCP/IP protocols and servers as their back-end support services.

Drupal CMS/CMF can do the same if  you know how to implement it as a webb app for group collaboration. And they too have SMTP module that supports few MTAs for Internet wide email exchange .

Back in the olden days, AOL had the so called " proprietary server and client software for dummies, and we had our BBSystems with FidoNet for groups of hackers. Then, we the hackers, switched to TCP/IP when Internet became a public domain and the rest, including AOL, followed 








						Bulletin board system - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## Spartrekus (Jun 26, 2019)

Superbe Zimbra.  

Is that very much so much more efficient to use WEBDAV compared to imaps / smtps?


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## ralphbsz (Jun 26, 2019)

Spartrekus said:


> ralphbsz: btw would mutt work with webdav?


AFAIK, the two have nothing to do with each other.  Mutt communicates with a mail server over IMAP and POP (probably POP3). WebDAV is inherently nothing but a file push/pull protocol, similar to ftp. I don't know of any integration that would use WebDAV for mail, but maybe I missed something.


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