Andreas Aardal Hanssen dovecot@andreas.hanssen.name writes:
I'd let my sister use it on her computer, but not in serious production -- I'd use NNTP to offer read-only archives rather than IMAP, but that's a personal preference.
I totally disagree with you here. What is lost with backups is gained in overall load on your system.
I know for a _fact_ (my own personal experience) that there are large free email providers that use Maildir for this very purpose.
Either you've lost me or we're talking past each other. I prefer Maildir, in case that isn't clear. I've heard too much whining about mbox corruption to care any longer about mbox format. It may work for static archives, but it'd best be accompanied by a useful index in that case, to avoid the recurring search "where is my <CR><LF>From<SP> line".
-- Matthias Andree