Re: Decentralized reliable instant messaging?

[deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com>]

Joe wrote:

> On Wed, 31 Aug 2016 08:27:51 +0200
> deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> wrote:
> 

Sorry for not being able to answer earlier. There are some points here that
need to be emphasized.

>> Lisi Reisz wrote:
>> 
>> >   
>> >> About reliability - I have not seen recently undelivered mails
>> >> (except bounces between gmain and yahoo .
>> > 
>> > Lucky you!
>> > 
>> > Lisi
>> 
>> Luck is something, that is out of scope in terms of software. Use
>> authorized SMTP servers.
> 
> Who authorises them, if not the owner of the domain? Should our
> governments expect to be paid for email server licences?
> 

No one authorizes them, but they are free to accept or reject the
communication with you. The same way that you may reject communication with
others

>> This means you can not install on your linux
>> box an smtp server, send an email and expect it to be delivered.
> 
> I have done so, for about fifteen years. I like it that way.
> 

There are surely way to do this, but in conjunction to the above it boils
down to trust. Trust is fundamental to interaction of any kind.

>> If
>> it is your provider, change it or talk to them. It is not common that
>> messages are rated as spam, when they come out from legal MX records.
> 
> The MX record is not involved in sending. Many companies outsource
> their anti-spamming, or for other reasons use completely different
> sending and receiving servers.
> 
> What you need are complementary domain host A record and IP address
> PTR records, pointing to each other, along with an ISP which doesn't
> host bulk emailers and is otherwise willing to keep itself off
> blacklists.
> 

Yes agreed MX was wrongly stated here by me.

>> As I said DMARC initiative is going on at the moment (and since
>> couple of years) and it will affect the mailing in positive way I
>> hope.
> 
> The main problem with anything like that is that many people have
> relatively complex email arrangements, e.g. forwarding from a number of
> email addresses to another, and these tend to get broken by security
> measures. A couple of years ago my ISP, who had provided email services
> based on sub-domains, outsourced them to an Exchange-based system using
> the MS SPF system. I don't use the provided sub-domain, so it didn't
> involve me, but there was a lot of trouble about it, and eventually the
> ISP grudgingly provided another pair of MX records for a SMTP server
> which did not implement this system.
> 

... and the SPF was configured by default ("next" > "next" style) ... come
on ...

The problem is trust and trust must be established, perhaps in 5y we'll see
another way of mail communication. I do not follow the future that closely,
but for now DMARC seems to be the only way most of the communities and
companies take. I recently got involved into DMARC related project and it
sounds at least promissing.

> Email is still a useful messaging protocol, it is somewhat broken, but
> the cure absolutely must not be worse than the disease, or we'll all
> end up using Facebook.

It is not broken - the design just gets abused too often.

regards