Re: Providers running dovecot?

[@lbutlr]

> On 10 Oct 2020, at 08:35, Olivier Cailloux  
> wrote:
> 
> Le samedi 10 octobre 2020 à 03:31 -0600, @lbutlr a écrit :
>> On 09 Oct 2020, at 02:15, Olivier Cailloux <
>> olivier.caill...@dauphine.fr
>>> wrote:
>>> My question is really: are there providers out there that satisfy
>>> these
>>> two conditions:
>>> a) offer free e-mail accounts (similar to Yahoo, GMail, and so on)
>> 
>> Doubtful, and if so I don't know any.
>> 
>>> b) implement correctly the IMAP SEARCH feature of RFC 3501.
>> 
>> I believe this is achievable via Roundcube and some plugins
>> (managesieve come to mind). Possibly Horde also supports sieve via
>> plugins.
>> 
>> Setting up either webmail client is pretty trivial.
> 
> Thank you for your reply. But I am not sure that we are on the same
> page here. I do not see how I can set this up so as to provide users of
> my software with such a functionality. The software I develop is a
> client software. I do not want to run a server and provide a service. I
> want to provide a client software that uses the e-mail service of
> existing providers.

OK, then I am not sure it is possible. Some providers support limited SIEVE 
features, but the only ones I have seen support it only though editing rules 
via a web interface that only allows a very small subset of what sieve can do. 
Without coordinating with those providers, it's unlikely you will be able to 
get anything to work.

Isn't the whole point of sieve that it is server-side filtering and rules? So 
you need to be able to write the sieve files to the appropriate location which, 
unless someone is truly mad, is going to be outside the IMAP store where a 
client cannot simply write a sieve file.




-- 
"You can think and you can fight, but the world's always movin', and
if you wanna stay ahead you gotta dance."

Re: Providers running dovecot?

[Chris Bennett]

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 04:31:07PM +0200, Olivier Cailloux wrote:
> Le vendredi 09 octobre 2020 à 11:22 +0200, Piotr Auksztulewicz a
> écrit :
> > On Fri, Oct 09, 2020 at 10:15:10AM +0200, Olivier Cailloux wrote:
> > > The real, “final” question I am interested in is, but which might be
> > > slightly off-topic on this list (the reason I asked the other
> > > question), is to find providers that satisfy these two conditions:
> > > a) offer free e-mail accounts
> > > b) implement correctly the IMAP SEARCH feature of RFC 3501.
> > 
> > IMO this is the right question to ask, even here.
> 
> You are probably right, in retrospect, I should have started with that
> question.
> 
> > 
> > > That is because my client uses the IMAP SEARCH feature, and it is
> > > usually implemented incorrectly (e.g. in GMail or MS Exchange).
> > 
> > Probably it would be more informative to describe which features you
> > need that are implemented "incorrectly".
> 
> Well, support of the IMAP SEARCH command is the specific feature I
> need. See https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501#section-6.4.4.
> 
> > 
> > Reality check: RFCs are not government-enforced standards. There are many
> > sensible RFCs that never got implemented widely, or nearly at all, are
> > implemented partially, or there are widely deployed not-fully-compliant
> > software systems. If your client software requires a feature that's not
> > widely available, you're just limiting your audience.
> 
> Sad but true, I believe you are completely right. I will perhaps have
> to abandon my hope of finding compliant providers.
> 
> > 
> > You may try to find a different way to achieve your goal using the
> > features that are widely implemented. Real, successful software packages
> > very often contain options to do some quirks in order to stay interoperable
> > with existing noncompliant implementations.
> 
> This is precisely the problem in my case: it is impossible to work
> nicely around the lack of IMAP SEARCH feature on the side of my
> software, which is client-side, because that support must be provided
> server side. In a nutshell, the SEARCH command lets a client ask a
> server: “give me all e-mails whose subject and date match such and such
> criteria”. As a client, if the server does not implement IMAP SEARCH, I
> simply can’t know which e-mails match such and such criteria, short of
> downloading all e-mail headers and filtering them, which is orders of
> magnitude slower if my user has many e-mails in her box.
> 
> Admittedly, I can work around this more or less nicely, e.g. by
> downloading all headers once, storing them on the device of my user,
> and searching this local database, instead of re-downloading all
> headers every time my software runs. (This is how Thunderbird, and, I
> suppose, most MUAs out there, work.) But this creates other
> inconvenience for the user: this database takes space, takes time and
> bandwidth to build, has to be re-built when the user changes device,
> there is a security issue with having these e-mail headers stored
> locally; not talking about the fact that it will make my software much
> more complex for a single feature that really should, conceptually, be
> implemented server side. Hence my willingness to actively try to find
> compliant providers before giving up.
> 
> An alternative is to try to understand what exactly bugs in the
> implementation of IMAP SEARCH of each of the main providers out there
> (GMail; MS Exchange; and so on) and work around this on a case-by-case
> basis. I suppose this has been investigated already by some developers;
> if anybody knows where I could ask about this, I’d be very happy to ask
> there, as I guess this discussion is becoming completely OT for this
> list. 
> 
> But the general lack of support for remote search in well known
> softwares such as Thunderbird (that seem to systematically perform
> searches client-side, on the local database) makes me rather
> pessimistic about the possibility of working around those bugs; after
> all, if the server sometimes (or often) replies incorrectly, as my
> tests indicate, there may be nothing the client can do to guess what
> the right answer is.
> --
> Olivier
> 
> 

