[Dovecot] Will pay $500 towards a Dovecot feature

[Brian G. Peterson]

Marc Perkel wrote:
> Here's some thoughts I'd like to throw out there. I know it's not 
> standard IMAP protocol but someone has to try new ideas first and I want 
> to see what people (Timo) think of this.
> 
> IMAP establishes a connection between the client and the server. 
> Wouldn't it be great if it could be a conduit to let custom Thunderbird 
> plugins talk to custom server application over the IMAP interface? For 
> example, personalized server settings. Suppose for example I want 
> Thunderbird to edit my server side white lists or black lists or any 
> other setting? Wouldn't it be nice if IMAP supported these changes? The 
> connection is made. It's a secure connection that's been authenticated. 
> Lets use it!
> 
> Here's my initial thoughts on this. Suppose we extended IMAP to include 
> an EXECUTE command as follows:
> 
> EXECUTE command parameter, parameter ....

I believe that the IMAP RFC defines how IMAP servers may implement and 
advertise additional non-standard capabilities and how to report those 
in the CAPABILITIES string.

I would strongly recommend that any such solution fit within the RFC 
definition of these new custom capabilities.  This would suggest, for 
instance, that you would *not* involve both IMAP and SMTP, but that all 
of your communications with the server would take place via the IMAP 
protocol stack.

I would also suggest that you might want a method whereby a dovecot 
plugin could add a new capability, with attendant command syntax, rather 
than a 'generic' EXECUTE command, so that clients could *absolutely* 
know (as they do now from the CAPABILITIES string) whether or not the 
feature they want is supported.

Cheers,

    - Brian