TMTP a Internet protocol combining elements of email and the web
mnmnotmail.org
mnmnotmail.org
1. Inconsistences like the value for "op" being sometimes integer but then sometimes string. Why is this an integer anyways? We are already in inefficient JSON land and a lot of the rest is strings.
2. No mentioning of ordering or guarantees in the draft spec. Bad recommendation to use time for sequential message ids.
3. Says E2EE not in it right now but planned. Says E2EE not default because sites want to scan and archive messages but then the page says email is bad because it doesn't have E2EE and nodes can scan messages?
4. The usage of the word "node" is confusing and inconsistent. Sometimes it's described as a device, sometimes it's a password. "nodeid", "node", "newnode"...
5. Seems like one can spoof the alias for each message? What's the reason for this? The page specifically mentions phishing being an issue with email but wouldn't this help phishers? There is no way that I can see if a message came from the site itself or a random user on it.
Just from a cursory glance. Also doesn't seem like it has moved much in a couple years.
The protocol specifics (e.g. identifiers & types) aren't polished, because I focused on features in working code. Thanks for the feedback!
You can't have alias collisions; it checks whether the string you propose is acceptable & available :)
A sender's alias is (or will be) checked against their recorded aliases.
The reason why lack of E2EE in email is a serious problem is that email traverses at least two "federated" services, which are typically third parties with whom you have no intrinsic need for a relationship. A TMTP message passes through a single service which you explicitly joined.
I don't see how your feedback justifies "poorly thought out"; it's merely an unpolished preview.
I don't think they meant this with sincerity. It's unpolished, which is accurate, but there's promise there, and I think their frustration was the last 20%, which is often overlooked- the cohesion of marketing babble and featureset.
This seems like a product rather than an internet draft protocol.
> The protocol specifics (e.g. identifiers & types) aren't polished, because I focused on features in working code. Thanks for the feedback!
> You can't have alias collisions; it checks whether the string you propose is acceptable & available :)
> A sender's alias is (or will be) checked against their recorded aliases.
My point is a cache should just be used to speed up certain operations but has to be handled with care (cache invalidation etc). Better to skip this as it's just premature optimization and can just cause trouble.
In fact all this work to juggle JSON in flat files will cause more headache than it's worth. Just use something like SQLite and you'll save yourself a lot of time and issues. It'll make the implementation much easier especially to adapt. But it'll pay dividends for a long time (migrations etc). You'll run into filesystem limitations quite quickly anyways with these flat files.
> The reason why lack of E2EE in email is a serious problem is that email traverses at least two "federated" services, which are typically third parties with whom you have no intrinsic need for a relationship. A TMTP message passes through a single service which you explicitly joined.
As GekkePrutser mentioned in a sibling comment, it's 2022 and any new messaging protocol without E2EE will be dead on arrival. I'm maybe exagerating but it'll have a tough time. Especially if it justifies itself partially because email doesn't have E2EE.
> I don't see how your feedback justifies "poorly thought out"; it's merely an unpolished preview.
To create a new protocol isn't an easy task. A protocol should be precise and robust. To create a product? Much easier.
BTW no one forces people to federate when using Matrix. Or one could use something like the Signal protocol. Sure they are more complex than TMTP but they have to be because they solve a ton of non-trivial issues.
PS: Seems like the demo doesn't actually use the protocol at all? It looks like it just loads all static data from https://mnmnotmail.org/w/data-demo.js and basically is a static page.
> You can't use a volatile cache ...
> all this work to juggle JSON in flat files
> Companies don't want to host heir own email servers
I discuss the E2EE issue on the mnm website FAQ. Only certain kinds of TMTP sites will want it to be the default. If a consumer tech brand offers an online TMTP client, it would present a proprietary API to the browser, as Gmail does; TMTP can't protect those messages.
> synchronization between multiple client devices?
> permissions in groups?
> identity verifications?
> mobile clients which don't want to open dozens persistent connections?
> the demo doesn't actually use the protocol?
And, hey, can't a protocol can be a work in progress? I'm only willing to spec what I am ready to implement!
> Wow, have to ask whether you're interested enough to contribute? :)
> I really don't think I've misused the cache!
> I didn't use SQLite because ordinary admins need to be able to inspect and occasionally fix the database.
> TMTP is more like HTTP than SMTP. There must be many ways to host a service, just like a website. Any admin must be able to bring up a TMTP server. (It's nothing like getting a new MTA host to work with the SMTP network!)
> And, hey, can't a protocol can be a work in progress? I'm only willing to spec what I am ready to implement!
It'd be far more likely to gain support if they unbundled this and made it work as an upgrade over e-mail, which would seem to make a lot of the spec redundant.
Trying to "upgrade" the email ecosystem is an impossible goal, and the requirements I'm working to can't be shoehorned into the email model.
Consider that SMTP was "shoehorned into" the email model, and so was HTML, and attachments. My first e-mail exchange involved UUCP rather than SMTP. For many years my e-mail clients did not understand this newfangled HTML thing. E-mail is extremely malleable because e-mail is extremely simple.
