All this discussion is being done already....
ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/internet-drafts/draft-maes-lemonade-deliver-00.txt
There are past I-Ds regarding other approaches to submission, but this appears to be the current proposal on the table.
LDELIVER is best ignored, the solution which has broad support and shortly will be submitted for final approval by the IESG is a trio of standards:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-lemonade-catenate-05.txt http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-lemonade-urlauth-07.txt http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-lemonade-burl-02.txt
this allows IMAP to be IMAP and SMTP to be SMTP. you still need to access an SMTP server directly (which I consider a feature), but you don't have to download or upload any data yourself, the SMTP server will fetch it for you.
see also: http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/lemonade-charter.html http://flyingfox.snowshore.com/i-d/lemonade/
Kjetil T.