The problem is that there is a lot of code related to Mime parsing and
Address validation needed to conform to the RFC's in javaMail, there are a
lot of mail RFC's (http://james.apache.org/rfclist.html) and they would
require a lot of work to re-implement.
They aren't a requirement of JavaMail; they are a requirement of SMTP/MIME and related RFCs. It just so happens that JavaMail also uses them.
I'd be very wary about starting down the road of an Apache clone of javaMail
unless it really offers serious advantages.
o Easier API to use to generate/send mails
o Less global configuration settings (JavaMail uses global system properties)
o Conformant JavaBeans representation of MimeMessage
o Use of Mail.getAttachment() to facilitate attachments, rather than presenting the low-level layer of how they are transmitted in MIME Multipart formats
Bearing in mind that any clone of javaMail would have to offer pretty much
interchangeable behaviour with the official product, particularly if it has
to pass tests, the issue of implementing the Store and Transport interfaces
is where we should start, and quite probably end too.
I've got an implementation of Transport kicking around from before that I can donate to the project, and I'm more than willing to give an implementation of JavaMail ago. But since I don't have access to the CVS repositories for dumping implementations, I'll have to send it as a pretty big patch file :-)
Alex.