Some projects just can't get around the lack of compliance from vendors,
whether it's from incompetence or their not needing/desiring to do it.

Several years ago, I wanted to move lpd forward.
After weeks of looking at the hardware with non-compliance, I finally
just had to drop the project because it was truly a vast and
hopeless situation.
It was an excellent, but frustrating lesson.

I wish you luck, but you might be in the same spot I found myself.

Chris Bennett

Re: Providers running dovecot?

[Sami Ketola]

> On 7. Oct 2020, at 17.35, Olivier Cailloux  
> wrote:
> 
> So far I didn’t find a service provider providing free e-mail accounts
> (similar to GMail, Yahoo, …) and using Dovecot, which I find very
> surprising, as I thought some of these big names, or at least some
> smaller ones that I do not know, would use Dovecot.

There is always mailbox.org  available that runs on 
dovecot. Not free, but 1€/month
is not far from that.

Sami

Re: Providers running dovecot?

[Olivier Cailloux]

Le samedi 10 octobre 2020 à 03:31 -0600, @lbutlr a écrit :
> On 09 Oct 2020, at 02:15, Olivier Cailloux <
> olivier.caill...@dauphine.fr
> > wrote:
> > My question is really: are there providers out there that satisfy
> > these
> > two conditions:
> > a) offer free e-mail accounts (similar to Yahoo, GMail, and so on)
> 
> Doubtful, and if so I don't know any.
> 
> > b) implement correctly the IMAP SEARCH feature of RFC 3501.
> 
> I believe this is achievable via Roundcube and some plugins
> (managesieve come to mind). Possibly Horde also supports sieve via
> plugins.
> 
> Setting up either webmail client is pretty trivial.

Thank you for your reply. But I am not sure that we are on the same
page here. I do not see how I can set this up so as to provide users of
my software with such a functionality. The software I develop is a
client software. I do not want to run a server and provide a service. I
want to provide a client software that uses the e-mail service of
existing providers.
--
Olivier

Re: Providers running dovecot?

[Olivier Cailloux]

Le vendredi 09 octobre 2020 à 11:22 +0200, Piotr Auksztulewicz a
écrit :
> On Fri, Oct 09, 2020 at 10:15:10AM +0200, Olivier Cailloux wrote:
> > The real, “final” question I am interested in is, but which might be
> > slightly off-topic on this list (the reason I asked the other
> > question), is to find providers that satisfy these two conditions:
> > a) offer free e-mail accounts
> > b) implement correctly the IMAP SEARCH feature of RFC 3501.
> 
> IMO this is the right question to ask, even here.

