I really hope Fastmail implements the JMAP spec for calendars and contacts soon. They’ve had the mail part of the spec implemented for a while, but it still requires CardDAV/CalDAV for contacts and calendar access.
We're working on it. We still use an unholy set of earlier versions of JMAP internally for our contacts and calendars; in particular the caldav_sync code is gnarly - I wrote it over 10 years ago when I knew less about calendars than I do now! It's still using an earlier branch of what became the perl Net::CalDAVTalk library interally, even though our frontend API is an almost-up-to-date version of what will become the JMAP Calendars spec eventually.
The downsides of developing and testing this stuff as we were writing it up!
We've finished rewriting the objectid generation to give smaller sized and more sortable IDs (they're an inverse of nanosecond internaldates now, plus some extra magic on the low bits for IMAP appends to avoid clashes)... which we wanted to speed up and reduce disk usage for the offline mode.
Next up is indeed updating to the latest spec on calendars and contacts. Files might take a bit longer, I really want to do some desktop clients for the files system, we have a really nice files backend at Fastmail which is only accessible via our interface or WebDAV right now.
Off-Topic: Thank you for not only providing a stellar service with Fastmail, but also for contributing back to the OSS ecosystem and the specifications/RFC work. This takes a lot of time and we all benefit from this work. It helps many people/small IT shops to run a system outside of the "big ones". Again, thank you.
The next, next big thing would be the Chatmail relays[1] supporting JMAP based servers (right now it's Dovecot) and this new targeted push extension for faster notifications without battery drain on mobile. I can see how the Fastmail mobile client will benefit from this RFC as well (it's already incredibly battery efficient, thanks to the team).
What good is a protocol like JMAP as long as common clients like Thunderbird, K-9 Mail, the iPhone email client and others don't support it? Without some concerted effort it will never take off. Then there is the question of what problem it solves that isn't already solved by existing solutions.
I think Thunderbird will implement JMAP at some point, because as I understand it their upcoming hosted mail service, Thunderbird Pro will offer it.
I looked into adding JMAP support to Thunderbird but the client is so tied around the ideas and principles of IMAP, it needs surgical refactoring of many parts of it and I don’t love C++.
So instead in my spare time I am developing a JMAP only gnome email client, using many Stalwart libraries. Think Geary but Rust instead of Vala, GTK4 instead of GTK3 and JMAP instead of IMAP. It’s been mostly an excuse to play with Rust and gtk-rs and Relm4 (beautiful Elm inspired rust bindings for GTK4). Someday, it will be released.
Client support for a new protocol is never that quick, but I believe adoption will happen, at least outside of the big providers, who will never support it.
The lack of support for JMAP in common mail clients has been my concern for years. And recently Fastmail went ahead with releasing its own Electron-based desktop app that uses JMAP for its mail service. Mozilla Thunderbird could do with some support (financial and/or people wise) to get JMAP implemented. I don’t know if Fastmail the company has done much on this aspect, but hope they do.
alberth|4 months ago
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-jmap-calendars/
And Contacts was only 10-months ago.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9610.html
brongondwana|4 months ago
The downsides of developing and testing this stuff as we were writing it up!
We've finished rewriting the objectid generation to give smaller sized and more sortable IDs (they're an inverse of nanosecond internaldates now, plus some extra magic on the low bits for IMAP appends to avoid clashes)... which we wanted to speed up and reduce disk usage for the offline mode.
Next up is indeed updating to the latest spec on calendars and contacts. Files might take a bit longer, I really want to do some desktop clients for the files system, we have a really nice files backend at Fastmail which is only accessible via our interface or WebDAV right now.
Loic|4 months ago
styanax|4 months ago
The next, next big thing would be the Chatmail relays[1] supporting JMAP based servers (right now it's Dovecot) and this new targeted push extension for faster notifications without battery drain on mobile. I can see how the Fastmail mobile client will benefit from this RFC as well (it's already incredibly battery efficient, thanks to the team).
[1] https://github.com/chatmail/relay
drnick1|4 months ago
aryonoco|4 months ago
I looked into adding JMAP support to Thunderbird but the client is so tied around the ideas and principles of IMAP, it needs surgical refactoring of many parts of it and I don’t love C++.
So instead in my spare time I am developing a JMAP only gnome email client, using many Stalwart libraries. Think Geary but Rust instead of Vala, GTK4 instead of GTK3 and JMAP instead of IMAP. It’s been mostly an excuse to play with Rust and gtk-rs and Relm4 (beautiful Elm inspired rust bindings for GTK4). Someday, it will be released.
Client support for a new protocol is never that quick, but I believe adoption will happen, at least outside of the big providers, who will never support it.
nine_k|4 months ago
tristan957|4 months ago
AnonC|4 months ago