IMAP Access to IETF Email List Archives
draft-sparks-genarea-imaparch-00

Abstract

The IETF makes heavy use of email lists to conduct its work. This often involves accessing the archived history of those email lists. Participants would like to have the ability to browse and search those archives using standard IMAP clients. This memo captures the requirements for providing a service that would allow such browsing and searching.

Status of this Memo

This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.

This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Requirements for IMAP access to archived IETF lists
• 3. Security Considerations
• 4. IANA Considerations
• 5. Acknowledgements
• 6. Changelog
• 6.1. 00
• 7. References
• Author's Address

1. Introduction

The IETF makes heavy use of email lists to conduct its work. This often involves accessing the archived history of those email lists. Work is underway to improve the web-based browsing and searching of these archives [I-D.sparks-genarea-mailarch]. Participants would like to have the ability to browse and search those archives using standard IMAP clients. This memo captures the requirements for providing a service that would allow such browsing and searching.

Discussion of this memo should take place on the ietf@ietf.org mailing list.

2. Requirements for IMAP access to archived IETF lists

Many participants would prefer to access the list archives using IMAP [RFC3501]. Providing this access while meeting the following requirements will likely require an IMAP server with specialized capabilities.

o

The system should expose the archive using an IMAP interface, with each list represented as a mailbox.

o

This interface must work with standard IMAP clients.

o

The interface should allow users to each have their own read/unread marks for messages. Allowing other annotation is desirable.

-

If this requires the user to login, the system should use datatracker login credentials

o

The interface must have server-side searching enabled, and should support multiple simultaneous extensive searches. The server should facilitate the enhanced search capabilities described in [I-D.sparks-genarea-mailarch]

3. Security Considerations

Allowing IMAP as an interface for browsing and searching the archives of IETF email lists does not affect the security of the Internet in any significant fashion.

4. IANA Considerations

This document has no actions for IANA.

5. Acknowledgements

This text was derived directly from an earlier version of [I-D.sparks-genarea-mailarch] which incorporated text suggestions from Alexey Melnikov, Pete Resnick, and S. Moonesamy.

6. Changelog

6.1. 00

1. Split this set of requirements out from the mailarch doc so that this project could be pursued separately

7. References

Author's Address