You are probably right, in retrospect, I should have started with that
question.

> 
> > That is because my client uses the IMAP SEARCH feature, and it is
> > usually implemented incorrectly (e.g. in GMail or MS Exchange).
> 
> Probably it would be more informative to describe which features you
> need that are implemented "incorrectly".

Well, support of the IMAP SEARCH command is the specific feature I
need. See https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501#section-6.4.4.

> 
> Reality check: RFCs are not government-enforced standards. There are many
> sensible RFCs that never got implemented widely, or nearly at all, are
> implemented partially, or there are widely deployed not-fully-compliant
> software systems. If your client software requires a feature that's not
> widely available, you're just limiting your audience.

Sad but true, I believe you are completely right. I will perhaps have
to abandon my hope of finding compliant providers.

> 
> You may try to find a different way to achieve your goal using the
> features that are widely implemented. Real, successful software packages
> very often contain options to do some quirks in order to stay interoperable
> with existing noncompliant implementations.

This is precisely the problem in my case: it is impossible to work
nicely around the lack of IMAP SEARCH feature on the side of my
software, which is client-side, because that support must be provided
server side. In a nutshell, the SEARCH command lets a client ask a
server: “give me all e-mails whose subject and date match such and such
criteria”. As a client, if the server does not implement IMAP SEARCH, I
simply can’t know which e-mails match such and such criteria, short of
downloading all e-mail headers and filtering them, which is orders of
magnitude slower if my user has many e-mails in her box.

Admittedly, I can work around this more or less nicely, e.g. by
downloading all headers once, storing them on the device of my user,
and searching this local database, instead of re-downloading all
headers every time my software runs. (This is how Thunderbird, and, I
suppose, most MUAs out there, work.) But this creates other
inconvenience for the user: this database takes space, takes time and
bandwidth to build, has to be re-built when the user changes device,
there is a security issue with having these e-mail headers stored
locally; not talking about the fact that it will make my software much
more complex for a single feature that really should, conceptually, be
implemented server side. Hence my willingness to actively try to find
compliant providers before giving up.

An alternative is to try to understand what exactly bugs in the
implementation of IMAP SEARCH of each of the main providers out there
(GMail; MS Exchange; and so on) and work around this on a case-by-case
basis. I suppose this has been investigated already by some developers;
if anybody knows where I could ask about this, I’d be very happy to ask
there, as I guess this discussion is becoming completely OT for this
list. 

But the general lack of support for remote search in well known
softwares such as Thunderbird (that seem to systematically perform
searches client-side, on the local database) makes me rather
pessimistic about the possibility of working around those bugs; after
all, if the server sometimes (or often) replies incorrectly, as my
tests indicate, there may be nothing the client can do to guess what
the right answer is.
--
Olivier

Re: Providers running dovecot?

[@lbutlr]

On 09 Oct 2020, at 02:15, Olivier Cailloux  wrote:
> My question is really: are there providers out there that satisfy these
> two conditions:
> a) offer free e-mail accounts (similar to Yahoo, GMail, and so on)

Doubtful, and if so I don't know any.

> b) implement correctly the IMAP SEARCH feature of RFC 3501.

I believe this is achievable via Roundcube and some plugins (managesieve come 
to mind). Possibly Horde also supports sieve via plugins.

Setting up either webmail client is pretty trivial.



-- 
Everybody wants a rock to wrap a piece of string around

Re: Providers running dovecot?

[Piotr Auksztulewicz]

On Fri, Oct 09, 2020 at 10:15:10AM +0200, Olivier Cailloux wrote:
> The real, “final” question I am interested in is, but which might be
> slightly off-topic on this list (the reason I asked the other
> question), is to find providers that satisfy these two conditions:
> a) offer free e-mail accounts
> b) implement correctly the IMAP SEARCH feature of RFC 3501.