Add a "To: " header to a text file and you have a basic e-mail. Copy the file to another machine and you have a mail transport (that's roughly how UUCP worked - by implementing basic file transfer between hosts, and layering distribution of that mail on top with a program that'd read a file of concatenated e-mail messages and distribute them to mailboxes).
E-mail is at its core a simple key-value header format, a message body and an address. Everything else is auxiliary. Transport layers can coexist: UUCP coexisted with SMTP for many years. If you invent a new one you just need to decide if you care about having a gateway to let "outsiders" contact you. Message formats can evolve: As long as you provide the basic MIME headers, you're in full control of the format of the message past the first set of headers. You choose how much interop you want by whether or not you use multipart/alternative to provide version readable by "old style" clients.
These features are why e-mail in its current form is still around.
What you gain* from this is interop and an opportunity to have your system evangelise itself as you use it.
To address your page more specifically:
>+ choose the sites where you participate >+ select which members of a site can message you
If you enforce DMARC (see below), you can do this in a mail server simply with an option to whitelist domains or users or both.
>+ always know from which site a message originated
This is supported in e-mail today via DMARC. The reason you still receive e-mail for which it's not the case is lack of universal deployment. You can solve this issue simply by configuring a mail server to reject all e-mail that fails DMARC.
> + can block anyone with whom you’ve made contact
> + may leave a site and never see traffic from it again
If you enforce DMARC, you can certainly block sites at the server level or client level or both, or just block individuals.
The upside of doing this with DMARC is that people with it correctly set up will only notice anything different if they try to send you unsolicited messages and get an error message back.
> + message formatting & layout via Markdown (aka CommonMark)
Solved with client support - just needs the appropriate MIME type set and a ideally a multipart/alternative to deal with any clients that fail to fall back on plain text rendering.
> + hyperlinks to messages and other threads
Solved with a URN spec and client support.
> + hashtags and private tags > + slide deck layouts > + data-driven charts & graphs
Solved with message formats and MIME types.
> + forms/surveys whose results are collected into tables
Needs server side support if you want something standardised, but works fine with links to the web today with appropriate client support and HTML, and if you want to provide an upgradeable path it's easily done with client support and a MIME type + requiring multipart alternative w/ a link to a web version for clients without support.
So to summarise how I would have done this if I wanted to meet the goals stated on your page:
* Pick a mail server that supports JMAP for the client.
* Configure it to reject all mail that fails DMARC with a suitable message explaining why. Now you've created pressure to add DMARC for those who don't.
* Add a JMAP profile for the client to tell the server if it wants whitelisting or blacklisting, and which users and domains it wants to whitelist and blacklist. I'll tell you right away that most users will reject a whitelisting option, so consider greylisting or quarantine as options.
* Optionally define a MIME type to carry subscription/follow/unfollow requests to remote sites, and a DNS record to hold public keys to sign requests.
* Define your desired message format and pick a MIME type.
* Specify the rendering of a plain text version of the message formats for delivery via multipart/alternative, which includes a footer that specifies that this is a possibly imprecise rendering and links to an info page.
Using JMAP means people would be able to connect with any JMAP capable client and "just" lose out on functionality not supported by that client. Using a mail server means most well configured mail servers can already talk to you if whitelisted/not blacklisted. Using multipart/alternative that way means clients can "upgrade" gradually and possibly after users see a link to an info page, and the footer in the plain text parts (or other rendered alternative) would help evangelise the system.
Building a new protocol today is kinda like inventing a new engine that doesn’t require gas, it’s gonna need a giant motivator to be adopted and trillions of dollars.
The days of grassroots bootstrapping are over, no one has any reason to adopt your thing because what we have now is Good Enough(tm). Your new thing needs to be revolutionary AND have government backing across multiple governments and administrations. There is no other way, consider the electric car vs hydrogen.
ACME protocol is fairly recent and widely used.
WebSocket protocol is barely over one decade old.
DNSSEC is a little over a decade and a half old.
NVMe over Ethernet is barely half a decade old and still gaining support.
400GBASE-LR4-6 is from last year. People are still working on terabit/second Ethernet.
There are loads of protocols on top of the HTTP family. DNS over HTTP is a protocol. SOAP, JSON-RPC, and REST are protocols. IPFS is a protocol.
To say there's no innovation in protocols when it's literally happening all the way up and down the stack is just silly and shortsighted.
Inboxes for a set of related services could conceivably be merged, tho I haven't done any work on that yet.
Conversely, TMTP groups/lists could be copied to a read-only website.
Seems like Hilton is mostly what comes up when I try searching for "sites supporting tmtp"
This is a deep topic, and "messaging" is not the only goal, nor even the principal one :)
In any case, good luck to the folks behind this effort; the more internet protocols (and not centralizied systems/orgs) that can help people, the better!
Yes, the default concept for an Internet messaging service is "everyone can reach anyone". This isn't helpful for online services and businesses who need to reach their members/customers directly & securely, and with a rich content model (e.g. survey/form in message, and structured result in reply).