Re: introduction is hard, message encryption with SMTP

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On Tue, Jan 04, 2022 at 02:20:10PM -0500, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
> Take a look at what is happening on the Internet. SMTP is dying. Young
> people are turning away from it. Many people use Facebook Messenger,
> WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, etc. etc. and they are using it:
> 
> INSTEAD OF SMTP.

Many people are using multiple applications for different purposes
---- e.g., there are some people who only use Facebook for talking to
their grandparents; they might use Weibo to connect with their Hong
Kong Student Association (HKSA) Unversity friends that made when
attending the University of Illinouis; and they might use e-mail when
they are developing the Linux kernel, or for work since that's the
contact information that's on their business card, etc.

So it's really not that simple.  If the success metric is that there
must be one messaging app to rule them all, then sure, SMTP has
failed.

> These 'walled gardens' you are referring to in mocking tones are whipping
> SMTP's sorry hide.

Many of these 'walled gardens' problem only solve part of the general
problem (or are only used for some people's subset of their
communication needs).

Also, never underestimate the network effects.  If you want to
communicate with the community which makes up the Soaring Eagle Kung
Fu school in Palatine, Illinois, you *have* to use Weibo, because
that's where the Kung Fu masters are.  If you want to submit patches
for review in the upstream Linux kernel, you *must* use SMTP to
vger.kernel.org.  (If you try to send a pull request via github, you
will be ingored if you are lucky, or socially "counseled" about why
that's not the way to go if you are not.  :-)

For other communities, code reviews have to be done via Github, or
Gerrit, and not via SMTP.  Does that mean that Github is "whipping
SMTP's butt"?  Well, that's not the language I would use.


> The only thing I am proposing that is new here is that the users can choose
> their own service provider and talk to people using a different service
> provider.

... and that's not new either.  Several decades ago, I could
communicate with people using SMTP, some of which used UUCP for their
messaging neeeds, some of which used BITNET, some of which used used
SMS text messages, using e-mail gateways.  :-)

							- Ted




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