IMO this is the right question to ask, even here.

> That is because my client uses the IMAP SEARCH feature, and it is
> usually implemented incorrectly (e.g. in GMail or MS Exchange).

Probably it would be more informative to describe which features you
need that are implemented "incorrectly".

Reality check: RFCs are not government-enforced standards. There are many
sensible RFCs that never got implemented widely, or nearly at all, are
implemented partially, or there are widely deployed not-fully-compliant
software systems. If your client software requires a feature that's not
widely available, you're just limiting your audience.

You may try to find a different way to achieve your goal using the
features that are widely implemented. Real, successful software packages
very often contain options to do some quirks in order to stay interoperable
with existing noncompliant implementations.

-- 
Piotr "Malgond" Auksztulewicz firstn...@lastname.net

Re: Providers running dovecot?

[Olivier Cailloux]

Le jeudi 08 octobre 2020 à 21:41 +0200, Marc Roos a écrit :
> There is no such thing as free. If you do not pay anything, you know 
> you are the product. 

I do not wish to debate here about whether anything is really free in
this world and what this would mean exactly, but I expect people
understand what I mean in this context when I refer to a “free e-mail
account”. Similarly, if you mean that it is a bad idea on my part to
suggest to my users to open a free e-mail account, well, you may be
right, but I currently don’t think so, and what I know for sure is that
this is a long and complicated debate that I’d rather not have here and
now.

>  >for an e-mail address just to use my software, so I’d recommend
> only 
> a
>  >provider who gives starter plans for free. (Of course these users
> in
>  >turn would perhaps then upgrade their plan if they want to.)
> 
> I don't think providers would be very willing (understatement) to 
> install
> your software on their platform that services their other clients. 
> I assume this is server side, since you enquire about dovecot.

My software acts as an IMAP client. I do not expect providers to
install anything for me, I just want to find a provider that uses
dovecot and offers e-mail accounts for free. For example, one answer to
my question would be: “GMail offers e-mail accounts for free and uses
dovecot”. (This would not be true, as GMail does not use dovecot, but
if the statement would be true, it would correctly answer my question.)
I would then be able to recommend my users to open an e-mail account at
GMail, if they do not have one already, and they would then be able to
use my software with their GMail account.

> 
>  >So far I didn’t find a service provider providing free e-mail 
> accounts
>  >(similar to GMail, Yahoo, …) and using Dovecot, which I find very
>  >surprising, as I thought some of these big names, or at least some
>  >smaller ones that I do not know, would use Dovecot.
>  >
> 
> T-mobile uses dovecot, find t-mobile users ;)

My question is really: are there providers out there that satisfy these
two conditions:
a) offer free e-mail accounts (similar to Yahoo, GMail, and so on)
b) use dovecot as their IMAP software.

Also, information that would point to a non-existence result would be
of interest. For example, an article that indicates which softwares the
main providers (that offer e-mail accounts for free) use.

The real, “final” question I am interested in is, but which might be
slightly off-topic on this list (the reason I asked the other
question), is to find providers that satisfy these two conditions:
a) offer free e-mail accounts
b) implement correctly the IMAP SEARCH feature of RFC 3501.

That is because my client uses the IMAP SEARCH feature, and it is
usually implemented incorrectly (e.g. in GMail or MS Exchange).
-- 
Olivier

RE: Providers running dovecot?

