We're not talking about webmail here, but direct access by HTTP request, either from a website or a desktop/mobile client. Some other relevant links for this:<p><a href="http://blog.gaborcselle.com/2010/02/how-to-replace-imap.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.gaborcselle.com/2010/02/how-to-replace-imap.html</a><p><a href="http://blog.webhooks.org/2009/02/13/restful-email-over-http/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.webhooks.org/2009/02/13/restful-email-over-http/</a><p>HTTP has had about 20 years of use, development, testing - culminating in SPDY now, which could get even 40% faster in some cases. I'm not sure I can think of a good reason <i>not</i> to make the switch.
If we're going to keep moving more and more apps from native to Web-based, I think we're going to see a lot more of this (standardizing an existing service to be accessible over HTTP), since WebSockets can't connect to any raw TCP sockets (and they shouldn't, that would be terrible security-wise) and WebRTC has the same approach: a protocol of its own with its own handshake & rules.<p>Better that than have everyone builds its own incompatible HTTP / REST API for common services.<p>I do wonder if there's any big companies like Google which have pledged to support this spec?
I'm not familiar with the IETF process, but it says "Expires: April 27, 2009"<p>With that said, I've been exploring the concept a while back myself. I tend to think of email as the largest "social" network in the world, and I think it's good to give it a sexy web face, and then extend it.<p><a href="https://github.com/pepijndevos/Wemail" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/pepijndevos/Wemail</a>