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List:       imap
Subject:    Re: [Imap-protocol] IMAP servers with no INBOX -- any indicators?
From:       Mark Crispin <MRC () washington ! edu>
Date:       2008-01-27 21:10:29
Message-ID: alpine.WNT.1.00.0801271301320.2968 () Shimo-Tomobiki ! Panda ! COM
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On Sun, 27 Jan 2008, Bill Janssen wrote:
> I think there's a pretty clear implication that it may not exist.

Putting on my historical hat:

It was the intent from the inception of IMAP that INBOX always exist.  It 
was not until 6 or 7 years later that there was any hint that there might 
be such a thing as a server that didn't have an INBOX.

The text that you quote in 6.3.8 comes from the latter time, and was an 
intent to back off from stating that INBOX was a MUST.

I, personally, never found the arguments for such a non-INBOX IMAP server 
to be particularly compelling.  Those arguments generally revolve around 
shared mailboxes servers, such as servers that support newsgroups.

I, personally, feel that even though INBOX may not be particularly 
meaningful on such a server, such servers are administrative special cases 
where INBOX is always empty as opposed to something that the protocol must 
define.  Otherwise, we could end up with servers that require user fred to 
do
 	tag SELECT /var/spool/mail/fred
because, for some reason, it did not offer INBOX.

Hence what we ended up with that text in 6.3.8; an obscure reference to a 
server that might not have INBOX, but nothing that actually promotes such 
a thing.

If there is a clear majority concensus, I would strongly support making 
INBOX mandatory and deleting that text in 6.3.8 entirely.  However, I 
suspect that this is a sleeping dog that is best allowed to lie.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
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