[Marc Roos]

 >Le dimanche 27 septembre 2020 à 16:30 +0200, Olivier Cailloux a écrit 
:
 >> Dear list,
 >> 
 >> I am looking for providers of free e-mail addresses known to run
 >> Dovecot (or a variant thereof) for IMAP access. I need only a few MB
 >> storage space and no particular features beyond SMTP and IMAP.
 >> 
 >> The reason I ask is that Dovecot is known to implement the IMAP spec
 >> quite respectfully, and I am writing a software which uses IMAP
 >> search
 >> (so I would suggest my users to register an e-mail to a provider
 >> implementing correctly the IMAP Search specifications, to reduce the
 >> probability of bugs). (More details here: 
 >> https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1821627
 >> .)
 >> 
 >
 >

 >
 >These private offers are very kind, but my question was more about
 >finding a provider who offers this access as a normal service, not as
 >some special favor to me. That’s because I want to recommend this
 >provider to the users of a software I am developing. And I do not
 >expect my users will agree to pay some fee (even a low fee) to 
register

There is no such thing as free. If you do not pay anything, you know 
you are the product. 

 >for an e-mail address just to use my software, so I’d recommend only 
a
 >provider who gives starter plans for free. (Of course these users in
 >turn would perhaps then upgrade their plan if they want to.)

I don't think providers would be very willing (understatement) to 
install
your software on their platform that services their other clients. 
I assume this is server side, since you enquire about dovecot.

 >So far I didn’t find a service provider providing free e-mail 
accounts
 >(similar to GMail, Yahoo, …) and using Dovecot, which I find very
 >surprising, as I thought some of these big names, or at least some
 >smaller ones that I do not know, would use Dovecot.
 >

T-mobile uses dovecot, find t-mobile users ;)

Re: Providers running dovecot?

[Olivier Cailloux]

Le dimanche 27 septembre 2020 à 16:30 +0200, Olivier Cailloux a écrit :
> Dear list,
> 
> I am looking for providers of free e-mail addresses known to run
> Dovecot (or a variant thereof) for IMAP access. I need only a few MB
> storage space and no particular features beyond SMTP and IMAP.
> 
> The reason I ask is that Dovecot is known to implement the IMAP spec
> quite respectfully, and I am writing a software which uses IMAP
> search
> (so I would suggest my users to register an e-mail to a provider
> implementing correctly the IMAP Search specifications, to reduce the
> probability of bugs). (More details here: 
> https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1821627
> .)
> 
> Do you know of any such provider?

Thanks to those who responded, offering me access to their servers. (I
am sorry, it seems that I can’t reply to these answers individually
when they are not in my inbox; something I had not realized initially,
having not used mailing lists since long.)

These private offers are very kind, but my question was more about
finding a provider who offers this access as a normal service, not as
some special favor to me. That’s because I want to recommend this
provider to the users of a software I am developing. And I do not
expect my users will agree to pay some fee (even a low fee) to register
for an e-mail address just to use my software, so I’d recommend only a
provider who gives starter plans for free. (Of course these users in
turn would perhaps then upgrade their plan if they want to.)

So far I didn’t find a service provider providing free e-mail accounts
(similar to GMail, Yahoo, …) and using Dovecot, which I find very
surprising, as I thought some of these big names, or at least some
smaller ones that I do not know, would use Dovecot.

Thanks again for the replies, anyway.
-- 
Olivier

RE: Providers running dovecot?

[Marc Roos]

>> I am looking for providers of free e-mail addresses known to run 
>> Dovecot (or a variant thereof) for IMAP access.
>
>Possibly Posteo.  Not free IIRC, but very inexpensive (~1EUR/month).

I already offered him a free account to test with, and some GB's
of testing mail. But him seem to have disappeared already ;)

Re: Providers running dovecot?

[Sam Kuper]

On Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 04:30:21PM +0200, Olivier Cailloux wrote:
> I am looking for providers of free e-mail addresses known to run
> Dovecot (or a variant thereof) for IMAP access.

Possibly Posteo.  Not free IIRC, but very inexpensive (~1EUR/month).

-- 
A: When it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: When is top-posting a bad thing?

()  ASCII ribbon campaign. Please avoid HTML emails & proprietary
/\  file formats. (Why? See e.g. https://v.gd/jrmGbS ). Thank you.