JSON Meta Application Protocol
The JSON Meta Application Protocol (JMAP) is an Internet protocol, currently in development, for the submission and access/synchronisation of e-mails and considered a possible successor for IMAP and SMTP.
Additionally, building on the core specification of JMAP, protocols for contacts/address book and calendar synchronisation are also planned, possibly replacing CardDAV and CalDAV.
Motivation
According to the authors the currently used mail protocols, namely IMAP and SMTP (for client-server communication; server-server communication is not part of JMAP), are too complicated and not suited any more for modern mobile networks and in high-latency scenarios.
This led to a stagnation in good (especially free) e-mail clients and to a proliferation of proprietary protocols developed by market-leading companies, e.g. for Google’s Gmail or Microsoft Outlook, that try to mitigate the shortcomings of the current generation of protocols.
JMAP wants to provide a modern and open solution to this situation.
Development
JMAP started around 2014 as an internal development at the Australian e-mail provider Fastmail.[1] Since 2017 a working group at the IETF is leading the development and standardisation process.[2] Besides Fastmal another company involved is Oracle.
Implementations
- In version 3.0 Apache Software Foundation’s free mail-server Apache James added “experimental” support for JMAP.[3]
References
- ^ "FOSDEM 2019: IMAP, JMAP, and the Future of Open Email Standards". Retrieved 2019-02-16.
- ^ "JSON Mail Access Protocol (jmap) -". Retrieved 2019-02-16.
- ^ "Apache James Project – Apache James Server 3 - Release Notes". Retrieved 2019-02-16.