This is possibly a better conversation to have on jdev@ or standards@ On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Daniel Pocock <dan...@pocock.com.au>wrote: > > For example, many free software projects (Debian, Fedora) offer their > developers mail forwarding (poc...@debian.org->dan...@pocock.com.au) > without having any mailboxes. Is it feasible to construct similarly low > key solutions with XMPP? > > Short answer: Not without treating it as a gateway.
The problem isn't the messages, which are trivial, but the presence handling. It's due to the fact that names, identities, and network locators are tightly coupled in XMPP - this gives us a lot of benefits, but also restricts the kinds of aliasing games one can play with mail. If someone contacts you as xmpp:poc...@debian.org then this name will be bound into their roster; presence will flow to it, and it'll expect probes and presence from it. xmpp:dan...@pocock.com.au on the other hand has no relationship to your contact, and is in all respects a wholly distinct entity. Your contact won't send it any presence, won't request its presence, and might even throw away messages from it in some cases. The only way around it would be to use an XMPP/XMPP gateway, under XEP-0100, which in turn needs some special client support - albeit quite common client support. Dave.
