Actually, that's exactly what we are trying to do with AirDispatch [1].
We started out intending to "fix" email with a better protocol, and ended up creating something much greater.
The core problems that we tried to solve (to help define "better") were:
- Security: encrypting and authenticating your messages
- Control: the sender hosts the message, so they can edit or delete them before the receiver sees them
- Flexibility: all messages are, in fact, just key-value stores, so any type of data can be sent on the protocol (whether it's Mail, IMs, Vines, Instagrams, or whatever the flavor of the week social network is)
I think it's a great product, and we are going to start the developer release of the client (Melange [2]) tomorrow.
I think it is an interesting idea that has yet to gain traction, let alone interoperable implementations, possibly due to the cantankerous origins. May have difficulty penetrating the enterprise, where control of policy trumps most other considerations. And as with any multi-sided business model, it requires a community segment with unmet needs to provide initial critical mass. I suggest trying to make the protocol less binary and more like a classical line-oriented exchange, it'll improve uptake amongst implementers. And I wish you well; every effort to reinvent email deserves a red hot go.
We started out intending to "fix" email with a better protocol, and ended up creating something much greater.
The core problems that we tried to solve (to help define "better") were:
- Security: encrypting and authenticating your messages
- Control: the sender hosts the message, so they can edit or delete them before the receiver sees them
- Flexibility: all messages are, in fact, just key-value stores, so any type of data can be sent on the protocol (whether it's Mail, IMs, Vines, Instagrams, or whatever the flavor of the week social network is)
I think it's a great product, and we are going to start the developer release of the client (Melange [2]) tomorrow.
[1] http://airdispat.ch
[2] http://github.com/melange-app/melange